strands of ginger and the cauliflower still retaining its shape and crunch. The butter tarka kofta where amazingly you can taste everything the sauce, the kofta arrives in, was tempered with. The stand out has to be the mango pineapple curry where bits of fruit are bathed in coconut sauce. Hot, sweet, tangy, the dish has its antecedents in Thai cuisine. 
Kambo for all his effort can’t completely shake off affectation in his food! Clearly, he has his eye on other culinary traditions that Indians like and he has been quick to incorporate those flavors with some delightful results. The chicken lemon chili kabab that arrives as a sizzler and is polished off within minutes by the table, is clean, flaky, white meat. Here, the inspiration is Greek food – lemon and pepper to flavored on a bed of charred onions. There is a creamy chicken tikka in white wine that sounds like an Italian sauce, a Punjabi saag that has pureed broccoli, paneer smoked over mesquite…
This inclusiveness Kambo also brings to his customer relations. With a keen eye on business, he has opened the doors to the adjoining and well-appointed 350 capacity banquet hall for namaz, church services and BAPS congregations. The goodwill has resulted in a stream of customers from the communities. 
The Royal India banquet hall and a second, smaller one of 2,000 sq ft, since their opening in 2014, has become a hub for San Diego’s Indian-American community with fundraisers and Indian bureaucrats and elected officials being hosted here. With its custom-look and options from Mexican, Italian and Mediterranean foods, Kambo says the hall is booked solid through the year with celebratory events like pre-wedding festivities and quinceaneras.
Many in the food business will tell you how after a long day they just prefer to go home to eat a simple dal. Kambo laughs that idea off. “My family and I eat here regularly because I know what’s in the food. There is nothing that we serve that we don’t eat ourselves.” Considering his wife Preet is a doctor from India, who for the sake of raising her two children and keeping up with her husband’s restaurant hours, works as a healthcare administrator instead, there might be some health guarantees in that!
With entrees hovering around the $20 mark, this large, airy and bright restaurant with spotless table linen, is definitely pricier than some others but also worth every spoonful you will greedily end up popping in. 
Royal Banquet
8990 Miramar Road, #200, San Diego, CA 92126
858.457.9999 or royalbanquet.com
Full bar. Catering for 1,000 people. Licensed to cater in several San Diego area hotels.
THE STORY
Chandigarhian Sam Kambo is an engineer by training. While pursuing an MBA in SoCal, he chanced upon an opportunity to run a fast food outlet in La Jolla. This was in 1993. In four years, he opened a second Royal India Express outlet in SD as well as a fine dining one. The flagship Royal India Banquet-Miramar employs 22 people and he has 14 cooks who work for him. ​

• 1 cup – brown rice - soak in the hot water
• 1 cup – red and white quinoa
• ¼ cup – chana dal – wash and soak

• ¼ cup – frozen peas
• 2-4 – jalapeno – chopped
• 4-5 cloves – garlic – grated
• 1 inch – ginger – grated
• 1 bunch – cilantro – chopped
• 1 tsp – cumin
• 1 stick – cinnamon
• 3-4 – cloves
• 3-4 – dry chillies
• 1 small can – el  pato  sauce (red)
• 3 tbsp – taco seasoning
• 2 cubes – chipotle seasoning (knorr mini cubes chipotle)
• 1 tbsp – garam masala
• 2-3 tbsp – butter or ghee
• 2-3 tbsp – oil
• Salt to taste
• Take large sauce pan, heat ghee or butter and oil together. Add cinnamon stick , cloves, dry chilles and cumin. Add onion and saute till it starts changing color.
• Wash brown rice few times and add to onion. Add 1tbsp of taco seasoning and 1 tsp of salt and add 3 cups  water .Let rice cook more than half way through.
• Add quinoa, chana dal, moong dal, beans and all the veggies. Mix well
• Add about 2cups of water and mix well and let boil on heat flame and  than reduce to medium.
• Add all the seasoning and garam masala, sauce, and taste the salt before adding more.
• Add water if needed. Let it cook on medium flames. It will take about 30-40 mins total.
• Add cilantro. Mix well and check to make sure it is fully cooked or just add little more water and let it cook .
• Serve hot.
Substitution is easy – any vegetables can be used and any type of rice or beans can be easily used Cooking has been Bhagat’s passion since childhood 66,  If I like something, I’ll figure out a way to make it,”she says. 
Kitchen Queens, pushes her harder to learn new things and create more interesting recipes.  
(Kitchen Queens is a facebook group created to inspire home cooks. It also holds an annual cooking competition as well as other events that are open to members of the group.To join the facebook group, please search for Kitchen Queens and ‘ask to join’) ​

BY RENU ANAND
Ingredients
8 to 10 Serrano chilies (deseed them if you don’t want too spicy; you can also use Jalapenos)
8 to 10 curry leaves...

BY NIMMI RAGHUNATHAN
The thing about Indian food is its variety and adaptability. The potato is made into a curry in every home; still in each home, just the sleight of the cook’s hand or a pinch of a different spice, yields a marvelous new dish. Indian chef Sanjeev Kapoor takes full advantage of this, picking up a host of flavors from across gastronomic...

India and then mixing and mashing his way through, giving a joyful kick to the food. So, while the gourmet may say there really is nothing special about his recipes, his food still intrigues. Most times, he has homemakers dissecting a dish and rushing off to replicate it in their kitchens. Kapoor has shrewdly monetized this interest. In the food empire that straddles continents, Kapoor has in his stable the Yellow Chilli brand of restaurants. In SoCal, his franchisees are the couple Satwinder and Kamal Gothra along with their partner Manoj Sukumaran. The restaurant, clearly aware of what will draw customers, bears a huge image of the celebrity chef at the entry. While that might be the USP of the place, the Gothras are clear – there is freedom in day to day operations. 
Under them the restaurant, previously home to another Indian eatery, has had a facelift. New to the industry, the duo have admittedly had their fair share of stumbles but a year into their new venture, say they are on firmer ground.  The buffet prices have been dropped and Indo-Chinese, Italian and Thai dishes added. The weekend buffet features a live counter where the street food offering changes every week. Then there are pre-set lunch meals where the sticker price is not a surprise. The adjacent banquet hall remains busy with anniversaries, wedding events and birthday parties.
But undoubtedly, the food is the star here with the famed Kapoor twist evident. The jalfrezi features water chestnuts and broccoli; one fish dish comes flavored with mustard and dill leaves; coriander pesto coats a mango and sprout salad while arugula and pomegranate bond with sweet potato in another salad plate. 
Reading the menu is half the entertainment here. The names hint toward what the dish might be but necessitates reading the description. Tandoor mushrooms stuffed with cheese is shabnam ke moti; subz panchavati is a veggie dish that probably is meant to invoke the holy town in Maharashtra. The menu also offers a culinary tour of India. The steamed Parsi patrani machchli; from Kolkata’s Chowringee Lane is a chili chicken; Awadh cuisine’s offering is a kabab that traditionally includes green papaya; Kerala is represented through coconut milk infused fish and Tamil Nadu with a beetroot and pea stir fry. Mostly though, the focus is Punjab so there is the obligatory Amritsar and Ludhiana inspired ones.  he signature dishes are stand outs. There is the opaquely named shaam savera which when it comes to the table conjures the idea of the bread-based birds in nest dish. It is actually balls of blanched spinach lined with fried chickpea flour and stuffed with paneer. Cut in half, on a bed of tomato gravy, the dark spinach is becomes shaam or evening and the bright white paneer, the morning.  
Aloo nazakat involves boiling, frying and baking the potato and at the table stuffed with a multitude of ingredients including cheese and lentils, it is a tongue pleaser. When the lalla mussa dal comes out from the kitchen, the chef Surajit Kumar Barai follows to explain that the dish was 36 hours in the making. At first glance it looks like mush but is a splendid, robust dish that is creamy and spicy all at once. Another dish is straight up what it says it is: ginger and cilantro coat the cubes of the adraki dhaniya paneer for a crunchy outside. Indeed paneer dominates the vegetarian menu. Kapoor was in the news recently for creating the infamous Malabar paneer, when he took the Arab, Brahmin, Zamorin and Chirakkal influenced cuisine and threw in the paneer which is foreign to the region, drawing heavy fire. But whether griddled, stuffed or scorched in the tandoor, this cheese is used with versatility and spiced uniquely at Yellow Chilli, for the diner to savor. For one who is partial to chicken, this casual dining restaurant will provide satiation. Satwinder says the restaurant only uses thigh meat, a favored cut for the Indian palate. Squarely aimed at the discerning Punjabi is the Puran Singh da tariwala murgh: the peppery curry mimics a roadside eatery on the Delhi-Ambala roadway.  Chicken tikka here, again with fanciful names, are of various varities – creamy, spiced with bedgi chilli or flavored with key lime. Whatever the dish, the meat falls apart with a gentle nudge of the fork. Another point he makes is that the restaurant does not use artificial coloring; the tandoori chicken looks like meat not a bolt of fire. 
Yellow Chilli of course has a slew of breads including a gluten free one, rice that of course has the ever popular biryani – finished in the oven, it gets served in a hot clay pot and a range of pleasing non-alcoholic drinks that are salted and sweetened. Here, you will not find the ubiquitous mango lassi. “It’s retired!” exclaims the energetic Kamal who is the PR and marketing brain of the operation. 
The restaurant has a full bar and the Gothras have in place a happy hour every day. An attractive feature particularly given that it is situated in a touristy neighborhood where at the end of the day the SoCal visitor can come and unwind.  Satwinder says the aim of the place is to see that everyone has an exceptional experience with food, family and friends. Cheerfully blunt, he says his challenge over the months has been to keep the kitchen consistent but the restaurant has now hit its stride. 
The food is expansive in its flavors, faultlessly delicious and very rich.  If that’s for you, head out there. 
​

​BY MANSI MOTWANI
LOS ANGELES, CA - ‘Kitchen Queens’, a community of cooking aficionados in Artesia is hosting an Author Meet-and-Greet on March 11 with Nandita Godbole. A native of Mumbai, India, Godbole is an indie cookbook author currently residing in Atlanta, Georgia. Her latest book ‘Not For You: Family Narratives of Denial &...

By SMITA AMIN
Ingredients
10 Fresh skinless chicken drumsticks 
2 tablespoon plain or Greek yogurt ...