Cocum, Cambridge

Before I start about Cocum, just a few random bits and pieces I wanted to mention. Firstly, why the knife and fork?  Well the Dancer brought her DSLR camera to dinner to take some decent photos, rather than using my little old point-and-shoot. The result? Pretty sure I'll need much more practice handling such serious equipment, although I was not helped by the fact that the lights above our table were broken. I now have seven 20mb (raw) photos of the same set of cutlery on my computer, so I thought I should use at least one of them.

So actually I've been contemplating buying a new camera for food photography amongst other things. I've mainly been looking at the expensive compact range - the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 has been recommended to me, whilst PC says there's a better Olympus which has just been released (this one perhaps). Do you guys have any suggestions?

Two other exciting things:
* This blog might see something from the other side of the Atlantic in the near future;
* Last night I paid a visit to what is (theoretically at least) the best restaurant in Cambridge... oh yes, will get blogging soon

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Pre-movie dinner? It's good for you. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d-qENAaNbM)

Cambridge has so many Indian restaurants, each offering a disconcertingly large number of options, making for a rather mind-boggling number of Indian (and other subcontinental) dishes. However when you take into account that they mostly serve similar variations on North Indian style curries, naan and this so-called Balti cuisine which apparently is a Birmingham invention, the choice is not as expansive as it might seem.

Given this, a few of us were keen to try out Cocum, a Keralan (southwestern) Indian restaurant suggested by Lady G all the way back during our gnocchi-making fest. We finally got around to trying it out one evening before going to the Arts Picturehouse for a movie.

Someone clearly had a lot of fun writing this.

We arrived to a find a reasonably peaceful and subdued Sunday evening unfolding in the restaurant. Upon reading the menu description however, it became apparent that this would be a life-changing experience. Nothing wrong with a little hype! The four of us on one side of the table decided sharing was indeed caring in order to maximise the number of dishes we each could try.

The Pope's requests for 'the one with butter' were met with the paneer butter masala, whilst the vegetable kootu was a recommendation by the waiter after the Dancer's aubergine thiyal wasn't available.

Left: Vegetable Kootu (£4.75) ; Right: Paneer Butter Masala (£5.50)

The servings were modest in size but reasonable given the price. To be honest, the kootu was a little reminiscent of Trinity curries, where rather unfortunately the dominant spice is salt. The paneer was a little more to my taste, with precious few cubes of the cheese in a thick creamy sauce. However I do think that butter chicken/paneer is one of the most generic and over-popularised dishes, and most definitely North Indian in style. The Pope didn't seem to mind (and rightly so I guess), because it has butter in it, and butter makes everything taste good.

Left: Kerala Paratha (£1.95) ; Right: Appam (£1.75)

Strangely enough, the breads were more exciting than the curries themselves. My only prior experience with parathas are the frozen kind you buy in supermarkets which turn out slightly crisp like puff pastry when cooked. This one was still full of delicious pastry layer goodness but with a soft texture, perfect for scooping up curry sauce. The appam was wonderfully light and spongy, and I probably could have gone through quite a few of them if we hadn't ordered rice too.

Chicken Shashlick (£7.95)

The chicken shashlick was solid if not inspiring, with generous cubes of barbecued tandoori chicken and onion. Again I think tandoori cooking is more of a North Indian thing, although I'm no expert. Also I'm curious about the origins of shashlick (Wikipedia says it's spelled shashlik) as it was basically chicken kebab with indian spices - perhaps for the naming of this dish, the word has just been borrowed from Russian.

Lamb Masala Dosa (£7.95)

By far and away, the star of the show was the lamb masala dosa - a giant larger-than-plate sized crepe filled with spiced lamb and potato, accompanied by sambar (a lentil curry) and coconut chutney. The crepe itself was thin, light and crisp, with a generous amount of satisfyingly starchy lamb masala in the middle. Whilst overpowered by the lamb, the sambar and chutney worked better with the plain unfilled dosa sections flanking either side of the plate. Based on sheer size, a thumbs up from me!

On the whole, I suspect that it would have been a more enjoyable experience if we had chosen some of the more unusual or authentic Keralan dishes. We also weren't helped by the time pressure which comes from needing to finish eating before a deadline, like the start of a movie! All that remains now is to try that other Keralan restaurant in Cambridge, The Rice Boat...

We'll save that for some time later.

Cocum
71 Castle St, Cambridge, CB3 0AH
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 366 668
www.cocumrestaurant.co.uk


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