Did you know? - The Art of Champagne Sabrage!

Sabrage is a technique for opening a champagne bottle with a sabre, used for ceremonial occasions. The saber is slid along the body of the bottle toward the neck. The force of the blade hitting the lip breaks the glass to separate the collar from the neck of the bottle. The cork and collar remain together after separating from the neck

There are several legends of the story of Sabrage or Sabering Champagne. One says that when the officers of Napoleon’s army returned home after a victory, cheering townspeople would hand bottles of Champagne as tokens of their appreciation for their victory and gallantry. Since the soldiers were mounted on horseback it was
difficult to hold the reins of the horse and remove both the foil, wire basket (muselet) around the cork and the cork (bouchon) at the same time, so the soldiers simply took out their sabers and struck it against the lip of the bottle with an upward blow and sabered off the cork. Voilà!

Here's a step by step illustration of how its done -

1. A chilled bottle of champagne (45-48°F or 7-8°C) is taken and the the foil on top of the bottle is removed to reveal the cork and wire basket





2. The wire basket around the cork is carefully removed.






3. The bottle is held firmly, neck pointing up about 30 degrees




4. Now, the sabre is held against the seam of the bottle and firmly slid up against the glass ring at the top.



5. The cork and glass ring fly away dramatically


When performed correctly, the cork and glass ring will fly away, spilling little of the precious wine and leaves a neat cut on the neck of the bottle

Go try! Caution: Careful though as we do not want any accidents around or any shards of glass in the champagne!

Khari and chai

The perfect start to my imperfect mornings. This has been my routine for the past few months but it is only of late that i realized how much i need the khari with the chai. Chai is not chai anymore without khari. I hate mornings when i have run out of khari. Tried regular toast, suji toast, soup sticks instead. Nothing compares or even comes close.

Getting the perfect khari is not easy. Some are hard and not quite the melt in your mouth variety. Some khari leave a sticky residue on the palette of the mouth. Some are too powdery (of theres a word like that), some too small and some too big while some come in ridiculous flavors. The best khari is available in the old time bakeries like the ahura bakery. I really can't make a trip all the way there for my regular khari needs. Among the branded ones, my favorite is the Baker Street Traditional Khari in plain maska, jeera and methi flavors. They also have the twist khari. I don't like. Just FYI Bakers Street is an ISO-22000 certified product of India:)

Finding the perfect khari is only half the journey. There is more.

The chai cannot be ignored in this tamasha. It plays an important part. My perfect chai for the khari cannot have too much milk, not too much sugar, got to have generous amount of tea leaves. The perfect chai should be hot but not piping hot.

Now comes the part where the khari has to be dipped into the chai. The dip has got be enough but not too much. Enough for the chai to soak in but the crispness of the khari to be retained. The justenoughdipped khari has to find its way to the mouth almost immediately, leaving as little crumbs in the chai as possible. The point where the chaisoakedbutcrisp khari meets the mouth is when experience begins to get divine. Mmmmmm!

The rest of the day can be, and is more often than not, duckall!