mongo_jones

nessa, leave the mango to ripen outside the fridge next time (folk wisdom in india has it that they'll ripen faster if you store them in a sack of rice). not only will the mango not dehydrate if it is outside but the aromas as it ripens will spread through your home. pop it in the fridge for 30 minutes before you eat it--a chilled mango is a good thing. mongo

this is not attractive behavior (as close a translation as i can get to "yeh tumhe shobha nahin deti"). i will have to wreak terrible revenge once i can figure out what it might be.

i believe a closer transliteration would be kochu-jang or gochu-jang. it is a fermented red bean paste with chillies. it was another of the things we had to take with us to india as well--but this only because my wife wanted to cook a meal for my family and this seemed like an ingredient we probably couldn't find in delhi (i've since been told that it is available in i.n.a market but have not verified this). it is a very versatile ingredient--used as an ingredient in "sauces", marinades, as a dipping sauce, and just last evening i caught my wife eating a bowl of steamed rice with kochu-jang (from the guilty look on her face i gathered this is not something adults do). it would probably be great with some types of kababs as well, or as an ingredient in a dry chicken curry. my wife makes a chicken "stew" with onions and potatoes, soy sauce, sesame oil and liberal doses of kochu-jang that looks like it could be indian, and tastes only a little less so.

rushina, richie has explained kimchi quite succinctly. as far as i can tell anyway--i'm not an expert on korean food by any means, i'm just married to a korean-american woman with high-standards (well, in the food department anyway). what i am an expert on is the eating of kimchi with bengali food. vikram has gone on record here to say that he doesn't think kimchi goes with any indian food. i'm tempted to guess that the quality of kimchi available in korean restaurants in india is not that high. more likely the kimchi vikram has come across was very freshly made--at which point it can be "squeaky" and sharp and clash with the flavors of much indian food. however, in our house we favor kimchi that has fermented for quite some time and has a softer texture and less aggressive flavor. i like to substitute it for achar and eat it with dal and rice (especially bengali style mushoor dal). it also goes well with a spicy meat curry i should say, however, that this has not been a conscious culinary choice. as any hardcore korean will tell you kimchi is eaten with everything. to illustrate: my wife's family has a traditional american turkey dinner on thanksgiving--they get the turkey, the cranberry sauce, the mashed potatoes, the works--and then they break out the kimchi. they don't find any contradiction there, nor do they think they're bravely hybridizing food traditions. a meal simply isn't a meal without kimchi. my wife is not quite as extreme in her attachment to it. she doesn't bring out the kimchi when i make pasta, for example--but i have little doubt that she would unconsciously make a move towards it if there was some on the table. when we went to india this winter we had to carry kimchi with us so that she wouldn't go insane. talk about lethal baggage. people complain here about the smell of hing/asafoetida; well, nothing can clear a room of the meek and mild like opening a jar of well-fermented kimchi (well kathal and shutki might do the trick as well). we had to wrap ours in layers and layers of plastic bags to take it on the plane and if we'd been asked to open it in security i might have been in guantanamo bay right now with little thought for egullet. mongo

i'm another one of those who has never had problems with hing/asafoetida aromas migrating to other parts of the pantry or smelling so strong as to require extreme measures. not in the u.s, and not back in india. and i have a super-sensitive nose. can't explain it. maybe tana got a package that into which something had crawled and died before it got to her? now that's a tasty thought.

i am someone who (as i've said elsewhere on egullet in the past) doesn't see too much movement on a continuum from great butter-chicken to crappy butter-chicken, as opposed to say from great naans to crappy naans. and i've eaten the butter chicken at bukhara as well. my suspicion is that a large part of the explanation for why the bukhara version tastes so different is that no one is better with a tandoor than the folks in the bukhara kitchen and, as episure has stated, good tandoori chicken makes all the difference--not just to the succulence of the meat but also to the flavor it imparts to the sauce. now, with that said when i want a butter-chicken in delhi i go to either pindi or gulati in pandara road. when i go to bukhara i focus on those of their offerings that have not been slathered in a rich tomato based gravy. but that's just me.

hey, i'm not the one concerned about the alleged disappearance of the family-style meal. my interest is more in the use of the term "family-style" to describe a form of serving that doesn't mesh at all with the term as i use it and the practices of it that i am familiar with in other cultural settings. as such i'm not sure why people keeps addressing to me these examples of places where this communal form of dining takes place. i'm not denying they exist (though marlena, i have not in fact eaten at any of these places you list) or lamenting their demise. family style dining to me is simply food served in communal rather than individual portions, with people serving themselves at their own table from food they've ordered. and in this form it is alive and thriving in asian restaurants all over this country. is it the case that many americans of other ethnic origins get served individually plated portions at home as well? if so, i suppose the cheesecake factory experience might well be a representative of family-style dining as well. fatguy, thanks for the oh-so-brief primer on the western history of food delivery. a little more detail? and do you know when the french/service russe form of plating saturated the american home and restaurant?

sorry to drag this back to the top of the forum--i've been away from regular net-access for 24 days now and am slowly catching up on conversations in which i've been involved and which continued in my absence. on may 24 shocker said with reference to my piece on jonathan gold: i'm really quite bemused by the homi bhabha comparison but whatever. i suppose you may just be using his name as short-hand for "postcolonial"--my point of view in the article on gold is quite far from the kind of thing bhabha is interested in; and while my writing in that piece may not be clear on its own terms, compared to the average bhabha essay it is as clear as a shot of vodka (if not as intoxicating). a PC, post-colonial studies, dialogue-squishing feel? while my involvement with postcolonial studies is doubtless palpable from the piece i'm surprised to hear it called PC (unless you mean "part calcuttan"). why is it pc? i know this isn't terribly dialogue-squishing of me but i'd really like to know in what way you feel that piece is informed by a spirit of political-correctness? or does any point of view that challenges first-world takes on third-world culture (particularly when voiced by a person of third-world origin) automatically become politically correct? generally i've found that there's little that's more liable to squish dialogue than for one participant in a conversation to call the other pc. in this context: not too long ago i asked on another egullet forum why in the forum listings the caribbean--a collection of independent sovereign states--could not be listed geographically along with latin america (a region most caribbean states actually physically neighbour much more closely than they do the u.s) rather than nationally as part of the u.s.a (another sovereign state). the englightening, if not edifying, response to that also involved a oblique reference to alleged political correctness. now that was political correctness but in a literal, geographical sense--but that wasn't the sense in which it was invoked. i'd be interested to hear how you're using it here to characterize my piece on gold. i don't believe i've referred to him, in that piece or in other posts on this forum, as a "great homogenizer". i do feel, however, that his "fubs" and over-generalizations are a)in fact the rule and not the exception when it comes to his writings on asian cuisines, b) that they are not random or arbitrary but in fact quite explainable via a larger cultural analysis and c)that this analysis is worth doing if for no other reason then because it is sometimes good to have the object of knowledge talk back to the subject. now i may not have performed this cultural analysis as well as i might have--it will help me revise the piece if you'll tell me which parts you think are most marred by over-generalizations of my own. see, now there's an honest invitation to a dialogue.

skchai, jschyun, thanks to your recommendations of titles and bookstore respectively we now own two monstrously sized korean cookbooks. one of them is indeed the updated version of the banchan book skchai listed, the other is one from the same series on chigaes and other soups. i'll post the exact names as soon as i can get my wife (who is supremely uninterested in online food discussion) to transliterate the titles for me. we'd wanted to get Hanguk ui Jeontong Eumshik but springwater books didn't have it. mongo

bux, you're corroborating me here, right? not answering me. my comment about indian restaurants in the u.s was that it seems to be the upscale ones--see, for example, amma under suvir--that do the individual plating. is amma an exception among upscale indian places in nyc? certainly. and this is true of certain dishes in various indian regional cuisines as well. while dosas, for example, can be shared by people merely by cutting them into pieces a dosa is a single unit of food. vadas and idlis on the other hand may arrive on a table stacked on a platter. docsconz: that other great bastion of italian food traditions, buca de peppo (or however it is their name is spelled) does a similar thing too. now, does anyone have any thoughts about my question about the history of individual portion plating and non-asian restaurants in the u.s?

yes, on numerous occasions--but the sharing there is for the people at one table. it has not been the kind of general communal experience you're describing, which seems closer to a buffet.

interesting. i don't believe i've ever experienced anything like that. i don't know if that's really family style though--seems more like a way for people not in a "family" or group to meet others. here's a related question(s): have non asian restaurants in the u.s always had the individual plating system that almost all of them seem to have now? or was there ever a time when even a steak and potatoes place served food in the kind of asian family style that pan and i have described? how about in europe? and a non-sequitur: sometimes it seems to me that the tasting menu almost functions as an attempt to give a microcosmic experience of a family-style meal to an individual diner. this will make more sense if you've ever eaten at a traditional bengali family's home or gone to a bengali wedding banquet--you get served/take and eat small portions of many different things in sequence; the structural difference being that at home different folks at the same table can take things for themselves in different sequence and at a wedding banquet the sequence is set by whoever is serving everyone (usually 50+ at a time in multiple seatings).

i'm not clear on what exactly you mean by family-style service here. do you not have to order anything in particular? or do they just put down large bowls of whatever you've ordered on the table for all present to take as much or as little of as they choose? if the latter this is still pretty much how korean places in koreatown in los angeles and chinese places in the san gabriel valley do it. most indian places do it this way as well (exceptions being thalis at the average restaurant and all entrees at upscale restaurants which buy into the european-style plating system).

got back to boulder yesterday after 24 days in lost angela. our original 2 week trip got extended for not particularly happy reasons but on the positive side we managed to get a lot more eating at our favorite places out of it. really, i spent the trip reading (11 novels in 24 days) and eating. pictures will follow but here's a list of some of the places we ate at, in decreasing order of number of visits. i will spare you the list of novels i read. multiple visits: 1. aladin: my favorite bengali/bangladeshi dive in l.a (vermont, between 2nd and 1st). ate here 4 times. almost better than the food was the news that they have started wholesaling frozen bengali fish to a pakistani grocery in denver and are fairly certain that these people also sell goat meat. 2. chungking: our favorite sichuan (and all around chinese) restaurant in monterey park (garfield a couple of blocks south of garvey). ate here twice. the first meal (monday night dinner) was almost disappointing. either they have a different chef on weeknights or the new waitress practising her limited english on us decided to tell the chef that we wouldn't be able to handle the heat. after we sent everything back to be done properly the second meal the next weekend was perfect (my lower intestine just twinged in pained acknowledgement of that statement). got their kung pao chicken for the first time on this trip. it will now be on our regular rotation on return trips. 3. hodori: i've stated on many occasions my love of this 24 hr, staffed by grim middle-aged women koreatown standby (olympic and vermont). ate here twice. got an excellent bibim naeng-myun on the first visit and their equally excellent yook-gae-jiang on the second. one-time only's: 1. shik-do-rak: our favorite duk-bo-sam bbq place in koreatown. did not disappoint. olympic and hoover. 2. chung kiwa: went to this bbq place (olympic, a couple of blocks west of wilton) for the first time on mrs. jones' cousin's recommendation (said cousin is the undisputed queen of koreatown eating, twenty-something division). she said they have the best naeng-myuns in koreatown. we went with an army of friends and sampled some naeng-myuns and some pretty good bbq. pleasant surprise: they do duk-bo-sam as well. regrettably it was only after we finished gorging that any of us noticed the prominent signs all over the place for something call "red deer bbq". next time we will check this out--hopefully it is in fact venison and not an euphemism for warthog-penis. 3. nrz seafood: this has taken the place of the shilla seafood buffet place on vermont (between james m. wood and wilshire). went with aforementioned cousin for korean style sashimi. for $40 you get a platter of two kinds of "live-fish" sashimi--they kill and slice it up after you order--before the sashimi arrives you get a ton of banchan and a porridgey thingy with clams, a fish-chigae, rice and a grilled pike mackerel arrives after. more than enough for three people--but being greedy we also got yellowtail and salmon sashimi (sliced much thicker than at japanese places). you don't have to do the live-fish sashimi if you go there, they also have platters of assorted sashimi. both kinds can be got in $40, $60 and $80 platters. 4. myung-dong: this is our favorite place for samgye-tang (a large steaming bowl of goodness that contains chicken, huge chunks of garlic, ginseng, chestnuts, mushrooms, noodles etc in a clear broth--add appropriate seasonings and ignore jonathon gold related generalizations about koreans and bland soups). in fact we're not sure why they serve anything other than samgye-tang. every time we've visited every single diner has had a bowl of it in front of them. this place is hard to find, however, for those who can't read korean. while their bi-lingual menu has their name on it, the sign outside is only in korean. however, interested parties should not let this stop them, should take irolo north from olympic (it starts out as normandie but stay on the main part which becomes irolo) and turn right into the strip immediately after the light at 7th street (if you hit wilshire you've gone too far). they are between the cleaners and the hair-salon and a few doors away from what may be the only moroccan restaurant in koreatown. 5. chunju-han-il kwan: speaking of places that don't have their names in english on the outside--these people don't even have a menu in english (unless they only bring it out if no one in your party is korean). pointing and ordering can't take you too far astray if you're an omnivore but it helps to take a korean speaker along. we were treated to dinner here by mrs. jones' aged grandma and we ate heaps of pork bulgoki, seafood pancakes, spicy cod-fish and most importantly bul-nak jun-gol (this was my first time eating this and i'm obviously relying on what the name sounded like when i asked the taciturn spouse--jschyun, skchai, please correct my transliteration). they apparently do a whole series of jun-gols (a spicy broth with noodles etc. in it) but the one we got had strips of beef bulgoki and octopus in it, hence the bul-nak. right, where is it located? the small strip at the corner of 6th and kenmore. it is to the right if you stand facing the restaurant/karaoke-joint that anchors the south end. 6. india sweet house: as i've said before the place for alu-parathas and chola-bhaturas in southern california is on pico a couple of blocks east of crescent heights. they also do, as i've noted before, the best sag-panir in town. you can eat like a particularly greedy pig for less than $15 (two people), and we felt it would be rash not to. i was supposed to return for a repeat engagement with a friend but he pulled a last minute strategic switcheroo on me and dragged me out to pasadena to eat a respectable but unremarkable buffet at a cookie-cutter north-indian by the name of mezbaan. my heart warmed to see that the great tradition of using the exact same sauce base for two dishes, but putting pieces of chicken-tikka in one and malai kofta in the other has not been abandoned by these people. they were sweet and unpretentious folk there though and it was good to hear some hardcore punjabi accents again, and i should not carp. 7. 888 seafood: on west valley in rosemead, east of san gabriel. went for dim-sum with other friends the same day that foodzealot, jschyun etc. were there. didn't eat with them but we connected (by which i mean only that we had a nice conversation, not that we entwined body-parts in any way). i don't know if there's any significance to this but foodzealot has a huuuge camera. 8. hide: sawtelle, between olympic and santa monica. in my opinion the best reasonably priced sushi west of robertson. did not disappoint. 9. menori: 1/2 block north of pico on robertson. in my opinion the best reasonably priced sushi on/east of robertson. did not disappoint either. 10. versailles: went to the culver city branch. mmm plantains and beans and rice and halibut in garlic sauce. 11. el cholo: went to the western branch with ex-work friends only because we used to go there from work. they do what they do, and they do it reasonably well i suppose. the food was not the point of the evening. 12. casablanca: bizarre l.a kitsch in venice. we only go there for the glorious freshly made tortillas. eating those with the tomatillo salsa was always a much better experience than eating anything on the menu, and so it proved to be again. now that i'm getting into the not-so memorable meals part of the story i'll stop. we ate out some more with diminishing returns, but we also had some great meals in the homes of relatives--i've probably forgotten some other good restaurant meals too. all in all it was a good trip for food. it was also nice to meet jschyun and foodzealot and i hope to meet more l.a egulleters whenever it is we get there next. i will drag you all to aladin. photos to follow anon edited to clean up grammar and correct an inadvertent anagram (shtick:kitsch)

sounds like a chutney to me. in return for these consulting services i will require a jar mailed to me. not just any jar, but one containing this chutney.

how about we push it back another week so fred can make it? and then we can all go to his company picnic--depending on the menu. mongo (not back in boulder yet)

that's an insult, right? just checking.

allow me to post again the link to my long piece on gold: http://home.comcast.net/~mongo_jones/gold.html

i'll try to get to an internet connection and confirm by friday evening--i'd like to meet you guys but won't know until we get to koreatown tonight whether m-i-l has a full schedule for us.

will the ticket be included?

if it is the same place it must have been before or after my time--nothing quite so decadent was in place when i ate there.

yes, a good orange chicken in my opinion is one which doesn't present sweetness as its first or last impression. i also find that the more orange an orange chicken is in color the less i am likely to like it; the best ones seem always to be a dark red, almost maroon, in color. the place in boulder i mentioned serves theirs garnished with sauteed snow-peas. i much prefer green onions.

not all supper-theater then tommy?

the chinese place in the university village food court by usc in los angeles used to have a killer orange chicken (this is about 8 years ago). for my room-mate and i, starving grad students both, and carless in l-a, that food-court was the major eat-out destination. this was not long after the riots and the area had the bombed out feel from which it has still not fully recovered. anyway, it got so that the family that owned the chinese place then (for all i know they still may) treated us like the regulars we were, giving us much larger portions in our combo, and always letting me know if i should wait another 10 minutes for fresh out of the kitchen orange chicken. however, the orange chickens at the foodcourts in both the century city and santa monica malls suck the big one. there's a place here in boulder that also has a pretty good orange chicken (may wah in the basemar center, for any boulder-ites reading), but only if you ask for it extra-spicy.

aha--i see i have nothing to be ashamed about; not on this score anyway: http://chinesefood.about.com/library/blrecipe017.htm