mongo_jones

don't puree the spinach for saag-alu--just chop the spinach coarsely, saute the diced par-boiled potatoes with spices (having first popped some methi seeds in the oil) till almost done, add the chopped spinach, a couple of t-spns of kasoori-methi and cook till done (just a few minutes). as for pureed spinach for palak paneer or palak meat/chicken, the key is to not steam and puree with too much water. for palak paneer i'd say add the spinach almost at the very end--unless too much water fell in by accident, in which case add it earlier and evaporate it out. i never add cream, but that may just be a personal thing.

i've only ever had goat/lamb marrow (since goat and to a lesser extent lamb is predominantly what indians cook). how does beef marrow differ in taste and texture? i still believe the most enjoyable way to eat marrow is in a spicy curry. finish everything, leave the marrow bone for last, and then suck the marrow out of the bone after thumping it on the plate a couple of times--or if you're a pukka days-of-the-raj indian employ one of those dainty marrow-forks. the test of a season pressure-cooker cook is whether they can get the mutton curry done without melting all the marrow away. edit to add: in a goat or any other curry spicy gravy will enter the bone as well making for a divine sucking experience.

by the way no one in india has a lunch-box. tiffin-box is what it is called. after all we were colonized by the english, not the yanks.

growing up the "marrow-bones" in mutton curry were always in big demand--usually only two per curry and 4 greedy-guts in the house.

i went to boarding school in india for a long time, and then to a school in hyderabad for 2 years which served lunch--everything was horrible with the signal exceptions of the buttermilk, achars and sambhars. but from my early childhood my memories seem to be of jam-sandwiches (good old kisan mixed-fruit) and occasionally cold french toast (yum!). later when i worked in advertizing in delhi i used to tantalize my co-workers (who mostly got dabbas from our receptionist's sister's business!) with elaborate 5 bowl-thermos container bengali lunches. at worst i'd have anda-parathas with hot nimbu achar.

going to be in l.a for two weeks starting wednesday. we may well be at 888 on saturday, but i won't complicate the group's plans since all our meals are being played by ear (but happily, eaten by mouth).

are you talking specifically about saag/palak paneer? i don't know that pureeing them before cooking is necessarily a mistake. when i make chicken or goat with spinach i usually steam and puree the spinach before adding it--can't imagine why you couldn't do the same with palak paneer. for other saag dishes, such as alu palak, you usually don't want a liquidy consistency. these things probably vary greatly from home to home, so you're best served by a consistency and taste that you like.

so, to turn this around: when did the french start eating snails? and did the two snail-eating practices cross-pollinate at all?

i vote for dalat on july 10. they better have pho with tendon and tripe or else heads will roll.

sam, you're forgetting the elusive erudition that goes into the cocktail. can't put anything as crass as a number on that.

i feel very foolish asking this, but what does lillet taste like?

yeah, i don't think of it as such either. have you seen the incredible hong kong movie "time and tide"? features the most gratuitous use of beer in a film ever--the boddington's can almost has a starring role.

there's bappi lahiri's immortal lyric: "you are my fish-fry/you are my chicken-fry"; sung in english no less. the man is a genius.

well, robyn, with the opening up of the indian economy to the global market, and with the arrival of satellite t.v etc. urban indians are being exposed to global cuisines in a manner not seen in recent indian history. for many indians pasta is "exotic" in the same manner that vindaloo may be to italians. however, the difference is that young, urban italians are not clamoring for indices of "easternization" whereas many of their indian counterparts are negotiating "westernization". this has taken many forms. for instance, we've discussed on this forum the displacement of certain items on the traditional bengali wedding menu by more recent dishes such as the "bhejitebel chop". part of the reason for that too, i'd hazard (and probably did in that thread), is that the vegetable chop can also be seen as a marker of "progressiveness", and i'd guess it is probably in the middle-class and lower-middle-class banquets that it rears its head--these people are less likely to eat pasta. noodles, of course, have been in india for a long time--and as people have indicated in this thread macaroni has been indianized in many ways (as i think about i too have a recipe from my mother for macaroni and keema). however, what's happening now in india is an emphasis on "authentic" italian pasta. you wouldn't have heard the phrase "al dente" outside the italian embassy in the 80s or even mid 90s. now it is a badge of culture. i don't mean to imply that this is necessarily a bad thing or betrayal of "indian-ness" or whatever. indian food has always been a mongrel thing. pretty much any indian food "tradition" you can invoke can be shown to have emerged from fairly recent hybridizations (after all in the vedas even the sage yajnavalkaya--one of the two most revered vedic sages--talks of his love of the meat of the young cow). it is interesting, however, to see how these changes happen, how they get coded, and how they get talked about.

right. i meant more as in taking cold food with you, the way americans take salads and sandwiches. we mostly took parathas and so on wrapped in foil or in steel containers to stay warm.

indians and other south asians go on picnics just like everybody else (are there cultures that proscribe picknicking?)--most indian cities have large parks and lake areas that crawl with picknickers over the weekends. what we don't really have is set traditions of barbecuing etc. also most indians are not fans of cold food. but as pan said, take food you like, feed it to who you like and don't worry about whether the local indian association would approve.

where's the money laubowski?

yes, this is why i asked. but my question is specifically about snails. also, was french cuisine not influenced by occupation of vietnam? was the traffic all one-way? seems unlikely to me.

if this is policy it is new--i've eaten there and we didn't have this happen. can anyone corroborate? or is this an isolated incident?

in my most recent post i mentioned a scene of snail eating in the vietnamese film "the vertical ray of the sun". clearly the preparation is not french--the snails are steamed and dipped into what looks like a thin ginger-scallion sauce/broth of some kind--but the little two-pronged cocktail forks they're eaten with seem very european. quite apart from cutlery i'm wondering if it is a huge coincidence that snails form a part of the cuisine of both france and vietnam or whether one learned to eat snails from the other or to what degree each influenced the other's snail-eating ways. thoughts?

possibly by near-freezing it first?

i have to ask you all if you've heard about the latest pirate movie. i hear it is going to be rated...wait for it...AAR!

check katzenjammy out--hasn't been here longer than 8 posts and already telling us old farts where to go. the nerve! just kidding--cambodian sounds good, and making everybody drive some distance sounds fair. i'm in for whatever the consensus is. i think we should do mid-june so as to not go more than 2 months between outings, and i think if we do an outing once every 2 months for sure it won't matter if we each miss an outing or 2. but i'm not organizing again for the next 8 outings. once we've got a date in june that more than 6 people can make those people should elect a leader.

"breast of anjou" is your doing is it? tch tch tch

now that we have a couple of new names in the crowd--katzenjammy, chezhoff, even kris, if she'll deign to join us--should we start thinking about potential times and places for the next colorado egullet gathering? personally, i don't think i'll be able to make it to anything before mid-june. how does that sound to people? a number of people had suggested vietnamese as our next meal--i'm down with that and also optionally with dragging you denver-ites up to boulder (though this might kill any chance of the person from colorado springs, whose name escapes me for the moment, joining us).