mongo_jones

i make the identical dish, as per my mother's instructions. she doesn't call it a ghonto. we just call it alu-palak. as for ghontos i've always thought they involved fish heads and carcasses--but that may be because those were the only types that were made in our home. if there is interest (or unless gautam suddenly reappears) i can institute inquiries about the exact difference between a ghonto and a chorchori. i have a suspicion though that bong could hazard an educated guess.

this borders on heresy but has been independently corroborated by my father--i think the ilish we get in the bangladeshi stores here is the bangladeshi padma-ilish, considered far superior to the west-bengali ilish by most connoiseurs.

ugly bottles--midori anyone?

ammini, i have my mother's recipe somewhere. of course, she's bengali and the india sweet house folks are good punjabi jats, so there'll be some difference. i'll look for it soon. mongo

man, that bengali food festival sounds good. someone with more patience than me will have to translate for the benefit of the bengali-challenged. can you tell that the telegraph is a calcutta paper?

but i don't have a shift key on my keyboard...it is either this or all caps...

i'd be very surprised if it was possible to eat a good sarson ka saag outside of punjab or at least a punjabi home. and personally i don't like saag paneers as the average restaurant in north-america makes them--way too much cream and masala. the best saag paneers in my opinon are the ones that bring out the pure flavor of spinach (where spinach is the dominant saag in the dish), and of course fresh paneer is a must. there is a hole in the wall place in l.a (india sweet house, on pico just west of fairfax) that makes what i think is the best commercial saag paneer in north america.

brooks, i refuse to read your post till you close all your parentheses. but seriously, i guess that makes sense. once a bottle has been opened and beer poured i'm guessing this is a non-issue and it doesn't matter whether you fill a glass to the top or not. but why don't breweries just fill beer bottles all the way to the top before sealing them? mongo

(spurred by my recent post in the "shelf-life" thread) i fully expect to be told almost immediately that there have been 2 threads already on just this subject but in case there haven't, which bottles are you tempted to buy just on aesthetic grounds (label, but more importantly bottle shape)? and which are the ernest borgnines of your bar? my picks: most attractive: there's lots of very beautiful single-malt bottles, but i can't afford them. i have to say that the galliano bottle is very attractive. likewise grand marnier. least attractive or inspired: bacardi rum

you mean i should be refrigerating my rose's ? d'oh! and yes, galliano--did they invent the harvey wallbangar to sell their product? i make maybe 4 of those every 5 years but i have the bottle of galliano anyway. it is a cool bottle, however.

god, tryska--you're so greedy. can't you even share your imaginary profits? do i have to underexpect this as well? there is also a saying: hope for the worst and you'll never be disappointed (i think it was on this principle that my wife married me); in sales they say "under-promise and over-deliver" (this is how i got her to marry me).

does length of neck make any difference to beer-experience? i can't see why it would, but then again i can't see why rich people don't send me money either.

Yup. Knudson and Lakewood both make shelf-stable versions, while POMwonderful makes a damn tasty refridgerated product. I've mixed plain voda and POM and don't like it all that much. Too astringent for my tastes, though, oddly enough, a little lime juice makes it better...seems brighter or something. Also better when a little club soda is added. But the two mixed straight? Not in love with it. I have made pomegranate liquor using sugar syrup, vodka, and poms, steeped for a long time. tryska, you're on to something here: pomegranate flavored vodka cocktails for those who don't like the taste of pomegranate juice. send me 10% of all profits. mongo

perhaps the guy is passionate about bananas?

pomegranate juice and regular vodka? has anyone tried that? is there even such a thing as pomegranate juice? not with flavored vodka but i once made a friend a concoction with regular vodka, guava juice and rock-salt. i refused to drink it myself but she liked it. but thanks all for the suggestions.

so does a pomegranate

thanks ammini. and yes, the legend in delhi is that the shopkeepers at ina market can get you anything you want, as long as it exists and you describe it well.

what is this splenda of which you speak? jesus, sometimes you people speak all these foreign languages and don't bother translating for the rest of us...

true--a lot of the frozen fish i have bought in bangladeshi stores in l.a is crappy. this may be because there's no telling how long the fish has been in their freezers since they received them. for a bengali in the u.s however, this is a chance worth taking to get at some ilish and rui (hilsa and rohu)--and strangely enough those two fish have always seemed to be of very good quality. i've had nasty experiences with magur though (a variety of bengali catfish)--then again this may be partly psychological as i was raised on the dictum that magur must always be bought live and killed before cooking (the childhood memories of 4 or 5 magur swimming in our kitchen sink while vegetables were chopped suddenly come vividly swimming back to me).

Saag is greens, can be spinach, mustard, collard, kale etc. Palak is more specific, being spinach. Palak paneer and saag paneer are the same thing i.e spinach with Indian Cottage cheese. When you say saag paneer it is presumed that it is spinach. I have not come accross mustard greens with cottage cheese though. well, there's the punjabi sarson ka saag, which is specifically a dish made with mustard greens. but if bhasin hasn't encounterd mustard saag paneer very few people are likely to have. it is his "people" who would make an eat it if it existed. a lot of this confusion in the u.s is propogated by indian restarateurs (sp.): i think they feel embarassed about having too many dishes with similar ingredients on the menu so make up fancy names and descriptions for all of them. see also, in this connection, the random use of the word "chicken" in some dish names and "murgh" in others. apparently the chicken in one dish went to an english-medium school while the other did not. by the way, episure, bengalis use the word "shaak" too. in addition to spinach and mustard greens we also eat something called "pui-shaak"--what this is bong will have to tell us.

i listen to a lot of hip-hop while cooking, especially de la soul (buhloone mindstate) and a tribe called quest (midnight marauders, beats, rhymes and life) also, 50s-60s hindi film music--in the middle of cooking dinner for 7 right now and am listening to a compilation of s.d burman composed songs. hopefully some of his and the songwriters' genius, and the joy in the voices of mohammad rafi, kishore kumar and geeta dutt will seep into the food.

back home in delhi my mother uses a SHARP mustard oil (not the limp versions you get in indian stores in the u.s) for a mayonnaise that really gets your attention!

all the critiques of my post are perfectly valid, but i was thinking more of "chefs" than line-cooks. but do even line-cooks peel and chop their own vegetables? it isn't just a matter of what happens after you cook but also before. if i had 2 people in my kitchen ready to peel and chop everything for me i'd be making pretty fancy meals every day.

does anything not taste good when cooked wrapped in bacon?

and leave us not forget the cuisine of the north-eastern states that bear even less resemblance to either north and south indian cuisines as those generally do to each other. i think penguin is doing a wonderful thing with their series--it is probably the only way to begin to approach this task (and i'm sure each of their regional titles is incomplete at best): intriguing sociological context, no exoticizing fluff, fairly good directions. i hope they keep going. here's a list of states whose foods i have never eaten (each of these states probably contains multiple cuisines): orissa madhya pradesh meghalaya manipur mizoram tripura arunachal pradesh sikkim himachal pradesh and i've probably eaten no more than 20 dishes each from these states: rajasthan maharashtra karnataka bihar states whose foods i've eaten a lot of but could not talk about at any length: gujarat andhra pradesh jammu and kashmir assam tamil nadu goa not counting the recent states (chattisgarh, jharkand, uttaranchal) or those which may not have a distinct cuisine of their own (haryana?) or the islands. really this leaves only west bengal, punjab, delhi, u-p and kerala--i'm probably missing a couple of states. i will not live long enough to fill in my gaps. this is why i hesitate to speak about "indian" food and why i doubt any 1 or even 5 cookbooks can make anything but the slightest dent. edit to add: slicing this by states is not really a good way to approach this--given the fact that most states were created after independence, and often carved out of each other; region or community would probably be a better way to do it--as neither of these respect state-lines--but i've done it by states here to make a more recognizable impact for non-indians.