mongo_jones

maybe the key is not whether we cook foods we aren't familiar with before we cook them but how we talk about them when we do. of the malayali dishes i've been trying to cook of late there's only one or two that i would feel comfortable feeding to people and saying this is a dish from the state of kerala--this because i have eaten these dishes as cooked by malayalis and know that they are reasonable approximations of the "originals". some of the others, while they taste good to me, i have no way of knowing at present whether they actually even taste like they're supposed to! leave alone matters of texture etc. if i were to present these experiments as malayali food i'd be attempting to represent something i have no actual knowledge of. this isn't just something for cooks to think about. in some ways it is more a matter for food-writers. most food-writers i've read in the states who write about indian food are american and very few of them have an in depth knowledge or understanding of most indian foods--this doesn't seem to prevent them from making all kinds of authoritative, magisterial statements about indian food. an example: there's a guy who writes for the local alternative weekly here in the boulder/denver area, named jason sheehan. he's funny and a good writer but knows very little about indian food other than what he's eaten in restaurants here. now there's nothing wrong with this--there's no way he can know more than he knows but for some reason he's not content with operating within the limits of his knowledge (as all of us should do). here's an extract from a review of a local restaurant: "...has gained a very loyal following with its Mughlai Indian cuisine, a gentler and beautifully complex culinary counterpart to the wholesome simplicity of Haryanvi and the richness of Bengali seafood." eh?

i suppose it would be possible to create a comprehensive cookbook of recipes made familiar by indian restaurants in the u.s and u.k. but you'd have to be very careful about labelling it as such.

the correct answer is that no such thing exists. the best you can do is buy all the books in the penguin regional series and hope they keep bringing more of those out.

yes, every place has atmosphere. my only requirements for atmosphere is that it not include a real threat of physical or digestive harm: thus not too many violent drunks rolling around, and a "kitchen" that doesn't double as a bathroom. other than that i'm up for anything. i would never eat at a restaurant just for the atmosphere--at best i might go for a drink. on the other hand one of the great attractions of roadside and highway-side dhabas in india is the prospect of conversation with the truck-drivers etc. i can see however that this possibility is not as open to women as to men (though i do have a woman friend in delhi who spent months on the open road with a bunch of truck-drivers, logging their lives for a book).

somewhat ambiguous topic title. allow me to explain what i am asking: the celebrated italian-american chef mario batali has said that in order to be able to become a good italian chef he needed to go live in italy for a few years. he ate and learned from italian chefs and cooks and got a good sense of what things were supposed to taste like etc. on which to then build his own version of italian cuisine in new york (with local ingredients). this is an issue not just for big chefs but also for amateur cooks like many of us who often cook dishes from other culinary locations out of cookbooks. if you don't know what the dish tastes like in the place it is from can you really cook it? in the indian context this isn't just a matter of american chefs or foodies cooking indian dishes in the u.s--i personally am currently engaged in going through the penguin kerala cookbook and while some of the things i've made are things i've eaten (albeit largely in restaurants outside kerala) many others are not. at one level, of course, the only question that matters is whether i like what i make or not; but i still wonder sometimes if i've really come close to what the original dish is supposed to taste like. especially since some of the cooking techniques are somewhat alien to this bengali: raw chopped onions and raw fish placed in a pan with water and cooked over low heat, a spice paste added later etc. etc. to what degree can theoretical knowledge and research take the place of actual experiential knowledge of tastes and aromas? to raise the stakes even higher: should chefs or food-writers be allowed to bill themselves as "experts" on cuisines other than their own if they have not spent x amount of time eating a wide variety of it every day? (of course when i say "allowed" i'm not envisioning a net dropping on offenders, though i can think of a couple of people for whom that might be a good thing.) can you hold forth on "chicken curry", say, if you haven't eaten 10 different chicken curries prepared in 10 different indian homes (the number is arbitrary, of course)? (of course, this does not apply to fusion cooking or to, say, indian-american cuisine, as and when it appears.) i don't really have answers to these questions--hoping to spark a debate.

he was great in schlesinger's very funny "cold comfort farm". but yes, showing up in a tv pilot suggests he's resigned himself to not being a film-star. to a cooking show he brings the possibility of sudden violence with kitchen knives. edit to add: oops! just noticed that i'm merely repeating steveklc's point above

suman, do you put the beetroot in raw? how finely do you chop it? and you don't cook the dish any more after you add it? thanks, mongo

sounds like it might be good. funny that the reviewer calls sambhar "sambal".

well, i have a half bottle of absolut mandarin left over from a party (someone else brought it). i usually only drink vodka-tonics and non-fancy schmancy martinis and thus have no idea what to do with this thing. i can imagine using a pepper vodka in a bloody mary, of course. i'll check out the thread you mention.

sipping on their own? cocktails? and suggestions for things to do with specific flavored vodkas?

this was the first line of your original post: "can we consider pickles (indian style) as chutney?" it doesn't leave much room for misinterpretation does it? how am i, or anyone else, supposed to magically know that you are one of those people who don't confuse pickles with chutney? especially when your response to my first question was to say that pickles and chutneys are both condiments etc. this is somewhat ironic: surely, given the advice you give me about starting other threads etc., you could have just started a thread of your own with the lemon pickle question and avoided confusion altogether. doubtless i have been laughably dense but you might consider that your own posts may have played a part in this. but to take this out of the realm of the merely combative and into that of information: you say: this is actually not true at all. many chutneys, depending on where you are in india, are separate "courses" in their own right: desserts, palate cleansers etc. other function largely as "dips" for other things (like pakoras, kababs, vadas etc.). in this group fall things like pudina (mint) chutney, coconut chutney, most tamarind chutneys etc. rare is the pickle that plays either of these roles. given this continued confusion on your part i'm actually not so sure at the end that i misunderstood you so fully after all.

death can also be extremely painful and involve involuntary voiding of the bowels and bladder.

to me not at all. some of the best food i've eaten has been in dives, holes in the wall and on the road.

in this spirit i'll also add that i suspect that it is the rare professional cook who is expected to do the dishes, clean up after herself or put the leftovers away in the refrigerator. this is not just a cutesy comment: there are many things i could cook at home but don't because the thought of either the prep or the cleanup or both is too offputting.

what exactly are the characteristics of koelsch bier? a local microbrewery here in boulder has a beer designated as "koelsch" on their list--what genre of beer should i expect if i get that? (which is not to say that it will necessarily be like koelsch in koln.) i notice above that someone mentioned that in the u.s such beers are called blond ales--so, something like gordon biersch's blonde bock?

i'm not sure if that's true for bengalis at least.

i use parachute brand coconut oil in my hair! (i like agastya's father's characterization of my generation in english, august, an indian journey as "the generation that doesn't oil its hair" even though i personally do)

i had no idea daniel rogov was such a big name in israeli culinary writing--then again i know very little about israeli food (as my contributions to this thread doubtless make clear). the first i heard of him was on this thread and if not for helena's intervention jason's "bogus" comment would have been my lasting impression. i know jason didn't mean it insultingly--he was responding to one aspect of one article--but i am glad that daniel is here in person, and look forward to learning from him. how long do people think it will take before egullet sucks daniel in completely?

so, if i understand correctly--porter and stout are descended from the same ancestor? or is it more accurate to say that contemporary stout is descended from porter?

ammini, i was talking about sesame oil purchased in delhi. and easyguru, where does one find this non-deodorized sesame oil in india? i ask with a view towards our next trip (not to bring back with us, but to use there). in general is the use of sesame oil, for pickles or otherwise, regionally specific?

Of course, Mongo, in the literal sense. One freshly made and one preserved. In the looser sense, and I thought I was clear, is that since both act as condiments, perhaps someone had a recipe for pickled lemons! And Yes! There is! I am so excited! marlena, your question was whether pickles (achars) qualify as chutneys. my response was merely that to most indians they're two completely different things. if we're going to generalize about condiments why not talk about ketchup and mustard as well? there's some indian varieties of those you don't get anywhere else in the world.

episure, others, a quick question about sesame oil: since i didn't cook as much when i lived in india i hadn't really encountered sesame oil there until my recent trip home. my wife was cooking a korean meal for the family and we used the sesame oil available in the local market. compared to the sesame oil available in asian stores in the u.s this one had almost no aroma (almost analogous to the non-pungent mustard oil available here). was this an anomaly or do indian sesame oils generally not have the powerful, smoky sesame aroma? thanks, mongo

to most indians chutneys and pickles are entirely different things (one set is cooked, the other preserved). equating them is largely a "days of the raj" kind of thing.

hi michal, just trying to understand israeli food culture/identity to some extent. you'll be glad to know that my initial curiosity has been satisfied--now it is on to the books. regards, mongo

alaska--salmon? new hampshire--lobster? indiana--cabbage? (i say this only because i had a prof in grad school who used to say of his days at bloomington that the only thing there was to do in the evenings was "to go out into the fields and listen to the cabbages grow")