mongo_jones

my own feeling is that you'd be better off just browsing this forum.

tamarind syrup (with a hint of ginger) over vanilla ice-cream might be nice. i'm not saying i've ever made it myself. i'm an ideas person--somebody else should waste their money experimenting with my ideas and then let me know how they are.

it's the time to DHOKLA! jesus, now i'm going to have that song in my head all day.

fresh curry leaves can scent a house like nothing else. someone should consider bottling it as a fragrance. italians may want to experiment with curry leaf risottos. i made a nadan fish curry out of my kerala cookbook yesterday and the combined aroma of just popped mustard seeds and lightly fried fresh curry leaves was so excellent i went around shutting windows instead of opening them.

okay, so three of them are ayurvedic herbs and one is a paan masala (though i suppose the others might all go into paan as well)--wonder why the store has them mixed up with their regular spices in their display.

aha--do they have particular flavors? or are they not used for flavoring purposes at all?

weapon of ass destruction anyone?

Maybe you heard it wrong it could be kanthol, a small round karela?(i am tempted to make an awful pun with this one but desist) And Jesth Madh is something that goes into a Paan. no, no ganthoda is what it said on the packet. gary may be onto something here--it did look like ground white pepper. or was it in pellet form? i'll have to check again next time. the store was swamped or else i would have just asked the manager--though she is the one who when asked the difference between the white and black kokum uttered the immortal words, "one is black and the other is white".

oops, wrong thread--this belongs in the "one dish from every country/region/city" thread

but hopefully not to fresno I dont get it? Is this an inside joke? Sorry I am a bit dense on this stuff a joke, but not an inside joke. fatguy said he predicts "your journey is going to take you places you never imagined". i'm sure you've never imagined going to fresno and so. this was better left unexplained, wasn't it?

i'm sorry, but this is COMPLETELY unacceptable!

growing up in india i don't recall seeing anything but red onions. that's predominantly what i use. i certainly never use white onions. don't even know what they taste like.

as i've said before, our local indian grocery caters more to south indians than north indians. while shopping there today i noticed a number of things on the shelves that i did not recognize. this may be because they are south indian ingredients or i may just be ignorant. if anyone knows what these are and what they are used for please enlighten me: kamar kas hemij jeth madh ganthoda (i am tempted to make an awful pun with this one but desist) there's a lot more there that i didn't recognize but i didn't have a pen and paper and these are the only ones i remember, possibly not accurately.

i'm pretty sure there's two of them--but i could be wrong. get the crab jschyun--it is really quite good. and no, it isn't the best sashimi in town but where else but at a korean seafood place are you going to be able to mix and match decent sashimi with steamed crab, and a spicy soup?

or you can buy a nice packet of jal jeera powder and add water to it

i have that cookbook--i probably used the wrong kind of potatoes.

i'm pretty sure there are african cuisines that incorporate raw meat.

given the thousands of kilometres of coastline and the diversity of peoples along it, not to mention the hundreds of rivers criss-crossing the country, you'd think someone, somewhere would have tried fish raw. bengalis--renowned for cooking and eating fish--don't eat raw fish (i can't even get my parents to try sushi). does any indian cuisine formally incorporate raw fish? if not the dominant hindu (influenced) culture how about tribal cultures?

brad, paul, hathor, would you be willing to share your recipes? i've only tried making gnocchi once and while it wasn't a disaster it wasn't an unqualified success either. thanks, mongo

for the non-brewpub micros, do they have fixed hours when one can sample their wares on the premises? or by non-brewpub do you just mean bar but no food?

colorado--john elway; wait, we're talking about food; um, beer? calcutta: roshogullas, puchka, mutton-rolls, shorshe-bata ilish delhi: butter chicken bombay: pav-bhaji hyderabad: hyderabadi biryani, baghera baingan, mirchi bhajjis

Why, no, Mongo dear, what makes you think that? it's just a walk in the park, la-di-da, dum-de-dum-dum, the merest little bagatelle, could do half a dozen of 'em before breakfast... RIGHT, FELLOW BLOGGERS? EDIT to add: Piece of cake. EDIT AGAIN to add: Nothin' to it. EDIT YET AGAIN to add: Convinced yet? Be very careful, Mongo. I do believe B is thinking about where she should pass the Blogger Torch. that would be a silly mistake indeed, and one our current blogger is too smart to make.

except, curry doesn't exist. curry leaves maybe--but i don't know how many non-indians even know what those are.

this was repaired tonight: heated some oil, put on gas-mask, threw in a 1/2 tea-spoon each of red chilli powder, turmeric and garam masala--fried for 30 seconds, ignored asphyxiating spouse's cries of indignation, tossed in previously bland alur-dom, mixed well, added salt, heated through and ate. this is not how you want to make an alur-dom, but it was still better than something you'd get from indian railways. ...i know you've all been waiting anxiously for this update

why do i get the sense that this foodblog business is pretty hard work?