mongo_jones

whippy, i'm genuinely sorry i've made you feel so bad. i don't think you need to feel bad or defensive about anything you've said. you raised an interesting question and i responded to it and also to related things it made me think about. i don't think your thoughts on any of this make you out to seem like a "jerk" or a "cultural vampire", and i don't think pat or anyone else used that term to characterize your posts either--most of what i said does not even apply to someone like you (as i noted earlier), though one part of it is an attempt to modulate some of what you said. i think we may be talking past each other on some points but that's an unavoidable hazard with disembodied communication. please don't take offense--at least believe that i didn't mean any. and certainly don't stop posting here. mongo

how about some reverse-snobbery?

puchka and mutton rolls from a nice, dirty calcutta street (what me worry?) a big juicy char-broiled burger--medium-rare, sauteed mushrooms, sauteed onions; thick fries on the side with LOTS of ketchup and tabasco a plate of assorted kababs from bukhara and dum pukht in delhi my aunt gopa's dal-puris and alur-dom the ma-po tofu and prickly-ash spare-ribs from chung-king in monterey park outside l.a sushi--must include monkfish-liver, uni, mackerel, yellow-tail, salmon, spicy-scallop, salmon-roe all the langda, daseri and alphonso mangoes i can eat gulab jamuns from nathu's in delhi, assorted bengali sweets from one of the better calcutta sweet-shops a wafffer-thin mint and a bucket for me to puke in after every course (and to drink: a nice selection of micro and macro brews--mayhaw man to pick)

whippy, i think you're talking about a different kind of hotness--a more haute hot. as far as indian restaurants go at this point pretty much every mid-size town in the u.s seems to have one. but everywhere they are (with the exception of the major metros and college towns) they're mostly "exotic" dining out options. whereas chinese and mexican (and japanese in the yoshinoya incarnation) have almost become regular american food, even in places where there are very few people of chinese, mexican or japanese descent. it is this leap that indian food is still very far away from making in my estimation--and if it happens i don't think it will have too much to do with celebrity chefs; it is likelier to happen when a true indian-american cuisine emerges--as bhelpuri suggests it will likely come from people who are not obsessed with creating "authentic" indian food. a couple more generations, i think. and once it is upon us foodies (like we on egullet) will likely scoff at it like we do at taco bell or panda inn or the olive garden :-) mongo

keema curry! keema curry!

or a dosa an "indian crepe". personally i refer to crepes as "french dosas" this from a review of the d.c restaurant indique: "For dessert, try the Gulab Jamun--fried beignets in a scented syrup"

Just had to interject, having worked at McD's in high school and subsequently giving up beef and pork for almost 10 years see, mcdonald's was good for you after all...and to think people say they promote ill-health...

secondly, and this might sound flip, but i'm sincere: i have no idea what that quote means. i've been staring and staring at it, and can't make my head eat it. but it's okay. allow me to try and translate my own obliqueness: you have to be careful not to over-inflate the importance of every single piece of possible cultural "context". you say you're looking for context (and you cited the example of the buffalo/cow ghee discussion) in order to be able to cook more holistically or something like that. i'm suggesting that if you think knowing exactly the difference between/cultural history of buffalo and cow ghee (or something else along those lines) is one of those things then 95% of indian home-cooks fail your criteria. where does that leave where you started from? in an endless logical loop, that's where. if these indian home-cooks don't know enough to cook indian food properly/holistically then why do you want to know what they don't know in order to be more like them? that isn't much clearer is it?

i think you'll find zarathushtra predates your boy charlton heston

when i die, i'd rather everyone else die to. i mean, what's the point of a world without me?

well, it is and isn't. it is common to get kababs with some sort of mint and/or yogurt sauce/chutney. but as far as i know eating grilled lamb with fruit based chutneys/preserves/jellies is not a particularly north-indian thing. but i could be totally wrong about this.

whippy, i'm not mad at you or anything like that--i find it charming that my opinion means as much as it does to you (to most people on egullet i suspect i'm just a persnickety pain in the ass :-) ). and i did acknowledge that the kind of thing i was bugged by probably wasn't at all the kind of thing you were talking about. but i think we're still seeing the point quoted above differently. i agree that indians and americans and uzbeks etc. have some relationship to their culture/food built in to some extent (and i also take bhelpuri's point that many of them may have for complex reasons "forgotten" other important parts of this relationship and may need to be reminded). however, i am not sure that this relationship can be captured, even to a limited extent, via the kinds of things you've cited so far. it is one thing to know that indians rarely eat pakodas or samosas as appetizers with their meals (or that indian cuisines rarely have a concept of appetizers or courses in the same way that high french cuisine might); quite another to know the ins and outs of cow vs. buffalo milk ghee. the latter information is something very few indian home-cooks know or worry about either. in the search for relevant context we have to be careful not to over-inflate the local cultural currency of every kind of information. and especially we have to be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking that x, y or z have to be "known" in order for a cuisine to be authentic--especially since if we aren't careful about the identity of x, y and z we might render many local practitioners of that cuisine inauthentic! regards, mongo

episure, are you making fun of my mother? :-) this is a sample recipe as written by her: "take some of ingredient 1, add to a little bit of ingredient 2, fry nicely for a while, and take off heat when done". the beauty of these instructions, however, is that by the time you figure them out the recipe has become entirely your own! but it isn't the kind of thing you'd want in a recipe book, no. mongo

i'm not sure that the categories map in that way; i rarely follow recipes to the t, and you know how i feel about contextual gloss. though i should say again that it is "gloss" that i object to, not the kind of information you're describing here: your book project sounds fascinating but it sounds more like a book about food than a recipe-book per se. even among recipe books there are many that in my opinion get it right: see most of the books in the penguin regional series. they give a cultural background that enables an understanding of the role particular foods play in their regions (though none of this is necessary to cook any of the dishes well--you don't need to start by understanding the introductions); but none of them read like copy for the next festival of india--it is the latter kind of thing that bugs me. but at this point i'm repeating myself so i'll stop. as far as your book goes, i think it might only have a niche audience internationally. garhwali food isn't really well known, and garhwal itself doesn't yet have any kind of cache. most american foodies are only just discovering that south indian food as a whole is different from north indian food as a whole, let alone the diversity of cuisines in south or north india. the only way out for you in attracting an audience in the u.s might be to play up the mystic journey through the majestic himalayas angle. or play up a jim corbett angle for the english and gymkhana club crowd. nonetheless, i'd like to read it--you might want to contact the folks at penguin india and see if they might be interested in it for their series. i know some important people there so pm me if you'd like an introduction.

yes, i'm probably too prickly around these issues, but i think it is important to examine our justificatory narratives. "what it is insiders already/automatically know" is not always as extensive as we think it is. if knowing this is really so crucial what does it mean that most insiders often don't know it either? that is one more place where the line needs to drawn or at least examined. i think it is in chasing after this that the whole question of "mastery" arises--always a dubious concept when it comes to culture.

whippy, your enthusiasm is laudable i suppose, though i'm not sure about the whole "mastery" thing. it is good to know more about what we eat--but i'm still not seeing how knowing the history of ghee impacts how you use it in food or whether you make something tasty with it. for one thing you're over-estimating the average indian's own knowledge of/interest in such matters. i'm reminded in a roundabout way of people who when they find out that i'm indian assume i know yoga, ayurveda and the exact zipcode of enlightenment (not suggesting you're one of those people--just that your assumption that all indians have this knowledge of their food hard-coded into their systems is in the same genre). it is easy to cook any food badly, especially if you haven't eaten it growing up or a lot since. however, knowing an intellectual history of this food is hardly a substitute for this experience--though it can supplement it in other ways, give you more ammunition for conversation about food etc. and no, knowing about thanksgiving doesn't do much for my enjoyment of roast turkey, nor baseball for my relationship with hot-dogs. it certainly doesn't do anything for how i might cook these things. then again i'm not the most romantic person. i'm sorry if i seem like a bucket of cold water--i'm just sick of the exoticizing fluff in cookbooks about asian cuisines. and the kind of thing that bugs me is probably not the kind of thing you're looking for and so this cold water may be doubly unnecessary. mongo p.s: i do know the way to enlightenment and for the right fee can transmit this information to interested parties in a dream. edit to fix a preposition

it was reported in the new york media (in the times and other places) that suvir and hemant have left amma. for some reason discussion of this topic on the new york forum has been stopped, but i can't imagine mentioning the fact of their departure here can be a violation.

pan, not having eaten at amma either i can't speak to the actual tastes but one of the ways in which amma is "fusion" is in its approach to serving and presenting the food. correct me if i'm wrong (i'm going on pictures from people's meals here) but the food is not served family-style. certain of the dishes--as described on the menu-- also seem to me to be "fusion" in the sense that they marry indian flavors with non-indian cooking techniques--the stuffed tandoori chicken legs might be one, and the tandoor lamb chops with the pear chutney etc. might be another; definitely the apricot stuffed lamb fillets. but you're right, the bulk of the menu is not fusion. mongo

ah well, suvir is no longer at amma--so that one experiment that we know of may no longer be applicable.

oh, i'm not upset--i don't expect that any or all of my questions should be enthusiastically answered just because i ask them. and while i've received two very-specific-to-my-exact-location answers i'll still be happy with more general suggestions if anyone has them--do retail prices vary so widely across states? i didn't realize though that so many people were just waiting for me to divulge my zipcode. you people, you're so shy about asking follow-up questions.

thank you my fellow coloradans! as for the rest of the habitues of this forum i can only conjecture that they're either sick of responding to questions such as mine or that their expertise does not extend to the budget in question.

no, mongo, no! it's the contextual gloss in the recipes that make them so good! we non indians need LOTS of contextual gloss if we are ever going to start doing justice to indian cuisine. right, i meant an indian audience. however, i'm not sure why a non-indian audience requires contextual gloss to "do justice to indian cuisine". do you really need to know the significance of the harvest festival in northern punjab to enjoy a paratha with ghee? if so, i fear most of us don't to do justice in a similar manner to american, french, italian cuisine etc.

aikiko, glad you had such a good time. i was beginning to worry that we hadn't heard from you yet: that maybe you'd taken my advice and gone to old delhi and had never emerged (bhelpuri and monica would have never let me live that down). looks like you tried out a little of everyone's recommendations; and what you didn't get to this time you will next time, right? i am so glad you went to bukhara/dum pukht and saravana bhavan--gives you experiences at opposite ends of the spectrum (in pretty much every way). and yes, everything at saravana bhavan is vegetarian--even the servers. and bukhara, i maintain, is one of the greatest restaurants in the world--even if most american food snobs (including many on egullet) won't recognize it as "fine dining" for a number of reasons, and even if they've ruined their tandoori gobi. and yes, it is what every "mughlai" restaurant in the western world aspires to be. also, good point about korean chinese: my wife is korean and we've eaten a good amount of korean-chinese food in l.a, and in terms of a flavor profile it is quite similar. however, the lamb and veg dishes that you get in indian-chinese restaurants are not available anywhere else. (and zha zhang mian in korean chinese places is somewhat different but not entirely so from the version you get in shanghainese restaurants--is it a korean original? it is one of the dishes my wife craves in colorado.) and man, the giant pooris at saravana bhavan: you could go through a stack of paper towels trying to get all the ghee off them, but they are SO good. my stomach is rumbling now thinking about them--one of those thalis would hit the spot right about now: almost noon here. and really one of us should have warned you about japanese food in india, especially in delhi. so, when are you going back? you need one more trip to get through the top delhi eateries, and only then can you think about going to the second tier cities like bangalore, calcutta and hyderabad. there's another city down there on the coast whose name escapes me for the moment...right, madras! good food there too. regards, mongo

hopefully she gets to choose the restaurant once every other year milt :-)

As I've said before, some folks will eat anything that doesen't crawl off their plates and escape into the nearest fetid swamp. does the swamp have to be fetid? In your case, I would think the the more fetid, the better. what is so terrible about blood? is it an aesthetic thing? or was it the marrow that put you off? have you never eaten a nice goat-meat curry and spent 5 minutes or so trying to get ambrosia out of one of the marrow-bones?