mongo_jones

i've mentioned "reef" before on similar threads on egullet. you'd think as someone who got a phd in indian literature i'd be able to call up 20 indian titles at a moment's notice but i'll be damned if i can think of a single one. there's saleem sinai, of course, sitting amongst the vats of pickles in "midnight's children", and there's brief descriptions of bengali food being cooked in ghosh's "the calcutta chromosome" (with one memorable rotten ilish, in particular, that is used to deliver a message) and probably also in "shadow lines"--there's some in mahasweta devi's "hajar churashir ma" ("mother of 1084"); and in shrilal shukla's "raag darbari" there's hilarious descriptions of filthy food in the feces-strewn hinterland of uttar-pradesh but by and large indian writers don't seem to go in for food as metaphor very much more than our film-makers do. i haven't read "the god of small things"--does that have some food stuff in it? i seem to recall some such description. of course, the title character of r.k narayan's "the vendor of sweets" is a vendor of sweets but not a whole lot of time in that novel is spent on the cooking and consuming of said sweets. i'll probably remember a whole lot later when i'm not trying so hard.

you should have seen what a sweet and benevolent ape that was before i photoshopped its eyes. now it looks more like the nasty cannibal chimps can often be. not that says anything about me of course--i'm sweet and benevolent.

mmmmm pizza with spam and pineapple....spamapalicious!

this is interesting info. however, kim-chi isn't necessarily spicy--my wife, for instance, likes it best once it has fermented for a while and is more tangy than spicy.

i am a baby of a different type so i'll ask this question here: should adults who are apt to get loud when they have fun also not go to fancy restaurants? what if my idea of a good time and a special occasion clashes with yours?

oh you people! don't traditions mean anything to you? christian women in bombay films are always "rosie", "daisy" or "julie"; she could also be "sandra from bandra", a bombay anglo-indian vamp, who has to always die virtuously in the end.

Er, Mongo - sorry, but you're going to have to keep translating as you go. Please? So far the translations have been priceless. i was hoping i wouldn't have to translate this one. it is a play on two different things: a) maa ki daal--a type of punjabi dal (episure made reference to this in a different thread) and 2) the indelicate saying : "teri ma ki ___"--where "teri" means "your" , "ma" is mother, "ki" makes it "your mother's..." and ___ refers to a certain part of the female anatomy; i don't know why i've suddenly turned so delicate. the latter saying is the north indian analogue of "fuck you" but has a greater import because it drags mothers into it. which is not to say that people necessarily freak out when they hear it. thus "teri ma ki daal" would mean "your mother's daal" but would suggest something else. like most things funny it loses all humor in translation and explanation. and as for "tandoori bandits"--been done--there was a movie out this winter called "funtoosh dudes in the 10th century" (or was it the 14th?).

if you'll excuse my continuing on my separate nostalgic way, i can't resist one more song idea (this time as a tribute to the great 50s, early 60s comedies and "thrillers"): "p.a.n pan, pan maane karhai! e.g.g egg, egg maane anda! ---arre dil hai tere tel mein to kya hua?!?" with considerable apologies to majrooh sultanpuri and ravi (and also to kishore kumar and nutan--by the way, how many actresses have ever looked as beautiful as nutan in "dilli ka thug"?) this one is a little hard to translate as it, and the song it pays homage to, play on an interplay between english and hindi, but roughly: p.a.n pan, pan means karhai (pan) e.g.g egg, egg means anda (egg) ---oh if my life is cooking in your oil, what do i do?

Now you're talking. Translations, please? "mere karhai ke saamne tera saute pan to kuch bhin nahin" "your saute pan can't compare to my karhai" "aa main teri roop ki kabab kor mere pyar ke parathe mein lapetoon" "come let me wrap the kabab of your body in the paratha of my love" "nahin, nahin, iske parathe mein dum nahin, mera chocolate souffle toh aazma lei" "no, no, his paratha is feeble, try my chocolate souffle instead"

oh yes, and the comic relief: a friend of the muslim chef who owns a small punjabi restaurant will constantly say, when surprised, "oh teri ma ki daal!"

well, okay so this draws its inspirations from the 70s, when masala films were reached their peak. "amar, akbar, anthony" is the apotheosis of that particular form and must always be paid homage to.

as for the songs, there will be one in which the brothers upon initial meeting spar, using their different culinary skills as metaphors: "mere karhai ke saamne tera saute pan to kuch bhin nahin"; another in which the boys woo the girl with extended food metaphors, "aa main teri roop ki kabab kor mere pyar ke parathe mein lapetoon"/"nahin, nahin, iske parathe mein dum nahin, mera chocolate souffle toh aazma lei"; and so on. and the music and lyrics can only be composed by bappi lahiri. it is he, after all, who gave us the immortal lyric: "you are my chicken fry/you are my fish fry".

people, people, clearly you have not watched enough bollywood films--you fail to recognize its formal conventions. it falls to me to insert some crucial plot points: there are two brothers separated in early childhood. one is found by a muslim khansama who takes him back to lucknow and raises him as a khandani cook. the other is found by a hindu entrepreneur who owns a 5-star hotel and raises his son to inherit it--sending him to cooking school in switzerland. the two boys come together when the rich boy hires the poor boy to head his new authentic-retro ethnic chic lucknawi restaurant. all is well till the comely christian goanese guest-relations manager comes between them. meanwhile it turns out that the hotel-father is actually a multi-national crook (in another age he would have been played by pran) who is working hand in glove with an unnamed multi-national fast-food company to extract indian culinary secrets and sell them to some unnamed country. the christian girl overhears this and is able to warn the muslim chef before being abducted. the two brothers unite to save their common love but fall into the clutches of the multinationals and the bad-father (who has also abducted the muslim father for good measure). the bad father delivers a florid speech which seems to be tempting the good brother: he will give up control of the hotel and release the lass if rich brother will first extract the secret of the kakori kabab form the poor brother and then kill him. at this point a blind old woman who has been employed by good-hearted poor brother as a sweeper suddenly miraculously recovers her sight, identifies her sons by a mooli shaped birthmark on both their thighs and recognizes bad father as the man who killed her husband and the brothers' real father (he had been his partner in a local dhaba in ludhiana and killed him over money and merchandising rights). the brothers re-unite and in an awesome orgy of violence dispatch all the foreign baddies. the muslim "father" takes a bullet for good measure and is weepingly bidden farewell. the film closes with the now happily hindu brothers reunited with their mother; the christian girl is with the older rich-brother and has become a good hindu housewife; the other brother has found true love in the arms of christian girl's smart-talking street-wise friend who he has hitherto ignored. the brothers forswear their 5-star ways and open a chain of pure-vegetarian brahman restaurants. ---- and aamir khan and aishwarya rai? you guys are so out of touch. shah rukh khan has to play the hindu brother (muslim actors rarely play muslims) and sunjay dutt the muslim brother. lara dutta plays the goan christian. the mother of course will be waheeda rehman.

as bong and i have lamented before the only mustard oil available in indian stores in the u.s is a particularly limp variety--genuine bengali mustard oil, as you know, makes you tear up if you get too close to it. no such effect here. where i am in colorado (in boulder) there is only one indian stores and it is run by a bunch of tamils--the store is thus chock-full of things i don't know how to use (and has way more types of par-boiled rice than basmati) and doesn't carry decent mustard oil. on the other hand they give me free curry leaves with every purchase--reminds me of the free green chillies and dhania the thela-wallahs in delhi give you.

What's the difference? Please. blue crabs small, dungeness big

or a dosa an "indian crepe". personally i refer to crepes as "french dosas"

depends on how long (or if) you soak the beans and how fancy your cooker is. the last time i soaked two cups of beans for about 6 hours and then pressure cooked them in my stone-age prestige cooker with some water (as my mother would helpfully say) for about 20 minutes--let the pressure dissipate by itself and voila cooked, yet still firm'ish beans. and i use no cream, no butter and it is still delicious. recipe to follow after i cook it again and this time measure the water.

bhelpuri, based on the ones i've read i'd strongly recommend the penguin series. i think skchai would concur. mongo

it is the kerala cookbook from the penguin series. the author is k. vijayan. in his glossary he says shallot=madras onion; this may be wrong. since i can't be bothered peeling 8 shallots for every recipe i just substitute onion anyway!

lambu-da's actually probably been in the most food displaying movies (weren't there huge food scenes in "namak halal" as well?)--this may be more proof that his fans tolerated in him things they might not in others. vikram, i forgot to say this but i am pleasantly surprised to discover that you don't scoff at bollywood (as in the bombay popular) cinema.

vikram, your take on the non-appearance, for the most part, of food in bollywood cinema is much better than my half-baked hypothesis which i never fully advanced (watch me cover my ass!). however, i'd hold very strongly to the distinctions between the different film industries and films made in the indian diaspora. not for the sake of being a pedant or being difficult (though i have been known to happily be both) but because i believe important things get blurred otherwise. mongo p.s: wasn't julia roberts in "mystic pizza" as well? surely she must have eaten some--or was that film not about pizza? never watched it. and don't forget her over-weight character in the execrable "america's sweethearts".

yes, pan--pretty much the way you describe it. one of the effects of professionalization is a drifting towards the marks of expertise and recognition. which in the world of food-writing may often be the marks of "access"--i'm reminded of lester bangs' advice to the kid in "almost famous".

edward, as far as i know the jhinge dish with tiny shrimp is an east-bengali/bangladeshi thing, and traditionally i don't think shrimp goes into jhinge-poshto, which is not to say it can't. and vikram, bengalis are apt to put mustard into everything! one of the classic bengali dishes is raw-mango chutney--sweet and sour and perfectly refreshing on a summer day. one of my aunts laces the finished product with freshly ground mustard. it is heavenly. i usually use 50-50 ground panch-phoron and mustard but once in a while i'll let the mustard rip on its own. of course the whole thing is vastly improved if you use genuine mustard oil to begin with, but here in colorado that isn't an option. as for shrimp/prawns/jhinga: i've eaten a good many different indian preparations of it but none approach for me the sheer ecstasy of a bengali malai curry. nothing i do can make my versions taste anything like my mother's. however, my eldest maternal uncle and aunt are going to be visiting us in june--and she is the greatest cook i know; she thinks she's coming on a holiday--little does she know that she's going to be teaching me some of her secrets. since they lived in ottawa for a long time i know she's adapted her recipes to first-world limitations (this one time when i visited them there ages ago she fed me home-made barfi, replete with silver leaf, better than any i've had in delhi.)

for fans of "bend it like beckham": http://www.chowk.com/show_picks_movie.cgi?pmovieid=10 scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page for a rip-roaring take on the film by umer murtaza

When it comes to the portrayal of food in film, Bollywood's aversion is not that dissimilar to Hollywood's. Does Hollywood's audience have any issues with putting food on the table? I think it has less to do with the financial situation of the audience and more with a larger than life image these studios are perpetuating. The activities of preparing food, eating and sleeping are just too mundane for popular cinema. Have you ever seen Julia Roberts eat on film? Denzel Washington? Brad Pitt? Aamir Khan? I haven't. Movie stars don't eat. Not publicly at least. It's an archetypal anima/animus thing. actually yes, characters in hollywood films eat all the time--in restaurants, in diners, they cook themselves breakfasts, they have family dinners, they throw food across the room when they get upset--think of the whole genre of the thanksgiving and christmas movies--complete orgies of eating; it just doesn't happen with as much fanfare as in something like "big night" or "eat, drink, man, woman" and the camera doesn't obsess with the food but it happens. i'd be hard-pressed to think of a hollywood film in which no one is ever seen eating. i can think of many bollywood films in which this is the case. but i did say i wasn't going to make that hypothesis anyway :-) (julia roberts eats in "ocean's eleven," by the way, and in "pretty woman", to name just two films.)