mongo_jones
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My wife invited a working companion to lunch, a young girl from Dubai. She was a sweet, modest creature, unassuming, well-behaved, a perfect guest. In the course of pre-luncheon conversation, she remarked that what disappointed her most in British food was that nothing was spicy enough. As a joke I brought her (along with a warning) a jar of Whistle Blower's Pickle from Bombay Bangers, the hottest and strongest condiment I've encountered. She tasted a bit on the end of a spoon, then ate a whole spoonful.
"Yes," she said, "that's what I miss."
When the steak and kidney pie arrived, she ladelled a generous amount of the pickle over it. She ate it without apparent effort -- no sweating, no heavy breathing. It could have been ketchup.
my parents eat raw green chillies (the lethal, slim, dark green ones) alongside lentils and rice. that is to say, they pause between mouthfuls of lentils and rice to bite off chunks of the chillies and chew them down. no water in sight either. on their last trip to the u.s (when i was still in los angeles) my mother was defeated by the hot chopped chicken i mentioned, my father on the other hand was largely unfazed.
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It's still a shit burger (however marginally "better" than Mickey D's).
i have to disagree. i've eaten very good burgers and i think the whopper is a pretty good burger, or at least used to be.
the caveat: i used to eat whoppers while i was at grad school at usc in los angeles--the only options for food near campus were burger king, a very scary food court (which did make a divine orange chicken), and the expensive crap on campus. as such i used to go to burger king not in a rush but with loads of time on my hands. i would ask for a burger to be made "fresh" for me--not reheated etc. under these conditions it was pretty good. this was 8 years ago though--i can't speak for possible recent declines.
as for the general issue of fast-food culture, we wouldn't be in much disagreement but if i had to choose between a neighbourhood of golden arches or burger kings i'd go with the burger kings.
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1. Szechuan/Hunan
2. Anglo-Indian
3. Thai
4. Tex-mex
5. Korean
can i ask where people have eaten instances of the cuisine that they're basing their selections on? thai food in the u.s, for instance, wouldn't be on my top 10. thai food in bangkok, on the other hand, knocked my socks off (steam came out my ears, bells rang, a cartoon fireman hit me on the head with a hammer).
and sichuan and hunan aren't the same thing are they?
also anglo-indian has a very different sense in india (evokes pictures of people eating anything but spicy food)--is it used generally to describe south asians in england and their food etc?
my own top 5:
1. thai food (as eaten in bangkok)
2. sichuan food (as eaten in the san gabriel valley in california)
3. andhra food (as eaten in andhra pradesh in india)
4. korean food (as eaten in los angeles)
5. chettinad cuisine (as eaten in various restaurants in north india that probably tone it down for the north-indian palate)
the spiciest things i've ever eaten?
1. the aforementioned bamboo-shoot/shrimp curry in bangkok
2. the hot chopped chicken at chungking in monterey park (san gabriel valley)
3. a concoction of powdered dried venision and red chillies that a naga classmate in boarding school once brought back with him from home--it was like eating gunpowder soaked in sulphuric acid, but it was so goooood.
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I just noticed Mongo_Jones new signature:"sahb, iska toh differential mein lafda hai"
~keshto mukherjee
I dont think I've laughed so much in a long time.
Keshto lives forever in the big bar up there! you're welcome episure--"chupke chupke" is one of the great film comedies--surpassed only by "padosan", "jaane bhi do yaaron" and above all "chalti ka naam gaadi".
bringing this back to the topic of food, do you remember the poem keshto is trying to compose in the movie and how dharmendra finishes it for him?
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curious if those who've tried durians have also tried kathal--the ripe form of the indian jackfruit. how does it compare? my father, like a good east-bengali, loves kathal--the poor man has been deprived of this pleasure for most of his adult life though since the family would threaten to leave the house if a kathal was ever brought into it. strangely the green (unripened) jackfruit, or enchor in bengali, doesn't arouse such passions and tastes and smells different.
here's a related discussion on the india forum
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i've brought in everything from dried spices to pickles to bengali sweets to mustard oil to cookies (brittania's bourbon chocolate biscuits mmm mmm mmm--thank god indian stores in the u.s have started carrying them now), but i have never been able to bring myself to bring mangoes in. i worry that if i get stopped at customs the aroma will be too strong and that the penalties will be stronger for bringing in fruit. i know others who've been braver/more foolhardy and never had trouble though. maybe next time.
edited to add: oh yeah, we carried tons of kim chi into india this past winter (so my wife could survive 4 weeks of indian food).
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things i will not eat if given the choice:
dogs: inconsistent ethical reasons
monkeys and apes: see above
spiders: they gross me out
cockroaches: see above
endangered species: anyone remember "the freshman"?
other than that i'm game for anything--and i would probably reconsider the above (definitely the endangered species) if my life depended on it.
those of you who say you won't eat brains you need to get yourselves to a good punjabi dhaba in north india and try some brain curry--the way the livid, red sauce spurts out of the cubed brains when you press down on them just adds to the sensory pleasure.
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not a competitition--i'm not asking who can eat the spiciest (by which i here mean hottest) food, but which cuisine people find to be the hottest on average--and which the hottest dish they've ever eaten is (not necessarily from that cuisine).
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the stalks from which the hearts are harvested are supposed to be not very thick. and the tree itself is one native to the americas. perhaps a related tree?
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there's quite a few real spicy cuisines in india (though my own home state of bengal can't claim to have one in the top 5) and i've sampled most of them. through my wife, who is korean-american (she was born and raised in korea for what that's worth in such discussions), i've also eaten a lot of korean food. we go back and forth over whether koreans can eat spicier food than indians but we're both agreed that the spiciest food we have ever eaten--topping even the incendiary sichuan food at the best restaurants in the san gabriel valley--is what we ate in thailand en route to india this winter. one shrimp-bamboo shoot dish literally knocked us out of our chairs and induced dangerous arrythmias. i can't imagine anything spicier. then again i have the lowest spice tolerance of anyone in my immediate family so perhaps i'm not the best judge.
so:
a) which cuisine do you think has the spiciest food on the whole?
b) what is the spiciest dish you've ever eaten?
(edit to add: oops! meant to post this in the general food topics forum--can someone with access please move it for me? thanks!)
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i haven't eaten a fast-food burger in years now but the whopper used to be my favorite mega-burger (this allows me to exclude regional chains like in 'n out and fatburger). much better than the crappy big mac.
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rushina,
others may have already said this (i'm feeling too lazy right now to scroll through the thread) but one of the first decisions should be to decide who your ideal audience is. a non-indian one will require/want less contextual gloss than an indian one; if it is a regional cookbook you'll need to take into account the needs of those outside the region. in a different context the great indian poet and translator a.k. ramanujan once said (in the foreword to his translation of u.r. anantamurthy's novel "samskara") that translators ideally translate not the source text from one language to another but the non-native reader into a native one. i think this is a good model for cookbook writers (not to mention chefs) to follow when working between cultures (both inter and intra nationally). (keeping in mind, of course, ramanujan's caveat that even the best of this kind are failures.) most indian cookbooks for a western audience are bad "translations" in this sense (not to mention articles on indian food in magazines and newspapers).
however, if you're thinking of a cookbook for/from/of its audience these issues may not matter--then vikram's suggestions are probably the main ones to think about.
mongo
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i haven't tried it in the slow-cooker yet--do you think pressure cooking might be a viable alternative? i'm a little nervous because misjudging the time might result in a complete mash.
i know you've all been waiting with bated breath for me to resolve this problem. well, i finally took recourse to the pressure cooker yesterday. after dry-roasting and washing 1 cup of the moog dal i pressure-cooked it with 4 cups of water (2 whistles), let the pressure dissipate on its own and then continued cooking as per normal. sped things up considerably with no loss in taste. i'll post a full recipe later (need to check first that i haven't already done so earlier).
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red kidney beans (rajma) are another ingredient commonly cooked in the pressure cooker in most north indian homes. following my mother i soak the beans overnight and then pressure cook them (recipe available upon request). i suppose this might be overkill. instead of soaking them i might just cook them longer--but i do get a childish pleasure from the sight of the beans having expanded overnight. can i claim this for the pleasures of slow food? (before i pop them in the pressure cooker, of course.)
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The questions are triggered by the recent article in Wine Telegraph The spice is right.
Couple of quotes:
"...Pinky Lilani is a is an adviser to British manufacturers of Indian supermarket meals, but she has published a cookbook, Spice Magic and holds cookery demonstrations in her kitchen....
...Besides the recipes, Lilani’s book also offers a guide to the four basic techniques of Indian cooking. They are bhunao, whereby you keep spices simmering until they blend perfectly; dhuan, which is the tradition of placing red-hot charcoal in a dish of chicken or smoked salmon and then sealing the lid so that the smoke infuses the food; dum, in which rice is cooked in its own steam; and tarka, in which spices are added to hot oil to release their flavour...."
And now couple of questions:
Has anybody read her book or attended the class? What do you think?
Can somebody describe the dhuan method?
Thank you,
Helena
this pinky lilani seems full of it. but hey if you've got an uninformed market willing to buy whatever exoticised claptrap you're willing to sell them ("greeted in typical Indian fashion, with a splash of saffron water on our foreheads" my ass) i suppose you may as well go for it. i'm beginning to think i should dust off some of my more colorful kurtas, get some beads and start advertizing swami jones' exotic indian cooking courses. my principle will be that you only need two ingredients: heat and dust. and i'll greet everyone with the traditional splash of cowdung in the face.
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Um, no - the "tail," AKA "neck," is the siphon. The condomy thingie is just a condomy thingie, i.e. a protective skin worn over the siphon - 'cept that unlike a good condom it has a couple of holes in the end so the siphon can... well, siphon.
My bad, when I was referring to the condomy thingie I thought you meant that whole entire piece including the siphon plus condomy thingie because I don't eat the siphon or the condomy thingie, I just eat the body.
mmmmm clam-flavor condoms....
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"Mmm... 64 slices of American cheese."
moe tries to explain "double indemnity" style insurance scam to homer--diagrams the fake car crash with an olive representing homer. homer pops the olive in his mouth and says, "mmmm.....me".
and then there's, "mmmmm...forbidden doughnut" from the treehouse of horror episode where flanders is the devil. this may be the definitive homer "mmmmm" in the age of atkins.
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and i've learned a lot from homer's sushi eating technique. still haven't tried any fugu though.
another favorite minor character is the maitre'd from recent years: the one with the botox smile who always greets people with a "YAAAAYSE?"
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Perhaps my favorite of all time is the "Death by Chocolate" pastry the french chef makes to kill Homer in the episode where he is the restaurant critic and all the chefs want to kill him.
"It has 1 million calories"
and don't forget the "land of chocolate" reverie in the "burns verkaufen der kraftwerk" episode. homer skipping around in the land of chocolate--the little chocolate dog come yipping up, he picks it up and takes a big, beatific bite out of it.
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does whiskey count as beer?
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pricey restaurants:
bukhara at the maurya sheraton: the apotheosis of north-western indian cuisine--everything is good but try the tandoori cauliflower if it is still on the menu
dum pukht at the maurya sheraton: amazing awadhi food--everything is good
mid-range:
swaagath, in the defence colony market: skip past the chinese and mughlai menu to the south indian non-veg menu at the back--get the crab butter-pepper-garlic
chopsticks, in the asiad village complex: to get a good sense of classic indian chinese; try particularly the vegetarian and lamb dishes.
nizam's, in daryaganj: for classic delhi mughlai food
pindi or gulati's, in the pandara road market: for the classic upmarket dhaba experience
cheap:
saravana bhavan, in connaught place on janpath: for the gold standard of south indian vegetarian--much better than saagar, which some people will tell you to go to instead. get one of the huge thalis (there's a picture of one of them on my delhi-trip web-page, linked to in a thread started sometime in the second week of jan)
nathu's sweets and spices, in bengali market: for the gold standard of classic north indian snack food and sweets
touristy but worth it:
dilli haat, for a range of foods from all the indian states; of variable quality but worth a jaunt.
some thoughts off the top of my head--i'm sure others will have more tips. when and for how long are you going?
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My mother is Malayali and anytime I've eaten chicken at any of our Malayali relatives houses its always been with bones in. I'm pretty sure the recipes in Mrs.Mathew's book would require chicken on the bone. The concept of 'boneless' is something I associate with North Indian restaurants and butter chicken in particular.
Vikram
thanks vikram--what i suspected.
however, the author of the penguin kerala cookbook is vijayan kannampilly. matthew might be the author of the spice coast book. i wonder why vijayan makes no mention of the bone-in/boneless substitution in his recipes given how scrupulous he is in general elsewhere in the book (taking pains to differentiate between kokum and cambodge, for example, or marking the fish recipes that ideally call for a specific fish found only in kerala). it is doubly strange since even punjabis don't do boneless chicken in home-cooking (boneless is meant to be a luxury when you eat out). so i don't know who this change is aimed at.
in general, pace edward, eating meat with bones is just so much more gratifying. both more sensual (as you grapple with the bones and crack them open with your teeth) and tasty (as you suck the marrow etc. out, or score some cartilage)--i'm glad to know that malayalis aren't missing out on these pleasures.
so, for these recipes i imagine i should hack the bird into smallish pieces. don't know if i'll have the patience to do that--probably just leave legs and thighs intact and split each breast into two.
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Wild speculation ? Sure! I too have noticed the same thing about chicken recipes in Malayali cookbooks and at restaurants, here in the US, that serve Malayali style dishes.
there are restaurants in the u.s that serve malayali style non-veg dishes? where can these places be found?
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It isn't exactly the question I was asking, but that doesn't mean I'm not interested in learning about the recipes!
the "you" i was referring to in my post wasn't you but azrael--who seemed to be more interested in adaptation of certain western classics to the pressure cooker.
i skimmed the other thread you linked to, couldn't see if suvir had in fact posted any recipes. like him, and probably 60% of other indians with pressure-cookers, i have an indian prestige cooker (i get a new one on every 2nd trip home).
here's a link to recipes for 2 dals i've posted on the india forum that involve pressure cooking:
if you'd like a chicken recipe as well, let me know.
Long Live the King
in Ready to Eat
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well, it doesn't surprise me to hear that restaurants may serve better burgers than fast-food outlets. however, the fact that i don't like fried burgers seems to rule out 90% of the neighbourhood restaurants you allude to.
look, i'm not disputing the world-view that says fast-food is bad (in oh so many ways) for the world. i'd just ask you to consider that there may be people who enjoy certain fast-food products (as they do spam and the like) and not because they're philistines or deluded fools.
then again this is egullet.