
mongo_jones
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Everything posted by mongo_jones
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which is why my mistake was all the more horrendous. actually i blame egullet--i don't think i would have ever confused the two if i hadn't read posts here from people who're confused by the nomenclature. it is all your fault.
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i forgot to say: never eat too much rice or pasta. i cannot stress this enough. rice and pasta is how the house wins at the vegas buffet.
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what we need is the buffet-lympics--points to be awarded for quantity, variety and speed of attack. style points awarded for order, lack of waste and attitude. definitely no swim-suit competition. someone pitch the food network for me. katherine, your tale intrigues me but i laugh knowingly: i will take you down!
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were you then literally carried away?
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i'll be glad to run the training camp for your kin, for only a nominal fee. i have a very scientific process. first, one must walk around the entire buffet and appraise the situation. then one constructs the courses in one's head and plans out a line of attack--this involves examining lines (time spent waiting for prime-rib could be better allocated digesting chilled asparagus) and status of platter (you don't want the fresh out of the kitchen mashed potatoes or the crusty last bit). never go all out on the first or second course. always leave room for a last sampling of the greatest hits and dessert. within these general parameters more creativity is possible: sometimes i like to move from cold to hot to cold (dessert) again. at other times i like to move from cuisine to cuisine (especially at the bellagio). needless to say, i always get my money's worth AND make up for my wife who doesn't understand the concept of the all-you-can-eat buffet. and here's a cheapskate's tip to the ultimate weekday vegas buffet experience: go at the liminal time between lunch and dinner (or breakfast and lunch). you pay for lunch but are still there when the fancier stuff for dinner or lunch gets brought out.
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there may have been bread, but i was too busy constructing sandwiches from sausage--two layers of sausage with sausage sprinkled sausage in between; with a side of sausage--to notice. (now i can't get the kids in the hall eraserhead/"sausages" film out of my head.) another great (albeit very expensive) buffet: the sunday brunch at the four seasons, beverly hills. also in l.a, a very inexpensive buffet: souplantation (or are they national?)--i always liked their tuna-tarragon and their chicken-noodle soup.
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denver. i am a 30 minute drive away--but the 10 years in l.a are beating out the 6 months in boulder in my head. though the 23 years in india are still dominant (and renewed for a month or so every other year).
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hey, when the chef does it they call it special sauce.
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i made a maccher-jhol (fish-curry would i suppose be the easiest translation) with turbot the other night. now, most bengali fish preparations call for the fish to first be lightly coated with salt and turmeric and shallow-fried before being later inserted into the sauce and simmered till completely done (the one exception to this rule is shorshe-ilish where the fish is traditionally dropped into the sauce raw and "steamed" in it--though this is not how bong does it). turbot it turns out is much like cod in that it is a very delicate, flaky fish. it doesn't take well to movement in the pan (i'm guessing europeans usually bread it and fry it, or grill it)--it was all i could do to not have it fall apart on me. since i am not an expert on fish commonly available in the u.s i would appreciate it if we could put together a list of fish that respond well to most indian style jhol/curry preparations. here's my list: easy in curries: mahi-mahi shark tilapia mackerel tough to handle in curries: cod turbot fish that i don't think are well suited to most indian curries (though maybe to the tandoor): swordfish monkfish salmon what else? i've never tried making a bengali style fish dish with orange roughy or sea bass or trout or catfish--thoughts?
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agreed--breakfast buffets in fine hotels in asia and europe are usually excellent. i have fond memories of the breakfast buffets at hotels in st. petersburg and moscow (featuring caviar and blinis) and in hungary and germany (featuring sausage, sausage, sausage, sausage, eggs, bacon, sausage and sausage)--all these experiences courtesy the wonderfully generous family of my then girlfriend who invited me on their trips. closer to home (well this home at any rate) there are the great buffets in vegas (especially the ones at the bellagio and mandalay bay, though paris has a great sunday brunch buffet too) where the chefs quail and the accountants resign at my appearance.
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a thread about buffets and not one mention of vegas? what next? cats and dogs sleeping together?
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i'm not sure i understand this. could you expand?
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here's a link to an entertaining review of a couple of restaurants in denver that might resonate (i'd posted a link to this on the southwest forum some time back): http://www.westword.com/issues/2004-01-08/...ml/1/index.html
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ach! even without the details i can almost taste that one. i have another fairly involved one from 11 years ago: i'd only recently arrived in the u.s.a and lived very close usc in los angeles (where i'd started on a phd in literature). there were no indian groceries near where my room-mate and i lived and neither of us had a car. as a result once my store of spices brought from home ran out i started cooking with mexican spices from the local market. now, i don't want to start a battle of the brown people here but the average mexican chilli powder is bland compared to the average indian powder. as a result over time i'd begun to slowly increase the amount of chilli powder i was adding to dishes. then my room-mate went home for a month and returned with indian red chilli powder. the first night he was back i was making kofta curry and having spent a month in his mother's bosom in cochin eating spicy malyali food he asked me to make it extra spicy. of course neither of us thought to make the adjustment with the chilli powder. we can both eat spicy food with the best of them, and we are both greedy bastards (well, he isn't any more--went all spiritual without warning one year), but we couldn't eat it. there may be a sitcom in here somewhere. a building that looks like a bennetton ad--their pantries get mixed up and all kinds of crazy hi-jinks ensue. by the end everyone has a green-card and eats steak and potatoes.
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the question is whether you're talking about self-conscious fancy-schmancy fusion or not. there's a lot in indian cooking that is already fusion (the use of bread in pau-bhaji, indian vege-burgers--to take just two examples from opposite ends of the fast-food world); but very few expensive restaurants in india expend energy in fusion of the kind that you see in the west. even in the west--where fusion usually means a western chef playing with "exotic" ingredients in a way that brings words like decadence to mind--there are the nobu matsuhisas and masaharu morimotos who come at the fusing from different places, so to speak. but for the most part (and i speak not just of crap like p.f chang but also expensive, highly-rated places like patina in l.a) what i've experienced in the u.s of fusion involving asian cuisines suggests that it is aimed at people who don't usually interface with those asian cuisines directly or know much about them (usually, in l.a these are wealthy, displaced new yorkers who've never been to the san gabriel valley but complain about chinese food in l.a). i don't object to fusion per se--but i'm sceptical about individual approaches, methodologies, criteria of evaluation etc. until convinced otherwise. (a good place in l.a to experience an "east-west" fusion meal which seems to begin from the east rather than the west is the sawtelle kitchen in west l.a)
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i grew up hating cauliflower--strange behavior for a bengali with a mother who is an excellent cook. i was converted by the mind-boggling tandoori cauliflower at bukhara in the maurya sheraton in new delhi. the head is dusted with a spice blend and roasted whole in the tandoor. still i treated cauliflower with suspicion for a long time after that--exceptions prove the rule and all that. on our recent trip back home, however, my wife--visiting india for the first time--got to eat home-made bengali cauliflower dishes for the first time and it was made clear that i'd need to add it to the repertoire. i've been experimenting with 2 or 3 recipes from my mother since then--even destroyed one prep with a horrible mistake last night. i had no idea that it featured prominently in cuisines other than indian.
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this is a classic bengali dish---there are almost no other seasonings, just a touch of haldi and salt; the vegetables (cauliflower, potatoes and peas, tiny bit of tomato) do all the work. kalonji is subtle, black-cumin is not (plus this lot was a little stale i think). in any case a spoon of black-cumin is a lot. the aroma of the seeds overpowered the dish--we forced it down for dinner, tried again at lunch today but ended up throwing it away. by the way, in bengali cauliflower is pronounced "kofi" or "kophi"; of course, the full name is "phul-kophi/kofi".
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#1 mistakenly substituting 1 tspn kalo-jeere (black cumin) for 1 tspn kalonji (nigella). i did this last night to an alu-kofi (potato-cauliflower) dish and ruined it. i know the difference between the two--still can't explain why i used the one instead of the other.
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isn't benihana already second-rate benihana?
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this is wrong. it may be good, but it is still wrong.
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you mean i've got to read through 6 whole pages?
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let fans of the cauliflower speak. and let the content of their speech be methods for its preparation.
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Q&A - Beginners Guide to Regional Indian Cooking
mongo_jones replied to a topic in The eGullet Culinary Institute (eGCI)
hi monica, an interesting read--good education for non-indians (and maybe even some indians). on that note, a small point: you indicate in the bengali section that the chinese ruled bengal? shurely shome mishtake. also, it should be "shonar bangla" not "shonar bangal", though i've been known to refer to myself as that latter. you have left out the afghans though from your list of invaders--who, both in the north-west and the east may have had more of a lasting impact than the turks (or more precisely the turkic invaders, who were more from central asia than turkey--both ghazni and ghor are in present-day afghanistan). a bigger point: garlic in any bengali fish dish? let alone in shorshe-bata maach? now that you've fingered chef seth as the source of that "inspiration" it may not be safe for him to go to calcutta. and speaking of calcutta and safety, i feel i should inform you that there are many bengalis (present company excluded, of course) who are as unrefined as their mustard oil. and whatever happened to the poor north-east? they're on the map but not in the kitchen. regards, mongo p.s: i presume that despite the article being posted by andy lynes, you are the owner of the personal pronoun in it. i'm a little curious--earlier you'd said that you had not gone to college in india (i think you said you'd left when you were 6 years old), this article, however, seems to state the opposite. or is this chef seth's college-days being referred to? -
there's a thread somewhere on egullet on cookware and metal that breaks down each metal's conductive properties etc. not sure if they go into brass too.
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haven't been to l.o.s--will for sure on next trip to vegas. but in the meantime i am curious if those who say that this is the best thai restaurant in america have eaten extensively at the thai restaurants in hollywood around the thailand plaza.