mongo_jones

tryska, tryska, tryska--you're losing major indian points here... this is how you pluck a guava: you pull it off the branch how do you eat it: if there's a source of water nearby you wash it; then you bite into it. ideally, you have some black salt at hand to dip it into before each bite. guavas are heavenly both when they're ripe--pink and soft in the middle--or still somewhat raw--harder and more astringent. we grew up eating guavas, mangoes, chikus (sapotas)--how i miss them now. lichees i was never a fan of since their seeds reminded me of the big brown indian roaches which i was completely phobic of. very rarely drank juice versions of these fruits--always seemed a waste of a mango to me to eat it anyway but as is. encountered guava juice for the first time in hawaii.

there is the mango (principally the langdra, daseri and alphonso) and then after a long time there is everything else.

this works like a charm for me too. same approach as for onions.

my wife has started using my chilli powder to make her version--it is markedly spicier now. she does not, of course, concede that this might mean that bengalis can eat spicier food than koreans.

if we're thinking of the same dish it depends on where you go. i've had a fairly incendiary version at hodori on vermont/olympic in los angeles. my wife makes a pretty fiery version herself. now, if i could only get the squid away from her and do some indian experiments with it... I go to Hodori quite regularly and it's not that bad. Hehe.. oooh my spicy-food eating capabilities are being challenged! believe me, as a bengali, i am able to eat a lot of very spicy food. perhaps the squid i had there was an aberration. on the other hand if you think hodori's yook gae jiang isn't spicy either then we may have a different definition of spicy.

i'm not a fan of jonathon gold, but that's not a bad intro to koreatown at all.

the two fat ladies used to recommend using anchovies with everything. i usually buy large jars of anchovies packed in oil and they last a long time in the fridge. an opened tin would be good for at least a week i'd guess--depending on how cold your fridge is. but, there's always the rinse and eat out of the can option. i always eat as many straight out of the jar as i put in a dish.

so maybe its bengali food wasn't good enough to impress bengalis who can eat it at home, and maybe bengali food in general wasn't enticing enough for other indians, and maybe a non-indian audience wants to see chicken tikka masala on the menu when they go out for indian. and maybe they just sucked. but we've had at least one opinion here to the contrary vis a vis the quality of their food.

hey, from where i'm eating there's far more gross things in french cuisine than in chinese!

while a lot of people have never been to campagnola it is nonetheless almost always full (and yes, a little cramped). it is the kind of place that people tell their close friends about but don't make too much noise about for fear that it will get too busy. but the owner (mario, i think) and the head waiter (if he's still there) are such great guys i don't think they'd ever get too much 'tude. they don't have a huge menu but they do feature many unusual (for l.a) dishes. my favorite was always their penne with sliced lamb and peas. their fish specials were always good and their antipasto is pretty good too. they have a small outside patio which is a very nice space to reserve if you ever have a group of 8-10 people for an event. you get it all to yourself. on a separate note, i've seen lots of minor celebrities there over the years, enjoying meals in relative anonymity. edited to add: it is very reasonably priced. two people can eat a very nice meal with a glass of wine and not crack the $60 barrier.

feni isn't just made from cashews (my favorite is palm feni; there's also coconut) and i'd hesitate to call it wine, but yes, a swig of feni, or even some indian army rum and all your troubles will be at an end.

bong, you are a better bong than me. i still can't eat kathal. this is largely because of how much the damned ripe fruit stinks. i can't get it out of my mind. we lived in north bengal for some time and there were jackfruit trees everywhere. i think i've been permanently scarred by childhood bicycle rides along semi-rural roads seeing this hideous fruit hanging from this hideous tree with its horrible stink permeating the countryside for miles around. interestingly, we have a bangal/ghoti type split in the family over kathal and shutki. i eat shutki now but growing up my mother and i refused to eat either while my father (originally from mymensingh) and my sister relished them. i would actually leave the house if ripe kathal was brought in. now it doesn't matter even if i see it on a menu in a restaurant and don't actually have to see it--i can remember the stink as vividly as though it were present. a sense-memory thing. my loss, probably--but i'll live.

hmmm. do you think it was quality that did it in--though we've heard differing accounts of that--or the fact that it was so different from what an indian restaurant in the u.s is "supposed to be"? you'd think silicon valley of all places would support a regional indian cuisine. certainly south indian restaurants do well in areas with large indian populations. i'd theorize that that might be because a) there are more south indians in the u.s and b) even north indians are used to eating out at south indian restaurants in india whereas something like bengali cuisine is a relative unknown even in india (outside bengal, that is). thoughts?

have any of you been to campagnola in westwood? a small, intimate italian restaurant (the owner's from sardinia, but the food isn't). it is quite good and as far as i know has never made it into the zagat. on westwood south of wilshire. has anyone mentioned empanada's place in mar vista/culver city? cash only but worth a trip. chandni in santa monica (wilshire and 18th) used to be very good for vegetarian indian.

do you mean the one in the big complex on 140 west valley? it totally rocks. they have the most amazing fish section. the asian answer to santa monica seafood, except with more, and cheaper. totally worth the drive. we used to make a weekly trip of it--dinner at a different place in the complex each time (that shanghainese restaurant is pretty good--forget the name), then fill the icebox with fish from the market and return home happy. it is one of the things we miss most about the l.a food scene.

Is that like toe jam? not like my toe jam. or so i've been told. then again, i've never thought of dipping my feet in black-bean sauce.

if we're thinking of the same dish it depends on where you go. i've had a fairly incendiary version at hodori on vermont/olympic in los angeles. my wife makes a pretty fiery version herself. now, if i could only get the squid away from her and do some indian experiments with it...

does all the bones removed mean no skin? or do they just slit the skin and remove the bones? if so, i wouldn't want that job. edited to add: mmmm jellyfish... while we're on the subject of dim-sum people are scared to eat, has anyone had the duck-tongue in spicy sauce? really good stuff, but it was real disconcerting the first time to discover that there was a bone or something in the middle of the tongue. i suppose there's something weirdly fetishistic about eating a tongue--yes, i have frenched a dead duck.

i thought i just did? but i'll let you have the last word.

considering the restaurant's reaction wasn't acceptable, i think the jury is still out on that one. ah tommy, never one to let reason get in the way of the last word. since the restaurant responded to the email with what they saw as adequate restitution it isn't particularly germane whether the actual form of the restitution was acceptable to reesek or not. their response validates the mode of communication she employed. she's not setting their policy, they are. i don't think it matters very much what any of our individual opinions is about the appropriateness of email for business communication--if a particular business, a restaurant or dell computers, puts an email address out there as a mode of communication (and then actually responds to it) their customers (disgruntled or gruntled) are within their rights to use it.

not to mention their pigs' uteruses and "bungs"

ah, but you have to love texture. chicken feet (of the dim-sum variety) are less about meat and more about connective tissue and fat. and sucking the accompanying sauce off the skin and out of the crevices. mmm mmm mmm!

in all the enlightening, if not edifying, moralizing and lecturing about appropriate means of communication that reesek's been subjected to since her original post i haven't seen too many people cite the fact (noted in her original email) that she did not email this restaurant to ask for money, but to notify them of what had happened. once they sent it to her she's well within her rights to not be satisfied with the actual amount ($100 means nothing by itself--i wouldn't be so excited if i'd spent $200 for the privilege of food-poisoning and then got half of that back). what's the point of asking her if she thinks restaurants should send money to all email-complainants? is she making some global policy statement or responding to her own particular experience? and let's get off our high-horses about email versus hard-copy and note the fact that since this specific restaurant responded very quickly to her email, obviously email was a completely appropriate vehicle of communication in this case. (in fact, the fact that they threw money so quickly at an email without too much story-checking makes me suspect that they'd probably received more calls. but that's neither here nor there.) in the words of homer simpson: help me jeebus!

there's also the huge, very non-japanese user-friendly, japanese grocery store in palms. i forget what it is called now (been through some name changes-- maybe mitsuwa?). basically, take ocean park east to centinela. turn right, keep on trucking past the airport etc, past rose--when you get to palms it'll appear in a large strip mall on your left. it is a good place for both processed and fresh ingredients, including sushi and sashimi grade fish. there's a pretty good food court too with great ramen and other stands.

russ, i wonder if your experiments have included cooking beans in a pressure-cooker. this is the way most indian homes cook red-beans (rajma) and (despite what i posted about my recent gaseous production) rajma-chawal (indian style red beans and rice) doesn't cause me much distress. then again i probably eat more red beans than the average american. or perhaps all that chilli powder and garam masala does something too. mongo