mongo_jones

yes. and i'm sure they love the atkins diet too. i wonder what the waitress thought of jack nicholson in "five easy pieces".

re. all this yogurt curdling: i have added yogurt (of varying fat content) to sauces (at varying heat settings) for years and years now without ever having it curdle or even being aware of this as a possibility. i've either just been lucky or have in fact been eating curries with curdled yogurt without knowing it. or perhaps i've been instinctively doing whatever you're supposed to do to not have yogurt curdle, though this has never included tempering it, adding besan or removing the sauce from heat first. what i have done, in the case of say a chicken curry, is always add the yogurt after the onions, garlic and ginger have been sauteed and the chicken pieces added and cooked till all the water has evaporated. perhaps this results in the presence of more oil at the surface of the sauce thus preventing the yogurt from curdling?

both these meals--and experiences--sound good; definitely putting a visit to adega on our list. however, if i can be so crass as to ask, what were the prices associated with all these meals? (other than $12 for the clams.)

my wife and i were in los angeles over the weekend. we ate dinner at chungking in monterey park on saturday (excellent as always) and had dim-sum for brunch on monday at 888 seafood. i am happy to report that my experience continues to be the opposite of yours--by which i mean only that we had an excellent meal. our l.a chinese food aficionado friends and we have eaten at pretty much every dim-sum house all over the san gabriel valley and we're pretty much unanimous in our choice of 888 seafood as the place to go to for consistent quality. i've never had any problem getting variety (and quality), and since we tend not to go on sundays (and to go early when we do go on saturdays) we've never been slammed by the kinds of wait-times you get at the monterey park stalwarts (or at empress pavilion). for what it is worth. also: we had the black-bean chicken feet on monday--pretty good. we also did some korean comfort food: shul-lung tang at hanbat and yook gae jiang etc. at hodori on our way to the airport today.

perhaps we should begin by asking what it is you are doing now that invariably leads to curdling? what steps are you following?

well, meeting me may speed the passing... but why all this talk tonight of passing on and passing on the torch? in any case i am supremely unqualified to receive it. vikram, maybe but certainly not me (and this isn't false modesty--just the unvarnished facts). i do hope, and i'm sure i speak for everyone here, you'll continue to expose us to more of your knowledge about the histories, geographies and political economies of bengali food.

gautam, i don't know why you are apologizing. i am consistently humbled by the depth of knowledge you have of bengali food (from the ground to the mouth, as it were). i would love to read the 600 pages of "garbage"--are they available anywhere? re. grinding shorshe and other seeds: my mother agrees with you--the blender is an inadequate substitute. if for no other reason because the blender method of pasting powders the seed husk with the seed and makes it impossible to separate. when you make the paste with the stone grinder it is possible to strain the paste into the oil--thus eschewing any bitterness from the mustard. nonetheless, i have lower standards than you and would rather eat an inferior take on shorshe ilish (or these days cod) than none at all. that being said, i must lodge a complaint with the gods of bengali cooking against our friend bong who is encouraging people to make shorshe-pomfret! edited to add: i actually feel that the bigger barrier to true shorshe-fish, or for that matter most bengali cooking, in the u.s is (as you've also identified) the lack of true bengali mustard oil. i made my wife smell the mustard oil back home so she could get a sense of the difference from the limp versions usually available in indian groceries here. (she had the exact same complaint in reverse--while preparing a korean meal for the family-- about the sesame oil available in grocery stores in india!) regards, mongo

sushi

This is a particular weakness of mine. Can you give some tips for how to avoid it? Much appreciated! as our lord alton brown has said, dairy products must always be incorporated into sauces in the presence of fat.

yes, rushina for forum leader!

my sister and i grew up eating ketchup and butter between 2 slices of white bread. i used to think we were the only ones have since discovered that many indians loved these in their childhoods. when i first came to the u.s (10 years ago) i used to take sandwiches made from wonderbread and spam (with a dash of tabasco) with me to my grad seminars to eat at the break. as i recall this was real good shit. after the second week a horrified classmate took me aside and asked me if i knew i was becoming white-trash. i am ashamed to say that i was culturally intimidated into stopping (on the other hand this led to my taking chicken curry and rice instead and tormenting everyone with the mouth-watering aroma).

sensible advice indeed, but not applicable in this case-- this restaurant does do a lot of catering. in any event, find me a caterer in los angeles who does indian food. forgive the essentialism but for my wedding it better be an indian caterer. (edit for grammar fix)

i should add that the bengali muslim biryani is also amazing. almost completely dry with the flavor of the meat and fried onions, plus some pods of black cardamom and a little tamarind, infusing the grains of basmati.

the classic hyderabadi biryani comes with a side of "korma" or gravy. sometimes also with mirch ka salan.

next week. and laudiso's it will be. i'll post a review.

hyderabadi biryanis are my favorite biryanis too. you don't have to be in hyderabad to get them though--the matka pir folks in delhi do an amazing job too. i also like malabar biryanis. but the soggy, take-meat-curry-and-rice-and-bake-them together biryanis i can do without. this, sadly, is almost entirely what's available in the u.s.

you my friend should take the freeway to artesia, to ambala sweets on one of the strip-malls off of pioneer blvd. not quite bengali market, but not bad at all.

slap the host and turn the table over?

you are welcome. the commentary could probably stand to be a little more transparent for a non-indian audience so if there's anything you want translated further, ask.

finally an update: http://home.comcast.net/~mongo_jones/indiafoodpics.html added pictures from a few meals eaten outside the home, broke everything out into two pages, and fixed the chronology. if you've bookmarked the page you might want to clear your cache and load again to make sure you see the new stuff (some of which is nestled among the old stuff). i probably have another update's worth of pictures left; and then there's a lot on my digicam that needs to be captured--both to fill in missing holes in some of these meals and in its own right. but don't hold your breath for that one.

i understand there was a fourth wise man who'd brought a jar of byrrh with him. apparently he never made it to bethlehem--he was found some days later wandering drunk around damascus.

what exactly is pan-asian anyway?

i don't know if we want to go to denver or plonk down cash for a really fine italian experience this time around, but i'll keep luca d italia in mind for when we do. afoodnut, is laudisio's priced about the same as full moon grill and carelli's?

someone explain marmite to me

i once had a martini with a blue-cheese stuffed olive in it--was surprisingly good.