mongo_jones

suvir, even though your restaurant sounds a bit like the kind of thing i railed about here ( )i wish you and your partner the best of luck with it. i am surprised you don't have panditji's kaddu recipe on your menu--i'd recommend it for a thanksgiving special. i will definitely check you out on my next trip to nyc--i look forward to it. mongo

i never measure while cooking (except of course for baking) and rarely taste--i too can tell salt by smell. the only times i taste dishes before serving are when i know my hand slipped while pouring something in and i need to figure out how to compensate. my wife used to think that i was just being insecure when i would ask how things taste when we sat down to eat--now she knows most of the time it is because i haven't tasted it at all myself yet. but there's nothing religious about this for me--i've just been cooking my standard repertoire so long now i don't need to taste or measure. like hardcore indian cooks i still use a prestige pressure cooker to cook goat, rajma etc. one of the most remarkable skills i recently realized i've developed over time without being conscious of it is to be able to tell by the smell of the steam when something is done. of course, like bhasin, there are times when i "taste"--not because i need to but because i am greedy.

tryska, i don't know where you're located but in los angeles every indian restaurant delivers and almost all their menus are divided the way chinese take-out menus are. of course, these are all cookie-cutter north-indian restaurants. biryani and butter chicken survives delivery much better than, as someone else pointed out, dosas or iddlies would. i'm surprised to hear that there are cities in the u.s with large numbers of indian restaurants that don't deliver. perhaps this is in areas with high(er) indian populations? indians (generalizing wildly here) may prefer to eat in than do delivery or take-out--since restaurant eating is more of an indulgence than a convenience thing for most middle-class indians.

squid stir-fried with chaat masala sounds intriguing--would you be willing to share a recipe/cooking times?

on kim chi and indian food: my wife has no trouble eating kim chi with everything since that is what she does--kim chi is eaten with everything, end of story. that being said, she is not a fan of freshly made kim chi (and since my tastes in korean food are mediated by hers, and hers in indian by mine, i follow her in this). she prefers kim chi that has sat and fermented for a while--this both removes that squeaky texture and also softens the edge a little. also, i'm not just talking about cabbage kim chi but also radish kim chi, which doesn't (texturally) feel very different to me than many north indian home-made achars. i can see, vikram, how kim chi might not go well with sambhar or coconut chutney, but believe me it matches beautifully with bengali food, as do many other korean panchan (the little side-dishes): in particular, cold sauteed spinach stalks, sauteed bean-sprouts with sesame and my personal favorite, sauteed dried anchovies. my wife is an excellent cook, by the way--so many of our meals are indo-korean hybrids. and no, we don't make kim chi at home--the process is too arduous. back in l.a we used to either get it by the gallonful from her aunts and mother (she and her family are all first-generation immigrants) or buy it in koreatown stores. you can't actually get kim chi in boulder, but in aurora (40 minutes away) komart sells the same brand we used to buy in l.a for about a dollar more. and yes, her definition of a curry before she met me was very different.

vikram, you may find this hard to believe but i have had good palm feni. unfortunately i can't remember brand names now but an aficionado friend who visits goa often used to bring bottles of it back for us (this is in my delhi days). to pick up the thread from my earlier post in this thread: part of the reason i think indians have been less inclined to develop indigenous spirits, and why some indian gourmands sometime get caught up in these convoluted narratives and dubious histories about wine etc. is the high-colonial heritage of the expensive spirit drinking classes. this doesn't play out just in the world of alcohol but also in the arts: indian writers who win the booker or other international awards are more celebrated than those who don't. there's a certain cultural investment in the signposts of english/european and more lately, american distinction. and of course class has a lot to do with why feni is often considered just another country liquor. as for my second point, that innovation in indian cuisine is only acknowledged if it is articulated in a western idiom it too is of a piece with a larger cultural pattern. here in the west cultural hybridity is only recognized and celebrated if it directly involves the west. thus, to take a very simple example, baz luhrmann is credited with hybridizing bollywood and hollywood film conventions when in fact bollywood is already an amazing hybridization of hollywood and indian film/theater conventions. similar things seem to be happening with food. of course in the indian context little of this anxiety probably holds true (i hope)--indian chefs, restaurants, homes probably continue to develop, innovate with little regard to or thought of whether this would be recognized as innovation by western foodies (including many snobs on our own egullet, though of course none of us ourselves )

even if i hadn't fallen in love with this recipe, my wife (who is korean) would have ensured that it entered the regular rotation. as it is, i plan to make this at least every other week. quite apart from everything else, squash is really good for your health. by the way, speaking of my wife, can i recommend that people try eating kim-chi alongside regular indian home food? it goes really well with mushoor dal and rice, among other things.

well, i think it is important not to get too sweepingly general in these matters. on the whole i am with vikram in that i don't think wine is the perfect accompaniment to indian food. that being said, indian food is a multi-headed beast and some parts of it go better/well with some wines than do others. for heavier dishes and for spicy curries and so on i don't think beer (and let's not be too snobby about simple, crisp lagers) can be beat. even dark rum and water goes better than most red wines i think. heaven forbid, even rum and coke goes better with butter chicken and naan than does any shiraz or red zinfandel. perhaps the way out is to pair certain dishes with certain wines and recommend beers and other spirits/cocktails with other dishes? my bigger problem is with the mindset that often drives these wine-indian food discussions (and i'm not accusing anyone here of having it). there's a certain eurocentric way of defining good cuisine that i think is easy to fall into (for chefs, foodies, critics, and restaurant patrons alike): indian cuisine can't be haute if it isn't plated and served a certain way, or if it can't be paired up with wine. in a more insidious form there is sometimes an evolutionary narrative that creeps in, in which indian cuisine can only be seen as "developing", "growing" if that change is mapped onto high-western approaches. or new dishes are seen as innovative only if they are articulated in a western idiom. why can't indian food, in all its heterogeneity, be taken on its own terms? do japanese restaurateurs or critics worry about which wine will go best with their food?

suvir and others, i never reported on my adventures with this recipe (from the home-cooking thread)--re-posting it below. i've made it twice now, the first time with a squash from the farmer's market in boulder that more closely resembled the indian kaddu and the second time with butternut squash. i am happy to report that in both cases the result was phenomenal and i would urge everyone who hasn't yet tried it to do so. suvir, please convey my thanks to panditji and keep a portion for yourself for acting as the conduit. here's my comments/slight variations on the recipe: *butternut squash cubes hold their shape far more readily than the mystery farmer's mkt. squash, so those who are experimenting with other squashes/pumpkins would do well to cook not by time but by feel. if you actually cook certain squashes for 25 minutes you won't need to mash any pieces, they'll completely disintegrate. then again this may be a matter of textural preference. i like more mash, my wife prefers a more solid texture. *in my second sortie i upped the spiciness quotient a little by doubling the green chillies (i use thai chillies) red chilly powder. i personally like the spicy kick with the sweetness of the squash--i also didn't add as much of the amchur, preferring the spicy/sweet with a hint of sour balance to the sour-sweet combination. again a matter of personal taste. *i also added a touch more hing--the earthy aroma of hing really goes well with the sweetness of squash but i can see how this is a dangerous game to play--there is such a thing as too much hing. we ate this alongside an improvised dish of potatoes and green-beans, bengali style mushoor dal with liberal squeezes of lime and hot phulkas. we were happy. while i like my slight variation i would recommend people start with the original: it is a bullet-proof recipe (the only complicated part is the cutting of the squash) and you should taste its splendor before you tinker with it. more home-cooking recipes please! ---------------------------------------------- here's the original as posted by suvir: SWEET AND SOUR BUTTERNUT SQUASH WITH GINGER AND CHILIES Kaddu Kee Sabzi Serves 4 to 6 In my grandmother’s home in Delhi, visitors would arrive begging to eat Panditjis preparation of this very simple and humble vegetable. His recipe, reproduced here, was fabled to be deliciously addictive; you will find out. Kaddu is the Hindi word for the oblong shaped, Indian pumpkin. In America, I use butternut squash instead: it comes close enough in flavor and makes it unnecessary to go hunting for the real thing in Asian markets. The end result is a dish that is authentic in taste and just as beautifully orange. Try it with a traditional Thanksgiving meal. 2- to 2 1/4- pound butternut squash 3 tablespoons canola oil 1 inch fresh ginger, peeled and minced 1 fresh, hot green chili, chopped 1/4 teaspoon fenugreek seeds 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1/8 teaspoon asafetida 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, or to taste 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar 2 teaspoons dried mango powder (amchur) 1. Cut the squash in half lengthwise. Peel it with a vegetable peeler or a paring knife and scrape out the seeds. Cut the two halves lengthwise into 1/2-inch-thick strips. Then cut the strips crosswise into 1 1/2-inch pieces. 2. Heat the oil in a large wok, kadai or frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the ginger and cook, stirring, 1 minute. 3. Add the fresh chili, the fenugreek, cayenne and asafetida and cook, stirring, 30 seconds. 4. Add the squash and stir to coat with the oil. Stir in the salt and sugar. Turn the heat down to medium. Cover and cook until the squash is tender, about 25 minutes. Uncover and stir the squash every 5 minutes and check on the cooking; if the spices begin to burn, turn the heat down. If the squash doesn’t brown at all, turn the heat up slightly. 5. Stir in the dried mango powder. Mash the squash with a spoon to break up some of the pieces. Taste for salt and serve hot.

this is inspired by the mussels thread. being largely north, east and hyderabad centered in my indian orbit i'd never encountered mussels (or for that matter shellfish outside of shrimps/prawns, crabs and lobsters) in the indian food context. it doesn't surprise me to learn that keralaite and konkani cuisines incorporate mussels, cockles etc. how about scallops? i hadn't even heard of scallops till i came to the u.s? are there indian cuisines that have traditional recipes for scallops? if not, can anyone share their own innovative scallop recipes? and also for squid and octopus.

i use a manual granite mortar and pestle--not exactly the stone grinders used in indian homes but close. i use it both for wet and dry stuff. due to my lack of patience i usually end up with more of a smashing than a grinding motion but it still results in better ginger-garlic pastes than in a blender and also grainier dry masalas than in a dry-grinder.

suvir, it is exactly the same as alu-sheddho then (sheddho just means boiled in bengali). it is extremely simple to make--the description i gave earlier is the recipe--everything adjusted to taste. we even described identical accompanying dishes. mongo

bhasin, don't know if you ever introduced this in your restaurant--if you did/do hopefully you won't retain the "boy" part--the etymology makes me a little uneasy.

i'm not actually familiar with this dish: either we know it by different names, or it isn't bengali or i'm not bengali enough (which my uncles will say is true--until they see me eating ilish/hilsa tails without a single problem). the one mashed potato dish that i've cherished since early childhood is alu-sheddho, which is a very simple preparation of mashed potatoes with a few drops of pure mustard oil, salt, minced onions and sometimes little flecks of green chillies as well. but i doubt that's what you're talking about. can you describe it a little? alu sheddho with steamed rice and a watery bengali style mushoor dal (with a squeeze of lime) is a meal fit for a king. if you want to get fancy maybe a light fish curry with magoor mach (a kind of catfish i think) as well. when i was growing up magoor and koi (2 classic bengali fishes) were available in abundance (prawns were very affordable then too). we ate those fish and my mother's heavenly prawn malai curry all the time. after my father got transferred away from south bengal magoor and koi became less easy to get, and now i think they are quite expensive in general. prawns, of course, are out of the average middle-class indian's reach now as an everyday food item--they're all being raised for export i guess. but i still remember my father buying live magoor (for some reason this fish is always bought live and killed right before cooking) and the fish swimming in our kitchen sink till the time came.

the major difference between the two preparations, i'm guessing, is that the bengali panch phoron seeds are used whole. also, there's less cumin, no fenugreek/methi and instead kalonji, and no red chilli powder at all. the overall flavor of the bengali dish is tanginess with the seeds that you get in each mouthful creating a slightly different flavor each time. this sounds good too--and why ever would i be offended? it is in the subtle variety of a cuisine that its soul lies.

arre suvir, i finished dinner not one hour ago and just the description of this is making my stomach growl again--i think i am going to make an all e-gullet feast this weekend: the bhindi raita, your kaddu dish and i was going to make a bengali "kosha mangsho" with my goat meat but i'm open to suggestions from the rest of you as well. thanks for the recipe!

so, is this a staple of punjabi home-cooking? or is this something relatively specific to delhi. i lived there for 5 years--ate at tons of punjabi friends' homes--never encountered it. i am writing a strongly worded letter of complaint to them all tonight.

suvir, i still remember the completely disoriented feeling i got when i walked into the udupi palace in artesia for the first time. it was almost as though i'd stepped into a wormhole and ended up in south india. every patron there was south indian (of course this isn't always true anymore) and the waiters looked like extras from central tam-brahm casting. and oh the vadas! i've always maintained that of the three greatest hits of stereotypical south indian food --idlis, vadas and dosas-- it is the vada that is the litmus test of a kitchen's effort and skill. and their mysore masala dosa sets the roof of your mouth aflame when you exhale. the thing about places like artesia is that since the clientele at restaurants there are so overwhelmingly indian (and sometimes regional) you don't encounter a watering down of flavors (though by the same token i suppose you don't encounter much fusion). the same is true of the korean restaurants in koreatown in los angeles and the amazing chinese restaurants in rosemead, alhambra, monterey park and other parts of the san gabriel valley. i've been to a couple of restaurants in new jersey as well that were similar--had a gongura mans at one of them last december (with a hyderabadi biryani, mirchi ka salan and chicken 65) that almost made me cry. i'll let you know how i feel about the aurora masala.

going back in time i see that this discussion about home and restaurant foods has occured before. though i'm not sure it has incorporated issues of class. i have to express vigorous disagreement, however, with this statement suvir has probably forgotten he made: this is certainly not true of bengali homes (unless you consider fish a vegetable--i used to say anything that doesn't make a sound when you kill it is a vegetable, but i digress). i doubt it is true of keralite or north-eastern or goan or hyderabadi homes either. i think there's a (sometimes unconscious) tendency to equate indian culture and cuisine with brahmanical culture. the lower castes, to take this even further, have always had a meat, even beef, culture--it didn't come with muslim invaders and traders. the difference between home food and restaurant food as i've experienced it in india, not in terms of quality but of kind, has more to do with labor intensity and equipment. while rich families perhaps have all the things in their kitchens that restaurant kitchens have, and also family cooks of lineage that can make those fancy dishes that restaurants make, the average indian family neither has these things and people, nor can they afford to cook things in butter or desi ghee or cream, or make meat dishes that don't stretch out for more than one meal--unlike some people on this board we never had a raan on the horizon of possibility in my parents' home, let alone the possibility of marinating it in single-malt scotch. as a result we ate/eat certain things at home (veg and non-veg) and when we had/have cravings for tandoori food or butter chicken or reshmi kababs we went/go out. nor are places like bukhara representative of the kind of restaurant that the average delhi-ite, let alone indian, goes to when they eat out--it is just too expensive. as such it is not a good example in this comparison; a better comparison in delhi would be between home food and the dhabas on pandara road (pindi and gulati's) etc. really i don't think it is a question of whether homes or restaurants cook better but of usually entirely different menus. to some extent i think the homes of the rich in delhi perhaps have more in common with restaurant kitchens than they do with the homes of the middle-class and below.

okay, so i went to masala a little ahead of schedule--for lunch today. here's my impressions/discoveries: 1. the place is TINY--it can seat maybe 20 people and that's if some sit double-decker 2. it is a branch of the presumably bigger one in aurora (will check that out soon too) 3. the kitchen presumably is to scale since things seemed to be getting cooked one by one--i got my food first and was told not to wait for my companion's meal since my dosa would get cold. now for the food itself: i went for one of the thalis--the madras thali, i think, since it had a dosa, idli and vada on it i figured i'd be able to sample all the greatest hits and get a good feel for the place. i didn't have a whole lot of trepidation because the place smells good! anyway, the long and short of it is as follows: idli: pretty good; i'd give it a b+; a little more sourish than i like but a nice texture vada: quite good; crisp, not soggy at all in the center, but a little too oily; i'd give it an a- dosa: mine was a mysore masala dosa; also pretty good, crispy without becoming a papad with a college education, nicely shaped and browned and a pretty good potato filling. my one crib: the masala paste on the inside of the dosa was not spicy at all. i'm used to mysore masala dosas being pretty spicy--but that may just be me. all in all, i'd give the dosa a b+ sambhar: unremarkable but good, which is saying a lot in the average indian restaurant; b- coconut chutney: bland, watery; c+ my overall grade for the food would be a b+; i don't really care about ambience and crap like that--if the food is good and doesn't kill me i'm happy. all in all, i'm pleased with the masala experience. this will not make me forget the udupi palace in artesia, but it is a lot better than the south indian restaurants in l.a proper. i look forward to trying their other dishes as well as the other dosas and vadas soon.

i've never had a bhindi/okra dish with yogurt--but this sounds good. i think i'll prepare the bhindi sitting in the fridge this way tonight. in the meantime, here's how i normally make bhindi--mostly my mother's recipe (don't know if it is classic bengali or whether it got hybridized as we moved all over india---airforce family). it is an easy, tasty dish (and completely non-slimy for those who have an unhappy relationship with the vegetable): 1 lb bhindi---wash them whole, dry them thoroughly and cut into extremely thin slices 2 medium onions--cut into thin cross-wize slices mustard oil--preferable for the flavor of the oil which should be apparent at the end, but any other oil will do 1 tspn haldi 1/2 tspn amchur powder 1/2 tspn black pepper pinch of sugar a fried masala mix my mother makes for garnish (ok, so you can substitute your own--i have some left over from her last trip this summer) heat the mustard oil to smoking point and drop in the bhindi--fry and fry, as my mother likes to say, till the oil starts to come out. add the sliced onion and keep stir-frying. when the onions begin to soften add all the spices and the sugar, stir and cook uncovered over medium heat till done. sprinkle the masala on top and serve with chapatis or rice.

i haven't perused all the threads here but it seems like a lot of readers and posters here are interested in (relatively) more complicated indian dishes, often in things that are cooked more in restaurants or the homes of the rich (where there is time, labor and means to cook these things). as someone who grew up decidedly middle-class, unable to afford to go to 5 star restaurants or to elite clubs (except as rare treats), indian food has largely been defined for me by home-cooking. which, as all indians know, is quite a different beast from what is found in restaurants. sometimes i think people who cook every day prefer dishes that are simply prepared, and those who cook as a hobby go for the more complicated recipes. unfortunately in cookbooks and restaurants and magazine/newspaper articles in the u.s indian food is being identified more with the complicated (and rich, in all senses of the term) than with the mainstays of the average indian kitchen. some of this has to do with narratives of exoticization (often internalized by indian writers themselves) and the place of india in the western imagination, but whatever the cause it paints a very narrow picture of the indian culinary scene. the basic potato recipe i posted earlier is an example of a simple but tasty bengali home-style dish. i'd love to read and try other such recipes from other people's and regions' repertoires.

i tend to agree with you skchai--when i talk about oil separation i'm not talking about reducing things to some sort of oily jam but as an indicator of when a sauce is cooked through. by the way, looking for oil separation, in the way i understand it and not the way episure describes it, is something that's been taught to me by other self-taught, non-academic (sometimes illiterate), non-pedantic cooks. i think we're talking about different degrees here.

okay, here's a classic bengali recipe for potatoes cooked to be eaten with lucchis (though if like me, and most normal people, you can't cook a lucchi to save your life they go well with chapatis and parathas too--not as well with rice): ingredients: panch phoron: 1 tspn (a bengali 5 seed mixture: fennel, cumin, mustard, kalonji and one more thing usually) 5 medium rose potatoes diced 1 small onion thinly sliced cross-wise 1/2 tspn haldi 1 medium tomato chopped salt 2-3 thin green and red chillies chopped dhania water heat some oil (medium-high heat) and drop in the panch phoron. as soon as the seeds stop making like shrapnel drop in the onions--saute till the onions begin to brown and drop in the diced potatoes. saute for some time and add the haldi and stir again for a while. add the tomatoes, chillies and salt and stir till the tomatoes break down and the legendary oil separation begins to happen. add water to cover the potatoes, cover the pot and simmer over medium-low heat till the potatoes are done. garnish with dhania and serve

my mother's recipes all say "fry until water dries up and oil starts coming out". this is a little more descriptive than "oil separation" but in any case i only figured it out while learning how to make good pasta sauce--for some tomato sauces it is crucial to stop cooking as soon as the oil separates. my mother's recipes are all wonderfully vague--it used to cause a great deal of consternation for me in my early days as a cook but now i find that my own recipes are equally vague. i tend to make up the proportions when i write them down for others (i never measure anything when i make curries--if i drop in too much of something by mistake i just adjust other things). and timing things is vastly over-rated too--the best guide is not a clock but your nose.