indiagirl

that's a good question. i usually cook based on what's in the fridge. i host one big indian dinner every year (about 30 people) and that is when i do my most "conscious" menu planning. here (i think) are my criterion: what's in season: who is the audience (how accustomed they are to indian food) is there sufficient contrast in texture is there sufficient contrast in flavor is there sufficient contrast in richness is there sufficient contrast in taste my basic dinner contents almost always include: a dry vegetable a gravy of some kind - vegetarian or not (more often vegetarian since i'm only a fledgling non-vegetarian but i've got a list a mile long that i want to try) a dhal type dish rice naan raita dessert so, to illustrate, if i decide to make a cream based dish with paneer in it, like a makhni style paneer, then i pick a dry, light, crunchy vegetable to go with it - like green beans tossed in ajwain, cumin and garlic with coconut. or a light, dry pepper dish with besan in it. i'll make a non-dairy raita without yoghurt (a misnomer, i know) but with a lentil based tarka to give it crunch and a squeeze of lemon juice. or if decide to make a pilaf with vegetables and nuts, i keep the dal simple, or even substitute it with a tomato coconut shorba / rasam / mirchi ka salan (which i think rocks) - especially if i'm making faux-biryani style rice or if i make an apricot based khubani murgh which is sweeter, i'll make a dry, spicy, sour potato fry to go with it. and a raita with tomatoes and onions and green chillies. i find bengali recipes for vegetables make good counterpoints to rich mughlai center piece dishes. i like to keep desserts light and refreshing (and i think this is what a lot of italians do to, notwithstanding some of the heavier desserts that are so popular) - like a fruit icecream or shrikhand or sorbet. am i rambling? or is this what you were looking for, monica? scottishchef? are you looking for actual menu suggestions? or just ramblings like mine? planning your menu for the summer. how exciting. i'm envious. are you looking for a prep cook? if you are looking for actual menu suggestions perhaps you could outline some criteria for us (in terms of restaurant scale production feasibility or specific ingredients) and we could make suggestions.

wow - i just noticed the sooji in p2's recipe. sooji. wow. learn something new everyday. maharashtrians, of course, have the sans-sooji version.

suvir, apologies, just got on for the first time today. here's a recipe, unsuprisingly pretty similar to p2's 4 katoris besan, slightly coarsely ground if possible 3 katoris confectioners sugar 1/4 katori milk 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 katoris ghee ( i think your amber ghee would be wonderful for this!) cardamom, almonds etc fry the besan in the ghee until golden brown take of the heat, sprinkle the milk over the flour and stir well when it is luke warm, add the sugar and mix well when completely cold, knead well for 5-6 minutes on a clean plate. add the cardamom powder and chopped almonds (i prefer them without almonds) and make laddus the kneading, btw, keeps the laddus soft even after they are formed. enjoy!

Same thing here, jackal10. And the NYT WD50 review did make me want to go there and eat out of sheer curiosity. When one of you NY eGulleteers does, I would like very much to read an eGullet review on it and then perhaps we could compare and contrast with a NYT review. "By now, each member of the team knows the others' skills, palates and preferences as well as his own. As befits a renegade pastry chef, Mr. Mason dislikes food that tastes noticeably sweet, unless it's balanced with some chili heat. But Mr. Goodwin balks at blatant spiciness and big, aggressive flavors. Mr. Rosell has never acquired a taste for the bitterness of daikon radish and broccoli rabe. "When we all like something, that's when we know it's good," he said." This paragraph in the review caught my eye - Do you agree with Mr. Rosell's conclusion? To put is simplistically - when a dish is designed to satisfy several people with very particular tastes (read: picky?) is it more or less likely to be either good or popular? Hope this is not too off topic - I think the answer will be somewhat relevant to whether the restaurant will succeed.

What I love about the frankies? The potato mixture inside was divine and I loved the combination of chaat potatoes and cilantro and cheese. And ofcourse the quick re-heat in butter on a tawa when youplaced your order. The parathas they were wrapped in, besides having copious amounts of fat, were then dipped in an egg batter and fried, how could something that bad for you not be immensely goood? And top that all off with a healthy helping of nostalgia ...... When my husbadn and I first wen to Bombay together I took him straight to Juhu for a frankie. He loved it. He had no idea how big of a test he passed. I'll have to confirm, Suvir, whether this place was in the level below Sahakari Bhandar. My memory is a little blurry. But that's the place to go to. The place under the shopping mall called maybe Sahakari Bhandar! Is there (was) a Woodlands a little further down the road? Apologies for the OT

no tv so no cricket. but when i was home when it was a big family event - bhajia and cilantro and tamarind chutney and coffee.

For the longest time, I fought a terrible battle against wanting to garnish everything I cooked with fresh cilantro. With the exception of some Italian pasta sauces (very few) and dessert, I could not think of anything that would not be improved by the addition of cilantro. Now, I have grown and matured, and developed some restraint! :) I use it now in typical Indian ways, in tarkas, chutneys and as a garnish. On Thai food, on cheese and crackers with a wee bit of tamarind sauce, on mexican food, in empanadas. I sometimes sprinkle it on my potato chips which I use in lieu of papads, especially with bisi beli bhaath. :) The seeds I used to flavor rasams and dals, sometimes pilafs. I wash the stems when I buy the bunch and then I leave the roots on and put the whole bunch in a big coffee mug filled with water. Mostly, I just toss it in the chiller drawer because I go through it faster than it perishes. I use the stems and leaves, like p2

p2, idli is an excellent idea. you're making my mouth water. i was thinking along the same lines: plain rice, basic toor dal with jeera tarka, slather it on a freshly made chapati, put some brown sugar and make it into a roll. delicious. besan ka laddu. but, most importantly suvir, <b> i don't think your ghee is burnt!</b> my family always made the ghee so that it turned out amber coloured. my konkanastha neighbors always teased my mother that she constantly burned the ghee and we all would just smile tolerantly ..... IMHO, that caramelized milk solid flavor is the best.

For the curious, What poha looks like I use the thick poha to make poha, the Maharashtrian breakfast food. And I make that the typical way. Drench the poha in water, squeeze in a lime, add salt, cilantro, cumin and coriander powder. Doing this before the tadka is a trick I learned from my mother. Make the tadka (oil, mustard seeds, fresh green chillies, cilantro, turmeric, asafoetida), gently fry onions and potatoes (thinky sliced, raw) until potatoes are cooked. Do not let the onions brown too much. Add the poha. Mix well. Add a bit of water and cover with a lid. Allow to steam for a few minutes before serving garnished with cilantro and cocnonut. I use either kind of poha to sometime make a raita. Drench poha in water. Add finely chopped cucumber, salt, cumin powder, black pepper and lime juice. Add a standard issue mustard tarka on top. Stir. Serve cold. If I feel like it, I skip the lime juice and add yoghurt instead. Chivda is my all time favorite snack. My mother cooks it better than anyone on the planet. And this ain't the love talking. Really. I can remember countless times as a kid when I made myself a bowl of chivda, topped with finely chopped onions and cilantro and sometimes raw mango pickle for an extra zing. I've found in myself a strange reluctance to get her recipe and make this snack at home. I feel like it would signify the end of something I'm not ready to end ......

Why is this thread making me cry? This thread is making me cry. It's beautiful. Thank you for creating it, Ivan. Food culture. Family. Ideas, which on my worst days, are what I regret most about being an immigrant, leaving home, walking away unthinkingly from it all when I was 21, an adult by most measures, but certainly not self aware. Walking away without realizing that I was taking, on my narrow shoulders, the burdern and responsiblity of recreating it all, in this land so far away from home. Food was important in my family. But in an unspoken kind of way. It was just who we were. It was like loving your family. But of course. I realize, now, that this is rare, and I treasure it immensely. It occasionally results in outbreaks of emotion when I am home, that my parents don't understand and indulge me in my American-ness!! My mother was a housewife (I know, not a PC term) and my father a pilot. In a country the size of India, that meant he was home a lot. As a result, my parents had many "creative projects" when we were growing up - food was definitely a part of those creative projects. They baked bread at home (a rarity in India), improvised tandoors to make naans on, experimented with cakes, Burmese food ....... We also were able to partake in the most wonderous of ingredients from all over the country which my father brought back from his flights. And cakes from the best hotels in the country because he almost never used his food allowance from overnight flights. We ate dinner together. Mostly my mother cooked. I started helping her as soon as I had basic coordination skills. We never had a cook, but the maid, who cleaned and washed, also functioned as a partial prep cook. My father contributed during the special food projects and cooked when my mom was ill or just having one of those days when she was sick of it all - rebelling, I think in retrospect, at the inevitability of producing food for teh family. Dinner was served at the dining table around 9pm with stainless steel plates and no napkins (not a good idea when you eat with your fingers!) As kids we had to pass the smell test (hands had to smell of soap) before we were allowed to sit at the table. There was always much conversation and argument on a wide variety of topics. No squabbling was allowed, no talking with food in your mouth, no slurpy sounds, no gross out topics. The only thing that resulted in physical punishment was squabbling, and there was a fair amount of that as we were growing up. Siblings, you know. Laying the table for dinner and cleaning up were shared, rotated tasks. Although my Dad and Mom were exempt, she always supervised and atleast one of us (three kids) complained and whined. Festivals were important. Besides the daily puja (prayer) in the house where food was offered to the goods after they were bathed and washed , festivals brought religion into our house. Food was how we paid homage to the Gods. My mother would cook days in advance and she would feed everyone that came to the house, hundreds of people over a period of days. When my 8 months pregnant sister got widowed at the age of 22, my parents lost faith for a while. And our capacity for joy was strained and stilted. That was the first time I had any inkling at all of how precious our life was. It was a sad house to live in for a while - I think the baby saved us. We kids are all atheists, my parents are slowly returning to the fold. I don't think my parents ever recovered their joie de vivre, my sister, amazingly, has. My father also got promoted into a 9-5 administrative job besides his flying at the time. My brother and I were growing up and inexorably drawing away from the hearth, wrapped up in the all consuming trivialities of our daily lives. I was in college, and stayed tehtered because the baby had to be raised (my sister, understandably, was preoccupied). My bother drifted. I think those things changed our lives forever. Fewer creative projects, less time, a quieter sadder enthusiasm for life. And it all showed in the food. We ate out more than the 3-4 times a year that we used to. To this day, my brother is less nostalgic and romantic about "home food". It amazes me. When I go home now, I see it coming back, slowly, and dearly miss being a part of it. My sister is now remarried and has a second child, my father retired. The old ways are coming back but slowed down by age and my mother's illness. The thread of food is inextricably woven into the fabric of the lives of Indian women. It is, for many who are constrained in unimaginable ways, a form of self expression, a means of expressing love, anger, sophistication, social status. For women who stay at home from choice or repression, it is inevitably a measure of self worth. And I think it all shows in the food.

suvir, don't do it. man, don't do it. some things are best forgotten as lost opportunities :)) anil, juhu beach. yes. and silver beach. do you remember the frankies at kwality? please tell me you do. in sahakari bhandar (?) across from jamnabai narsee school. suvir, the next time you are in india, that's what you have to try, frankies, really. impossible to recreate. i've tried a million times. and just the best best thing. i try them every time i go back and even though my palate has become more and more discerning, the frankies never diminish .....

Could be a not-enough-frying-oil problem? A good inch or so above the samosa?

at home a regular ceramic tallish 6" mug (comes in white or orange) which tapers towards the bottom at work, a double walled steel one with a plastic lid - standard issue mug style, perpendicular walls. i am not too fond of drinking out of a plastic lid but i need that because i walk around from place to place a lot and even when on level ground i find it impossible to walk with coffee without spillage must be all the coffee i drink

the crushed ice desserts with the syrups were the bane of my life growing up in bombay. they were called golas and sold by street vendors. the carts had a big wheel in the center driven by a handle which the vendor used to crush the ice. all around the edge of the cart were glasses chained to each other so that you would not slip away with one containing dubious looking "syrups". you paid half a buck, the vendor crushed the ice and used his bare hands to srunch it into a ball around a stick with origins almost as dubious as the syrup. you then selected a syrup, he dipped it in there and you had your gola. india, being the haven of water borne disease, the pattern went something like this - at any and all opportunities to be on the street unsupervised, we would run out and get golas and enjoy them immensely, especially in the sweltering humidity of bombay. come home, wash all the eticky stuff off your hands and face before anyone catches you and pretend like nothing happened and then wake up the next morning, immensely immensely sick. those were the days. that and sugarcane juice. and of course bhel puri and pani puri i think the book in discussion might be by Yamuna Devi (edited a typo)

oh dear!! my husband just told me that the ell sound in mulaha is different from the one in valapalam. the weird azhu substitution is only used for the latter it's complicated being married into a tamilian family, that's for sure. :P love gongura. when we moved to hyderabad, i learned how to eat hot food and boy am i addicted now! they have some truly awesome pickles, as suvir pointed out. anf they use garlic in them too which i suspect is a legacy of a south indian state with north indian nawabs as rulers? what do you think, prasad?

i cant abide by the rice cooker bottom crust waste although jinmyo's idea of using it as a crispy side is intriguing i use a black and decker rice steamer. perfect divine rice, every time. only down side is it takes 45 minutes. it's only the two of us so i average a cup or two at a a time which is all the black and decker can hold. works for me and it only cost 20 dollars or something Steamer on Amazon larger quantities, i do it the old fashioned way expect in a paella (or any wide flat bottomed) pan to prevent the bottom burn phenom in india almost everyone uses pressure cookers with little stackable inserts - one for lentils, one for rice. the rice is always a wee bit too squishy for me. like the steamed or old fashioned way better.

compare and contrast time, folks. my mom-in-laws tamilian recipe milagai podi (her spelling) 1 cup toor dal 1 cup chana dal 1 cup urad dal 1 spoon asafoetida 6 teaspoons sesame seeds 2 handfuls of red chillis - dried Roast everything without oil to a brown or deep red color. Add 5 teaspoons salt and grind to a rough powder voila! so quite different from prasad's recipe (welcome to the board, prasad) less spices more lentils no garlic i thought i remembered the garlic distinction but did not trust my memory anymore

emailed my ultimate authorities (mom and mom-in-law) with the questions. never heard of it myself. can't imagine cooking it. does any other cuisine have a dish where one of the ingredients is a wood of some kind? bamboo doesn't count! teak tartare pine au poivre served on a bed of walnut shavings balsa au jus served with little baby carrots ok. i'm sleep deprived. you must understand i'll let you know when i find out ....

prechopped?? jar??? ohmegod arrrrrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhh :) :) :) emoticons dont work! more seriously, i don't necessarily mind the smell of garlic but i prefer the cooked garlic smell from eating it with your fingers to the raw garlic smell that comes from cutting it never tried the steel thing. don't sound right.

ok, so gunpowder, i think every south indian cuisine has it's own. i've tasted the andhra kind and the tamilian kind and love both although they are different. I have not tasted the andhra one in a while but i just emailed a friend for a recipe so that we can compare. i have the tamilian kind at home - and the best kind at that. my mom-in-law makes droves it for me (in sesame oil) when she visits and then i freeze it and it lasts forever. i use it just as a chutney with sesame oil and sometimes i toss it in potato curry, mmmm. i've even used it in tofu marinades! i can post her recipe if you like the pronounciation - now that is one strange vowel and one of the ways i got accepted into my tamilian husband's family was trying very hard to pronounce it like a good tamilian - i must have succeded at least once!! i closest phoenetic spelling i think is mulaha but that certainly does not do it justice. say that, specificallyy the ell sound, with a bunch of marbles in your mouth maybe. some cookbooks spell it using some kind of "azhu" spelling which drives me batty. other tamilian words with that vowel that i love to just say because they make me laugh: uralakalanga (the second ell is the special one) - potato valapalam (both special ell's) - banana no wonder the brits translated mulaha-tanni (pepper water) into mulligatawny!

sobaddict Never heard of the dish you're describing but boy, it sure sounds like a lot of work. Here is a recipe for gajar (carrot) halwa from Joyce Westrip who rules: 1 lb carrots 4 1/2 cups milk 1/2 teaspoon cardamom powder 1/4 tsp saffron threads steeped for atleast 15 minutes in hot milk 4 tbsp ghee/unslated butter, softened 6 tbsp caster sugar 2 tbsp seeded raisins 4 drops rose essence (optional) 2 tbsp blanced and slivered almonds (I don't usually blanch them) Wash, peel and finely grate the carrot. Put the carrots,milk, cardamom and saffron in a wide, heavy bottomed saucepan. bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer and stir as often as you can until all the liquid is absorbed. This can take up to an hour. Being impatient by nature, I frequently turn the heat up on higher and stir more. :) Add the ghee/butter and keep stirring until the mixture stops looking milky and has a golden colour. This usually takes 7-10 minutes, I like to really caramelize the halva Add the sugar, raisins, rose essence and half the almonds. Keep stirring on a low heat until the mixture starts to thicken and pull away from the sides. (I usually skip the raisins, rose and almonds and only add sugar in this step. I have used brown sugar in the past and like the flavor. Just a personal taste thing, I guess. I only use almonds for garnish and I usually roast or fry them a little for that) Allow to cool before serving since the mixture will thicken as it cools. In response to the topic of your post - there are many other Indian desserts. The ones that seem to get the least exposure, I think, are the pastry type ones. One of my favorites used to be chiravate - loosely translated to 100 layers. You made a dough with ghee and white pastry flour and then started rolling it out with a pin, folding into quarters and re-rolling at least 25 times so you had hundred layers (the math is a little wonky on that because it's exponential actually). the you deep fried it in ghee and plunged it into a sugar syrup flavored with cardamom and saffron. Gorgeous, but I don't think I could stomach it anymore! And then there is shrikhand - for which I've posted a recipe on the yoghurt thread. And mishti dhoi, sweet yoghurt, also on the same thread. Possibly the healthiest of Indian deserts after mango. Which in my mind reigns supreme. There is kulfi and kheer, both milk based. And then there is all the rest, but I can't think of any!!! Perhaps cause it's past midnight and I have to wake up in five hours ... sigh. G'Night.

yup, regular dish soap and the nylon mesh spone thingy for regular stuff. steel wool and/or barkeepers friend for stubborn stuff. this will result in scratches but i actually like the scratchy look because eventually it becomes the burnished look and i like that a lot better than the mirrored surface look! drip dry, or dry with cloth if there is no space.

wine books count? that's another 10 for me. :)

me too. i either chop or crush it with a knife or use a spice grinder (coffee mill) for large quantities. mostly, i don't feel that pressed for time, i think. stealing five-ten minute increments from the sleep quota seems to just come easy! i used to have an oxo press and did not like it all - it must have been an older edition because it did not have an ingenious cleaning thingy (or i just missed it's existence but i don't think so) and so i ended up with too much waste, too much of a cleaning pain, not to mention that i had to stick my fingers in there to get all the garlic out and then they smelled like garlic for days. therein lies one difference between crushed and chopped - the former makes your fingers smell more. i frequently dry roast my garlic in the skin on a very slow fire for 15-20 minutes. love the flavor and the skins just come of on their own. i learned that in rick bayless' book.

i've had a 16 qt stockpot for a year plus now - it does not say chefmate anywhere on it but looks *exactly* like the posted photograph. i bought it at either linens and things or bed, bath and beyond (those stores meld into one in my mind). paid forty bucks for it and it came with two strainer inserts a shallow one and a deep one. it rocks. i mostly use it to make pasta and one time i had a huge tomato pickle fiasco in it and it had a layer of burnt crust in it that was inches high (ok, a slight exaggeration there) anyway, a little barmate thingy powder, steelwool and a lot of scrubbing and it was like new again. the only downside - storage and washing, the thing is so damn tall it fits in none of my shelves and it's hard to maneuver in my sink but i love it anyway and i'm going to target on the way home from work tommorow to buy the saucepan. thanks for the tip.