Jump to content

anil

participating member
  • Posts

    1,489
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by anil

  1. a review of a very nice Tamil-Malay restaurant here in Honolulu, called India Cafe It has on its menu dishes similar to the ones mentioned here - its nasi lemak with spicy eggplant poriyal is a great eating experience.

    It is indeed a very strange restaurant . But in other ways not : :smile: In a moment of weakness, we misjudged the geographic mishmash that the restaurant presented to be a fad. It turned out to be surprisingly decent meal.

  2. Okay, so I realize there must be some cultural or religious significance to this, but I don't understand why a lot of Indian food is heavily pigmented or colored. For example, the bright red Tandoori chicken in Indian buffets that we all know and love -- and carrot puddings with that nuclear waste orange color that only comes from heavy food coloring. What gives? Any other examples?

    Much of what is cooked in various homes across diverse regions and ethnicities do not use colour. Many of the colors you see in restaurants in the US is unfortunate force-of-habit cooking by many non-traditional cooks :sad:

    An Upscale Indian restaurant in India serving a buffet will not attempt to put colour if the clientele is predominantly locals. BTW that's "mutton Saag, Chatpate Aloo, Bhindi Achari and Chicken do-pyaja" which is Mutton with mustard greens,sour&spicy potatos, Okra cooked in indian pickles and chicken cookid in two onions.

    Much of the colour one would find in dishes cooked in dhabas and fairly decent restaurants are by products of chilis,mustard oil,turmeric, and/or other natural spices.

  3. Rajma and Chawal are the 'soul-food' of the punjs. Among other things, you eat mukke-piaz (raw onion smashed with the fiist) with rajma - While some families put chunks of ginger in the rajma, many have forgotten the importance of ginger in rajma for reasons unknown.

  4. In Mumbai, the folks at Gajali,Trishna,Mahesh Lunch Home have brought a live crab and then asked how one wanted it cooked - Ofcourse my favourite is malvani. Another is just cooked , rather steamed and the sauteed with garlic and black pepper. On the other hand, I have tasted soft-shell crabs fast fried as bhajjia (but that's not something I've had in recent years)

    Now, those King Crab legs in Seattle -- YummYumm !!!! :smile:

  5. It's funny that I never thought about this until I had to eat at a distant relative's place recently. ...... The cook in question must really hate cooking to murder food like that.

    Are you sure ? :blink: maybe they cooked to make you squirm ? It happens, when people are mean.

  6. I gather the quality of local wines will improve as the awareness towards wine increases (courtsey BPO,Call-center expendable moolas) - Still long way to go before it competes with beer and rum as favorite libations.

    On a slightly serious note, much of ancient reference to 'soma' would probably also include blanco colored toddy,arrack,tharra and other non-grape libations which have a ancient history too.

    The notion of red wine and related imagery has been imported with the mughals. It is quite surpising that none of Megisthese folks use it when they settled in the Indus Valley, after Alexander departed.... hmmm

    Vikram: Your cell-phone was turned ff when I was in BOM :(

  7. Water chestnut flour may not be in common use in India but it is in common use in Chinese cuisine (or perhaps I should write "some Chinese cuisines" :biggrin::laugh: ).

    It is also common in some regions of india, where water chestnut is readily available :biggrin:

  8. In all fairness, much of the effort of new restaurants (non-5star) is focussed outside of New Delhi - It's in Gurgaon - the home of many outsourcing outfits. The master plan calls for opening of many SuperMall+Office Complexes in the coming years. The discreationary and disposable income of the folks who work in many of the multinational s is geared towards spending. The GEs,AMexs etc. are all there. Ericsson has a space age building in the middle of nowhere DLF - Within five minutes of the Airport and so is Raddison :smile:

  9. Apart from what mongo listed try "chore Bazare", for south indian fare try Woodlands., Go to Sunder Nagar's Sweets Corner for sweets or maybe order Chole Bhature.

    Go to South Extension or Kailash Colong for "chaat" [tasty evening appetisers, that one normally used to eat standing on the sidewalk outside the shop...]

  10. After reading from Anil, my family seems to have not had very good records at all.

    But that is not what matters... Anil has so much passion, that in his own life, it seems he has filled others with great riches that come from his lineage and his own curiosity.

    No, You attribute too much to my curosity. It's just miles and FF. 11 generations is < 15th century.

  11. Suvir will clarify this if he ever gets round to checking this forum again :sad: , but I'm guessing its the Hardwar/Benaras pandit tradition. Many north Indian families followed, and still do, the tradition of having a pandit in Hardwar or Benaras who kept the records of births and deaths in their family literally stretching back for centuries. Everytime someone in the family was born or died you had to travel there for religious rituals, or at least send money for the pandit to do them, and in doing so the records were updated. I forget if the archives were actually written or were entirely memorised - certainly large chunks were memorised. So its quite likely that Suvir's family can trace its roots back to the 15th century through this connection,

    Vikram

    We go 11 generations in Haridwar - (add two generations more as my nephew recently became a father :cool: )

  12. a decent enough article but a few quibbles:

    ...........

    3. when do the indians in new york get to also become new yorkers?

    on the whole though the article makes me jealous of the range of indian food available in new york--though new jersey is no slouch either.

    When those indians start picking up bagel with cream cheese and coffee to go, every day during the work week from the carts outside their offices bldg. or the corner - Or is it doughnut :smile:

    Move to New York mongo :cool:

  13. Can somebody describe the dhuan method?

    I must admit that in all my extensive travels over the decades, I have not seen dhuan method as described in action. Either this technique died around the time Pinky came to UK as a new bride; or I wasn't travelling extensively for years on end :smile:

    Simply put is it not similar to the smokers one sees at bbqs ?

×
×
  • Create New...