sizzleteeth

Hello Nakji - definitely take those pictures and come back and share them, You've been to some places I didn't make it to - a friend of mine's home town is Jodhpur so I wonder what it's like there. Glad to see you have a good driver - safe journey for the rest of your time.

No disrespect taken. Wouldn't have dreamt that it was that simple (just in case you think I was serious about creating such a thing, or replacing humans with robots to season food, or replacing human expression with mathematical probability... because... I wasn't.) Wish you the best of luck though. Not only do I not know something they don't or any subject in it's entirety... I'm not doing anything really in exclusion of all others - as far as I know anyway. It's that knowing part that always gets me.

Here you go - a scan of the Knife Maker Business Card - that should eliminate any bad spelling on my part and make up for my ignorance of how Indian addresses and phone numbers are formatted.

Nah... who needs to season food with something like "taste" when you could simply make a dish and then scan it's makeup at the molecular level and then reproduce it exactly from a store of "blank matter" (sorta like culinary stem cells) - that way there is only 1 person involved in the process. You could hire Google to write an algorithm to calculate the statistical probability of whether an idea will suck or not based on access to the genomes of all known edible substances, every food review ever written and all the written philosophies on human nature. You just enter in the combination of ingredients in the box and click submit and get back a big SUCK or DOESN'T SUCK and an explaination why. Hmm... on second thought - maybe that is taking things too far?

I think you should take it a step further. Eliminate human employees all-together and replace them with robots. Have the robots sign non-disclosure agreements. Lock the doors, install retina scanners and have everything come out a little square hole in the wall on a conveyor belt.

Fantastic Doc, nice food shots - that snapper is calling me.

Actually, gentlemen - if you'll go back and read my comments in the first excerpt - I agree with both of you, nor do I not appreciate the processes - in fact quite the opposite - though I would say "Dippin' Dots", "Orbitz Soda", and the like don't fall far from the tree and some chefs have even referenced things like this in discussions of their work. The discussion was about attitudes, credit where credit is due and attempts to take individual credit for things in which credit belongs to many. The work, admiration for the work, interest in the product of the work and the processes which made the work possible were never an issue. To make use of an old cliche for a new purpose - I merely "pointed out the elephant in the room" - I didn't put it there, nor was I the first person to point at it.

I'm sorry to hear that - because that's how I intended to contact him, but I can't say I'm surprised - he didn't look like he did much surfing the internet. Still - it could be my spelling - I'll doublecheck. Actually I may just scan and post the card - because there are other phone numbers with notations I don't understand - I just posted what seemed to be the main - perhaps people here can help sort it out. Organic restaurant info forthcoming - I haven't located it as of yet (or unpacked really).

Corinna or anyone else, can you explain this system a little more, please? ← I can a bit - perhaps Corinna can elaborate. It seemed when in India, especially buying something - you were never dealing with just one person - if someone directed you somewhere it was because they get a comission for sending people to that place - every place has numerous people "helping" you - but in Crawford Market this seemed to be replaced by the system mentioned by Corinna. You walk in and are greeted by a badged "porter" who promptly points you to the rules of the market and then takes you around to make sure you see everything you want (and everything you might not know you want to see). Crawford market is massive and the food part is just one section and within that there are vegetable, fruit, spice, meat and live animal sections as well as a large wholesale section. I only had a couple of hours when I went there and had it not been for the porter - I would not have seen half the market - at first they seem pushy but in the end you are very glad for their help (and happy to hand over a few rupies). BTW: Thanks Corinna! edit: Actually Corinna - speaking of strange - the only thing that kept me from shrugging my "porter" off as someone running a scam is, in the same sentence, he said the words "Chicago" and "Kentucky" to me without me saying a word to him about me. So I stopped and thought for a second and assumed it must be that I was supposed to let this person help me - and I'm glad I did. another edit: spelling and clarification

Knifemaker info: Jagdish Sikligar Rare Arts Ph:091-0294-2432691 jagdishsikligar@yahoo.co.in O/S Chandpole, Jethlyon Ka Akhada Udaipur 313 001 Says on his card he is a specialist in Arms, Armor, Old and New Damascus Steel and Gold and Silver Wiring Work - if you happen to need any gold or silver wiring work done.

Be happy to - I don't have the info handy with me at the moment but I know I have the cards - so look for a post later tonight or tomorrow. The knife maker was in Udaipur actually and that damascus blank I'm holding was - ready for this - 300 rupies (about $6) - but they were all high carbon content that was only tempered to Rockwell 45 - which is pretty soft - but so beautiful. I had 3 flights back so I didn't buy then but I made sure to get the guy's card so I could order - he ships internationally via EMS. The organic restaurant was literally in the middle of nowhere on the road between Jaipur and Bijaipur - it was vegetarian and they grew all their own food (except for the endless packaged ice cream choices and the Kingfisher bottled water). It was full of Indian families and even had a Chinese twist to the menu. I had a dish called "Chinese Manchurian" which was like a vegetarian version of General Tsao's chicken and some great Chinese fried rice and an Indian curry who's name escapes me at the moment. I'll post names and addresses as soon as I have access.

Hehe - speak for yourself brother. (lips smacking) Iconoclasm begets iconoclasm. and btw, thanks.

Joesan we can completely agree on the above if nothing else. If more emphasis was put on "look at the sculpture I have created, is it not beautiful" - rather than "I am to be credited in history as the inventor of sculpting" - then a great deal of these arguments would disappear. One can attempt to dupe history all one wishes by organizing information in a dated and cataloged format and publishing it in a book or manifesto and in some cases history will be duped - simply because others whom have done the same things have not documented them in such a format and made them available to the public. The undocumented occurrences with time will fall out of memory and people will point to the documented occurrence and say "this is the first documented evidence we have of such and such occurring" - though that does not mean by any stretch that it is the first time it has happened. The context is largely to blame, Adria may have well been the first "chef" (in the haute cuisine, restaurant sense of the word) to gel a puree with calcium chloride/sodium alginate - but by no means was he the first person to gel a puree with calcium chloride/sodium alginate - nor did he invent that technique or discover that those things do what they do. That technique may be revolutionary in the context of gastronomy, which has largely been relegated to the influence of French Haute Cuisine and its "rules"... in which no such thing exists - just as the first sushi chef to put sauce on a piece of sushi was revolutionary in the context of sushi, which has so many traditional boundaries attached to it that that person must have looked like they created the Piss Christ. The same could be said of many things. An example being Adria's Texturas, which in large part is just the same stuff you can get from TIC Gums, in a prettier package with Adria's name on it - and half that stuff shows up in the average McDonalds ingredients list - which puts chefs closer and closer to creating Big Macs which is an example of product who's every aspect has been designed to a "T" from color to texture to flavor of all the individual components as well as their collective interaction so that Big Macs taste the same no matter where you get one. And is a Big Mac not delicious? Hell, deconstruct one and plate it "a-symmetrically" for me and I might even pay double. The point is that we agree that the work that has been done is worthy of credit and praise. I personally would pay even more respect to such things - if the other less desirable elements would turn into vapor. edit:spelling

Phil, Anil, Doc , Betty thank you all. Anil good to see you back safe and Doc, good luck on your trip - I know you'll be inspired and and humbled by the things you will encounter. Betty street food was what I was looking forward to most and yes I ate it everywhere, I really had expected to eat vegetarian on this trip and the unexpected availability of meat without seeking it was a bit of a surprise - I avoided meat on the street but everything else was pretty much deep fried - and nothing lives in 400 degree oil or in the center of glowing red ambers of cow dung. I brought my pepto and immodium and a precaution prescription of antibiotic but am happy to report I made it without getting sick - in large part because I was careful what I ate - but it's not so unsafe as you might be led to believe - though your body might have a difficult time adjusting to the local "flora" - I drank Kefir for about 2 months before I went to get my pipes in order. Though that does bring about a story: My friend ended up getting an eye infection in Jaipur and we had to go to a doctor - which was a short rickshaw ride from the hotel in the middle of Jaipur. We got there and these two thug looking guys called the doctor down who was a clean-cut older guy and had a very stoic manner. He checked out my friend's eye with a flashlight and promptly diagnosed him with "eye flu" - which kind of freaked my friend out until he was told an ointment and some drops would clear it up in a few days. So the doc got the ointment (which turned out to be a type of Neosporin) and gave us a prescription for the drops and pointed us to a chemist down the road. The entire visit, ointment and filled prescription cost 600 rupies (about U.S. $12) and the prescription itself was only 80 rupies (less than $2.00). It was great because I kept telling him to let me know if things started going dark, and kept saying things like "if he breaks out the needles - we're out of here". Anyway - he was allright - but the funniest part was we got the paper the next morning at breakfast and it was talking about outbreaks of bird flu and listed the symptoms - third on the list was "sudden eye infections". Which led to a whole day of fun. edit:spelling

I agree Joesan that all should be able to post as they please in whatever tone, and friendly debate is all I'm interested in. Though I am not simply saying "some of these things have been used before" - I am saying the entire construct of "examining the properties of the products and trying to figure out what can be done with them outside of their traditional uses", "deliberately changing and designing the physical aesthetic and textural characteristics of a product", "researching the effect of different applications of unconventional 'cooking' methods" and "looking for new flavor combinations" both predate Ferran Adria's work in this area and existed long ago far outside of Spain - and yes, the commercial food industry was in large part the initiator of these things. Such questions, reflections and discussions can be found here for instance: http://www.foodproductdesign.com/ Enter the word of your choice, gellan, carageenan, sous vide - whatever and read endless articles on the applications of these things and note some of the dates on the articles, '93, '96 - one thing you won't get any results for is "Adria". I agree that Adria's application of tools and techniques is admirable, but the man whom chips away at the block of stone owes his sculpture to the man who invented the hammer and chisle , and in using those tools - is using them to do exactly what they were designed to do. Paco Jets were designed to make finely textured sorbets, Vita-Prep blenders were created to make intense blends and emulsions, food dehydrators were designed to dehydrate food and all of the mention additives were isolated and created to do exactly what they are being used to do. So in that respect - using a tool to do what it was made to do - is not so amazing. As you elude to - it is the product of your work that is the key. But even to that point, picture a vast parking lot full of blue cars - and then a single red car. To someone whom all their life has been saturated by the sight of a blue cars, all that ever existed was blue cars - a red car blows their mind. Then everyone starts buying red cars and red cars are everywhere - all of a sudden the blue cars become the obscure and are one again revered. Molecular gastronomy comes at a time when people are tired of looking at what they've been looking at and is something they are not concious of having seen - whether they have or not in whatever form. Being from the country, when I first moved to Chicago the skyline filled me full of inspiration - now having lived here for so many years - a field of green grass does the same. If you are not concious of it you can become a slave to "getting excited by the new thing and leaving the old thing behind". That is where cliches like "the grass is always greener" come from, but that seems technically incorrect - because really the grass is only greener after you get tired of looking at the grass you're standing on. As for the ego, if Mr.Adria truly believes that his philosophy is the way and should be followed and that anyone doing this type of thing is following in his footsteps solely - with no credit to those who created the tools, isolated the chemicals or helped out along the way with work, ideas and research then he has become a shining example of the system he set out to defy and is no better than the iron fisted French chefs who insist that "this is how things are done, this is the way". I wonder if he truly believes what he is quoted as saying.

I can see both sides of the argument - though I don't think either side applies as a blanket policy to all those involved. When someone reveres something they tend to gush about it, I would imagine that applies to Cathar as much as it does to me or anyone else - we all simply have different things to gush about, all place importance on different aspects, even within the same subject and cooking is a big subject with many facets to gush about - from the newest experimentations of molecular gastronomy to the oldest iron pot hanging over a fire in Mongolia. It's important to remember that it's all just opinions of individuals and on this site those individuals can become collections of individuals and it sometimes doesn't really reflect reality. Most people still don't know who Ferran Adria is and most people have even less of an idea what molecular gastronomy is or any of the details of it's components, this isolated world of gastronomy of ours and this isolated segment of that world called Egullet is only representative of a very minute segment of the overall world of food and and even more minute segment of the overall world. Things in this world are often put on a pedestal, people, ingredients, techniques, we're all guilty of one or all of these things even if we haven't posted about it and sometimes it warps the sense of reality. In reality, the newest ingredients, methods and techniques of molecular gastronomy are not really new at all and the credit does not belong to Ferran Adria, me, you or anyone else on this site. Most of them are taken out of the context of industrial food processing or from obscure hundreds of years old techniques and have existed long before El Bulli or any place like it. Gellan made Orbitz soft drink, carageenan stabilized your canned whipped cream, calcium chloride/sodium alginate put the pimentos in your pickled pimento loaf and cocktail olives, liquid nitrogen has made Dippin' Dots since before '85, foam has been purposely put on top of cappucino, konnyaku has been a heatable gel made of yam flour and calcium carbonate in Japan for decades if not over a hundred years. You could get your photo printed on a birthday cake in edible ink at your local baker 5 years ago. Giant food additive companies make massive amounts of these things, texture manipulation products, flavor enhancer and property isolation chemicals and sell them to the commercial food processing industry who has decades old labs established doing research on the food products themselves, focus group testing for target marketing for highly designed aesthetic, textural and flavor qualities of products that contain trademarked and trade secret ingredients and techniques to place endless amounts of new forms and flavors on your grocery store shelf. These things have simply been moved from column A (commercial food) to column B (gastronomy) and layer of beauty applied over them so they are no longer so technical and the product of their use is accessible to regular people. Like Apple putting a pretty GUI on Unix. These people certainly deserve credit for doing such a thing and as we have all seen it can produce fantastic results in and out of the world of chefs and the few who exalt themselves are not representative of the collective whole. Though I recently read an article that quoted Adria as saying he thinks of himself as "an architect of cuisine, like Frank Gehry." and further quotes him as saying: "Everybody wants to follow him (Frank Gehry)," he said. "It's normal, and that happens. There are a lot of people who follow the influences of a few, like me. I'm very happy to see young people follow my ideas. The important thing is to understand my philosophy." That is the kind of thing that Cathar speaks of and that even I find whacked - because in my book - it's fine for others to say things like that about you - but when you start looking at yourself this way... It's all just cooking and there is art and beauty in it all - old a new - and the credit belongs to many and not few. Don't let the attitude of the few who drag down the collective ruin your opinion of the collective - because the collective is for the most part - good. edit: spelling

I keep remembering little tidbits of stuff here and there that I thought were odd and here's one... Udaipur is the city where they filmed the James Bond movie Octopussy, they were showing it everywhere - it was painted permanently on brick walls all over the city. I vaguely remember that movie and haven't seen it for years but the one thing that stuck with me was the rickshaw chase - I remember thinking it was crazy then - but that's what it's really like to ride a rickshaw in Udaipur. There are tons of hills like San Francisco and one of my drivers kept turning his engine off to go down hill and then restarting at the bottom - the whole time dodging all kinds of obstacles. Those guys know how to drive.

Wrap chunks of banana in canned biscuits and roll into balls, deep fry into beautiful golden brown spheres filled with warm gooey banana - drizzle with a simple syrup mixed with some fruit preserves. (nevermind I just paid attention to the word ultimate and not the word wierd - but they are damn good.)

Hiroyuki you are many wonderful things... boring is never one of them. I'll answer any question you can come up with. 1. India was next on my list of places to visit to learn about the food after Japan - along with trial and error and self study - this is my culinary school. I checked out many traditional culinary schools long ago and even took some classes but they were not for me, a very heavy bias towards French technique with a little of this and a little of that thrown in (walk into a knife class at a Western culinary school and start cutting up a chicken Chinese style - I dare you). I also did a couple of professional kitchens for a day or two and have no desire to be a cog in the wheel of a machine or spend 14 hours a day in the same place churning out the same dishes for every person that walks in the door. Nothing wrong with that and as much as I love to eat out I am immensley grateful there are those who choose this path else that would not be possible - it's just not for me. My current chosen and preferred methods of operation more or less exclude the likelihood of having any type of traditional dining establishment (though I can never completely rule out anything). So at the moment I am traveling to learn about the cuisines of the world in their natural environments from the people that cook them everyday and will use this information and these experiences ultimately to do something more organized then I am doing now - something that requires no names on my resume. India was now - something else is next, "if the creek don't rise", as they say in KY. 2. Due to restrictions on import I was only able to bring back some high quality Assam and Nilgiri tea - but got lot's of contacts for ordering things for shipment. 3. Secret? That was funny Hiroyuki. Secrets are for people with something to hide. Many places on my list but if possible very soon Italy and then a Thailand, Vietnam, Laos trip, but we'll see. Don't want to get too far ahead of myself. 4. Just like Japan there is Old India and there is New India though more than any place I have ever seen, Old India coexists in the same space as new India side by side - this is visible almost everywhere - but places like Mumbai, Panjim and Udaipur almost don't fit into the scheme - until you get out into the outskirts - this is especially visible in Mumbai. For me, Madhogarh is the place I would go back to first probably followed by Udaipur to represent a larger place. As with anywhere - the bigger cities are warped representations of the country - somebody told me 70% of India's billion population still live in rural villages. So to me, that is India.

Yes, exactly like a troll doll - managability and all. The khichdi was great and was totally different from just about anything else I had, I'll definitely make it at home - it was really simple - but very flavorful and light. Reminded me of a Persian dish I had once called Chicken Tacheen, without the chicken of course. I can tell you with certainty that the things I did and saw would not have come to pass with a guide book and plane ticket - I wouldn't have even known these things exist to look for them and even if I did - getting there would have been next to impossible. If you ever get driven in India make sure you have a really good driver who really knows where he's going and how to navigate the insane traffic coming on the wrong side of the road in between people and cows and herds of goats - or you won't be getting anywhere. There are some places in the world where a guidebook will serve you well, and it will in India as well to a certain degree... but then - that's where everybody else is going. May I quote you on that? My son1's family nickname is The Electric Head, but I like your description better! I was interested to hear that you really liked khichdi - my family enjoy it to as a variation on rice, but I've always wondered what it might be like eaten in India! Taking cooking classes sounds like a great idea! As an ex-travel coordinator, I think you made good use of your travel agent. I used to dislike putting together the kind of arrangements anybody could make for themselves with less hassle than going through an agent, but it sounds as if you got something more than you could have had by hopping on the plane with a guide-book. ←

Sure... That was in Delhi just at about 7 in the morning near Karol Bagh, which is a big bustling market of all kinds of things including western brand stores. My hotel in Delhi was the Bajaj homestay and this picture was taken about 2 blocks away. Bajaj Indian Home Stay 8A/34 W.E.A, Karol Bagh, New Delhi - 110 005. India. http://www.bajajindianhomestay.com/eng/location.html Cooking fuel (tanks of gas) in India are pretty expensive for the average person, so lots of the street vendors cooked their food with charcoal fires. As I was walking the streets in the early morning many of the vendors were setting up their carts - it looked to me as though this kid had a bag of charcoal and for whatever reason he had dumped part of it on the ground and seemed to be sorting it - why I couldn't tell you - but he was off in a side alley with the man in the background setting up the cart you see in the pic.

I just noticed there is a thread in this forum on Sushi in India and several places are mentioned including the Morimoto restaurant at the Taj Palace in Mumbai. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=82172 I didn't stay at the Taj but went there for a drink on the way back from Elephante Island (the boats left from the Gateway of India, which is right in front of the Taj.) The hotel is like a spaceship in which you enter and are no longer in Mumbai or in India at all, almost reminded me of Miami. Morimoto is through another bar in the hotel, up a small metal spiral staircase in the corner and the decor is super modern - there was a little room off to the side with a table that looked like it had blue neon around the edge. Some of the pieces of nigiri were 450 rupees (about US $9). I was told while in Mumbai that the Japanese do alot of business in Mumbai on the golf courses and have most of them booked for years in advance.

Don't worry Genny - I'm African, Native American, Irish and English - I have hair like a troll doll so I've shaved it since I was about 16 except for a brief stint of dreadlocks - I was simply making a comparison contrast between my shiny dome and Bourdain's just-out-of-the-salon look for comic value. I actually enjoy my appearance and the various reactions it envokes in different places under different circumstances - though I didn't seem to scare the children in India too much... No need for PM - I hope any and all of you go on as many trips as you can: http://www.intrepidtravel.com/ Also my Japan pics are here: http://ngray.minusseven.com/japan/index.htm And anything past or future can be found simply at the top level: http://ngray.minusseven.com/

Hehe - you've had a year Pan - but they're still there as you can see - so no rush. I am of the sort that believes in connections between all occurrences in some sort of greater overall framework - I couldn't tell you the number of things that seem to have fallen directly in my path just at the right time - if anything I'm simply lucky that I have learned in my short time to pay attention to details... it is those details that end up leading me in directions I otherwise would never have chosen. In that respect accidents are few and far between, I am responsible for everything that happens to me, good or bad, in some way - even if I don't realize it at the time. Nothing that happens ever affects the future, it only affects the path - the path can always be changed... therefore the future is never certain.

Thanks Ronnie, much appreciated from Chicago.