bhelpuri

Having said that, I'm fairly sure that I have eaten "raw" fish roe a couple of times in India, but it wasn't strictly raw. It was salted and preserved for a couple of days, and thus quite different from - say - the untouched fresh roe you get in some Japanese preparations. -- Also, I have made brilliant-tasting ceviche a couple of times in India, right on the beach with super-fresh fish straight from the seine nets. It can be done, but I have to also report that every desi I've offered it to couldn't stomach the idea.

It's possible, though unlikely, that there are (literally) primitive cultures in Africa (and India) which refrain from cooking meat and simply gnaw it from the bloodied bone. However, if there is such a culture in the tropics, it's also highly likely it refrains from being clothed and suffers from an extremely low life expectancy. And, naturally, it would be a bit much to refer to this basic food as "cuisine." It doesn't make sense to eat meat or fish raw in the tropics, much of what we know as the history of Indian food (specifically) is also the history of how to preserve food for the maximum time, and how to mask/augment the taste and smell of rapidly deteriorating produce.

I got those covered. What else?

Jal jeera was mentioned. This is one of the things I've never been able to make really well at home. Has anyone succeeded in doing so? Care to share your recipe/technique?

I looked at Merchant's little (first) cookbook, the time estimated for making 'Masala Bhindi' is 20 minutes. In general, everything in his cookbooks is timed at 10-20 minutes, tops, and the estimates are - if anything - generous. Anyway, Merchant is indeed famous for his cooking and for grand entertainment (both at home and at his and Ivory's estate upstate) and particularly for feeding the entire casts and crews of his movies. I happen to like his cookbooks very much, though I use them less nowadays. They're all about improvisation and short cuts. As I mentioned in another thread, the first Indian cookbook I kept on my shelves was the Sameen Rushdie volume. But I never cooked anything from it because it seemed intimidating, plus I was just learning my way around the kitchen in the first place, plus it is quite meticulous about ingredients and I didn't have access to many. So I just read the wonderful Rushdie book, and wept quietly for the unattainable ( by the way, I was living in France - the world's worst Indian-food country). Then, by fortuitous circumstance, I got my hands on Merchant's first little cookbook. It was shocking, everything seemed very easy and straightforward, and there was no fuss about ingredients other than the basic spices. Scarcely believing his ridiculously simple instructions, I set about cooking my way all the way through his book. And, wonders, everything came out just as blazing-fast as he estimated, and was a very serviceable approximation of really tasty home-cooked Indian food. So, for the first couple of years I cooked Indian food, I'd first read up on the item in Rushdie's book to get a sense of what the ideal painstakingly-crafted dish was meant to be. And then I'd set about Merchant's down-and-dirty, all-short-cut, version. And then slowly moved to my own techniques which were a combination. But am always grateful to Merchant, he made Indian cooking possible and easy for me. Anyway, here is the okra recipe, which I've made scores of times to total satisfaction. Prep and cooking time: 20 minutes 1 tablespoon ground cumin 1/2 teaspoon turmeric' 1 tablespoon chili powder 1/4 teaspoon salt 4 tablespoons lemon juice 1 tablespoon mustard 30 (small) pods okra 4 tablespoons vegetable oil Mix the cumin, turmeric, chili powder, salt and lemon juice in a small bowl Add mustard and mix to make a wet paste Cut off the stems of the okra. Then split them 3/4 of the way down to the tip. Split them again, dividing the pods into 4 equal parts held together by the tip Por a bit of the paste into the openings and spread more paste all over the pods except for the narrow tip. Sprinkle with salt. Heat the oil in a small frying-pan over low heat and fry the pods, covered, until they are tender (about 10 minutes), turning at least once. -- That's it. Enjoy.

Ismail Merchant uses mustard (including the type you're describing) in a whole range of dishes, one that we've been cooking regularly is a kind of stuffed and pan-fried okra. Granted, his style is only three-quarters Indian, but the no-nonsense 20-minutes-tops recipes are big favorites with me.

It's not just mangoes. All 'fresh' fruit and vegetables from India are proscribed by the FDA. I think the biggest reason is standardization. The inspectors need to know that one container is going to be near-exactly like another, and that is a very difficult hurdle for Indian producers to get over.

It's nothing particularly grand, but if you're still in Malaga you would do no better than to head immediately down (eastwards) the seafront virtually as far as the road goes - to the landmark El Tintero II. This is a totally unique seafood restaurant, hugely popular in the city, which operates on kind of a high-speed dim sum concept. Waiters charge around the place (it's under a canopy, but open-air) carrying many many plates at a time. And you hail them as they pass with something likely-looking and pay by the plate at the end. Everything fishy that's available in Malaga comes by in the course of an hour, very very fresh and simply cooked, particularly recommended are the boquerones (tiny fish fried up and served in a crunchy vinegary cloud).

I guess it's too late to be joining in here. Still, there are all kinds of snack food that you can approximate (or actually source) in the USA that could give kids a strong idea of what their peers in Brazil munch on. 1) Empadas - these are essentially no different from the easily available L. American (and Caribbean) empanadas. Small pastries filled with meat, or shrimp, or those palm hearts, etc. 2) Pasteles - small fried turnovers, similar fillings to the empadas. 3) Bolinhos - little fried fish balls, usually made with bacalhao. 4) Pao de Queijo - this snack food above all, small rolls baked with a mild cheese (usually from Minas Gerais) inside. 5) Aipim Frito - essentially cheese fries, except made with yucca.

Yes, yes, exactly. This ruins otherwise attractive-looking and promising Gujju thali meals. The last time I ate at Status, the popular Nariman Point thali restaurant, every vegetable tasted like a dessert.

In my opinion, the hands-down best restaurant in the Ironbound is Seabra's Marisqueria (a glance off Ferry Street, on the same turn as the smaller Seabra's supermarket). The better place to eat in the restaurant is the large horseshoe-shaped bar and the window-fronted area surrounding it. But there is also a back room, where smokers don't venture (I've never seen anyone smoke there in well over a score visits). You can call in advance and check, but I'm fairly certain that it's a restaurant policy since the back room is also very kid-friendly. -- The service, by the way, is excellent, very patient and friendly. They also comp parking at the lot opposite, which is an issue in the Ironbound. -- Happy to give you menu recommendations if you wish, this is a place I'm always eager to turn new people on to and it has yet to disappoint.

Good article, thanks for posting it. -- Here's my beef (no pun intended) with Gujerati food, it's particularly true in restaurants but also at the homes I've eaten in. It's always too sweet, there is a hint of sugary aftertaste to virtually everything you eat except for the breads. All those vegetable dishes mentioned, the shaak, eseepecially the kadhis - it all has been sugared. My palate can't take it, after one or two meals in a row.

Here's a picture of the very satisfactory tah dig from my Iranian rice with chicken and barberry dish made yesterday. It's amazing just how different it tastes from the rest of the preparation, mild with yoghurt yet full of flavor from the saffron and the crisping-up at the bottom of the pan. We mix and match, eat it with spicy Indian mango pickle.

Fine question. There must have been informal eating houses set up for the benefit of the (mostly Punjabi) earliest Indian migrants who worked in the lumber yards of the North-West. Wherever Indians have gone, we've taken our spices and cooking techniques, and these first Indian-Americans cannot have been an exception. But, given the racial politics of the time, it's very unlikely that such eating houses came even close to being "restaurants." Remember that those migrants were chased out of the region with riots, violence, and the political pressure of an expressly anti-Indian Asian Exclusion League. So, my bet is that we can possibly track the first Indian restaurant - as we'd recognize one - to San Francisco, and if you search city records you'll probably be able to place one or more in the interwar years of the early 20th century. This was a time when the anti-colonial Gadar Party was set up. These fiery young men must have met someplace - I'm guessing there were restaurants to serve them and probably a broader audience. There was even a Brit spy deputed to track them and turn them in for expulsion (with the State department willing to oblige), perhaps we can get the answer to this question by tracing Hopkinson's many recorded statements at trial. In NYC, Kalustyan was the famous and only spice shop for decades, and the first Manhattan Little India rose up around it. I think the store has been open since soon after WWII - but it wasn't a restaurant until it started serving some food quite recently.

I called my local Patel Brothers store - no Amba Haldi. According to the manager, you can't get it anywhere in the area.

I don't know what that is. Can you describe it to me, or give me the Hindi or Gujerati name and I can check.

Fresh turmeric is easily available at the (mostly Gujju) desi stores in the tri-State area.

I second Vikram's recommendation of a proper technique to eat Alphonse mangoes. In the better fruits, there is no fibrousness at all except around the seed and thus the cheeks must be eaten, chilled, with a spoon. You can gnaw at the seed directly, but there isn't much work to do as there is with many other mango varieties. However, the characterization of the flavour of the mango (above) indicates to me that Vikram has possibly only ever eaten Ratnagiri Apoos, and not the source product - the magnificent Goan Alphonse. The former has been cultivated for hardiness, to hold up in lengthy shipping, and for uniformity. The latter, while recognizeably the same variety, comes from trees that are notoriously fickle and unreliable, and when the trees bear fruit the output is much more often than not consumed completely by the owners and friends and family. In a Goan village, everyone knows which are the good trees. If one of these flowers, everyone is on alert. Small boys are warned off long before the mangoes even start to appear, and the owners will check the branches several times a day to make sure that everything is going well. The bounty from such a tree is then carefully doled out, and some of it may be made into the suberb and sinful ripe mango jam - 'mangada' that far-flung relatives (like me) have to cope with as their share of the harvest. Property matters - always bizarrely convoluted in Goa - become wrenching torture when mango trees of repute are involved. But then, no place in India is more obsessed or more identified with the mango. There are still at least 50 varieties grown in the small territory. And Goa has been known for many centuries for the quality of its fruit. Akbar used to demand shipments annually, visitors have raved about the Goan mango forever starting with the famous (pioneering Western botanist, and fleeing converso refugee) Garcia da Orta. Anyway, the odd thing is that the Alphonse is still probably not the most prized mango in Goa. That distinction belongs to the 'mankurade' or 'malcorado'. The name is roughly derived from the Portuguese for 'badly colored', and this particular variety is notorious for bruising and travelling badly. Still, off the tree, there is nothing badly colored about it and the fruit is as flawlessly rosy golden as any Alphonse. The flesh is equally custardy-smooth and perfect, but the aroma is more heady and the taste more honeyed and intense. Ah, mangoes.

Hm, in my mind it's always worked the other way around. Come to think of it, that may be the way it works in most Indian lit to - more evidence of the paramountcy of the almighty Indian mango. -- Anyway, I don't know if it still is the convention, but the Times of India always used to run an article or two about the "arrival" of Apoos at Crawford market and into the easy reach of consumers. I wonder if it's still the case, maybe Vikram can confirm (and link?) But the marketplace works a bit differently now. When I was in Bombay in mid-February there were already early Apoos being sold in a couple of spots, for princely sums. I hesitate to admit (on this mango deprived board) that I had a bunch of them, as many as I could.

This article indicates that the damn Canadians also get their hands on exported Indian mangoes, and goes a little bit into the love of the fruit inbuilt into Indian culture. So, I guess it's us in the US alone who live lives entirely deprived of the subcontinental best. I think something should be done about it.

It was Vikram, I think, who correctly described Indian cooking as hard to capture as appealing in photography - brown glop, yellow glop, green glop. It's very difficult to take photos that really grab the eye with cooked Indian food. The ingredients, on the other hand, are beautiful and can be used to good dramatic effect. So, the better attempts at Indian food photography (in my opinion) have cretively paired the finished products with the ingredients and sometimes with striking Indian fabrics in the background. The best Indian cookbook visuals that I've seen are in the 'Bombay Brasserie cookbook', a volume put out by that now-storied London restaurant. The whole book has extremely high production values, the photos are all very good (and use ingredients just as I describe above).

David Davidar's decent novel is called 'The House of Blue Mangoes'. There could probably be a good compilation of subcontinental writings about mangoes, they've been passionately written about from the beginnings of Indian lit.

You lucky, lucky, man. (weeping softly)

$27? How did you get that?

It's walkable, a good 15 minute clip, from the Hyatt. 351 Grove St, Jersey City, New Jersey Telephone - (201) 435-6770 -- There are other Jersey City areas that you might wish to get to, and restaurants. Very decent Japanese (unbeaten by Hoboken), an excellent Italian-eat-by-the-water-expensive place (very near), and the whole Indian ghetto on Newark Ave. Plus a good Ironbound-type Portuguese. Let me know if you want more details.