FaustianBargain

← I think it was porpoise. ← Thanks. Seal, perhaps? Grey Seal(Halichoerus grypus). Adult males, and some older adult females to a lesser extent, have a recognisable long "Roman" nose with wide nostrils, giving the species its name "horsehead" in Canada and its Latin name that translates as "hooked-nose pig of the sea". altho' "La Cochina" means little pig of the sea for the people living along the beautiful Sea of Cortez, or Gulf of California, Mexico. The little "pig" is the critically endangered vaquita porpoise endemic to a mere 30 mile radius in the upper Gulf. porpoise..seal..doesnt matter..still interesting.

looks lovely. how did you cook it? also, is that black salsify or the brown one? I have a vague memory of someone telling me that the way to prepare black salsify is slightly different from the brown one. either that or the taste differs. somebody shoot me! I am getting old!

I have no idea... Never heard of it. Where did you find the reference? ← recettes médiévales

I found a couple of recipes. It seems to have a great affinity for fish. Eels and 'porc du mer'. What would "porc du mer" be? Are are any Indian recipes that uses poivre long with fish?

I remember reading somewhere(probably This. or McGee?) that one yolk is sufficient to create approx 25 litres of hollandaise.

I have to confess that I know very little about Spanish cheeses. I have had only two, Manchego and El Suspiro. Both made from goat's milk, iirc. I am especially fond of El Suspiro and am in complete agreement with the name assigned to this heavenly cheese. My question is..what about the cheeses made from cow's milk? Are sheep/goat milk cheeses more popular than cow milk cheeses in Spain? Same with the concept mixed milk cheese. Is it more popular in Spain than..say..in France or Italy?

It is sometimes said that asafoetida was used to mimic the flavours of garlic and/or onion, both of which were taboo in certain religious communities. Although, I have noticed that asafoetida goes well with onion. For garlic rasam(there are many many ways to prepare garlic rasam though) 4-5 garlic cloves, peeled and lightly crushed 1 tsp cumin seeds a lime sized knob of tamarind(prep: soak tamarind in hot/warm water. extract juice. discard pulp) seasoning*: torn curry leaves black mustard seeds sputtered in a hot tsp of oil/ghee.** In hot oil(1 tbsp), fry the garlic. add the cumin seeds. add the tamarind water. boil until the raw smell of tamarind is cooked away. salt, to taste. add *seasoning. **this ought to be done at the last minute. the idea is to dunk the hot mustard seeds into the rasam and let it sizzle. somehow, it is not the same if you let the seasoning cool before you add it.

The rice vadams need to be cooked or else they wont loose the 'raw' smell of rice. Also, they need to be of a certain consistency to be able to 'pressed' through the vadam contraption. Steaming them will cook the rice, wont it? I dont really get the steaming thing. It reminds me of another recipe for steamed rice dough. It is called 'undili kozakattai'. A mass of rice dough with green chillies and sputtered mustard is rolled into tiny little balls. They are then steamed and you can pop it into your mouth just like that. Of course, there is no tapioca in that one. Tapioca pearls(note that we are not using the tapioca powder. the desired pearl like bumps on the vadams was probably for aesthetic purposes.) are much more tender than rice and unless you boil them in water, how will you get the starch out? Boiling them will 'disperse' the starch. Without boiling them, you cannot get that 'gooey' starchiness into the vadam batter. Also notice that the tapioca vadam batter is porridgey and liquidey(needs to be spooned to make the wafers) while the one cooked with rice is more of a slack dough or a semi solid mass. The ratio of tapioca to rice is very negligible but without the tapioca(cooked in boiling water), the dough will be a lot less starchy. The tapioca porridge 'gels' the rice together. This is how I understand it.

Vadais entirely different from vadams. Vadams are dried wafers that can be stored and then they are deep fried. Vadais are wetter. There are different kinds of vadais. The easiest is the Urad Dhal Vadai(and my favourite). I dont even need to look this one up. 1 cup urad dhal soaked for 45-60mts ground to a fine paste. No need to add water as we need a thick paste and the soaking already has gotten in some of the water. Add water only if you need it..the consistency is like this..it is like very thick and dense pancake batter. Too thin and it wont keep its shape. Too thick, it would be pasty and gummy. When you spoon it, it should reluctantly drop from the spoon. The nature of urad dhal is such that, it will 'coagulate' into a single, dense mass while still being liquidy. After you have got the smooth paste (It must be smooth as silk to touch. I mean..no lumps...no stray urad dhal left unground), add salt to taste, asafoetida(with caution. urad dhal causes flatulence. asafoetida counters it, but not too much of it) Chopped, thin ringlets of green chilli. *Whole* black peppers, if you dont want to use green chillies. Drop them into the hot oil. It will turn a golden brown. Turn it over so the other side gets the same lovely colour as it cooks evenly. A hot vadai is a beautiful thing to behold. It is a perfect golden brown pillow. It is still white inside, but it is cooked to a fluffy perfection. Unfortunately, it also 'drinks' a lot of the oil. Although, thats what makes it heavenly. You want to have the vadai immediately. It isnt as good when it cools down. edited to add: This is the 'tabletop wet grinder' I got in the States. It is cheaper in India, but I wasnt going to lug it up and down an aircraft. These people import it, change it from 220v to 110v etc. So it is double the price in the States. And worth it. It is impossible to make *real* 'Idlis' without this grinder. I have used the regular blender to make the vadai batter. Urad dhal is soft, especially when it is soaked. Idli needs rice(parboiled rice. harder to grind to a paste) and a stone wet grinder is an absolute must.

Tapioca vadams 1.5 kilos tapioca pearls 200-250gms green chillies(how hot is your chilli?!) 1/2-3/4 cup salt.(to taste) 2 cups sour buttermilk 2-3 lime, juiced asafoetida 24 cups(6 litres) water Soak the tapioca pearls in water and buttermilk(water: buttermilk > 8cups:2cups). Do not soak for more than one hour. This will cause the tapioca pearl to become too soggy. If we want to keep the shape of the pearl, we want to skip the soaking. Bring water and buttermilk to a boil. Add the tapioca to the liquid. Stir. Boil the remaining 16cups of water. Add the soaked tapioca, buttermilk, water and all. Keep stirring until it feels like a porridge. Keep stirring to avoid lumps. It is nice to have a thin porridge consistency. The 'thicker' it is, the longer it will take for it to dry and the deep fried vadams will be too thick. The thinner they are, the more delicate the vadam will be... Grind asafoetida, salt and greenchillies together into a paste. Add to the tapioca porridge. Add the juice of limes. Taste. Season to taste. These, given their consistency, cannot be made into noodle shapes. They are spooned onto a dry plastic sheet. You get a round pool of pearly, gooey, lemony, SPICY tapioca. Leave it out to dry. On day #2, peel the half dried vadams and turn them over so they are dried out completely. There are three more in this book. My mom had marked some from the book, 'Samaithu Paar'. There are no recipes for 'Aval'(beaten rice flakes), Wheat and Ragi(dont know what that is in English) vadams in my copy even though they are mentioned in the book.

Kuzhambu vadam 1 cup black gram dhal 5-6 dry red chillies a small bit of asafoetida soak black gram dhal(urad dhal, i think) for about 45-60 mts. Grind to a smooth paste with the red chillies. Add the asafoetida. Season to taste. Roll them into tiny balls. About the size of a cherry, maybe? Dont make them too big or they wont be cooked through when you deep fry them. Dry in sun. You may omit the chillies. Optionally, sputter some black mustard and add it to the dough along with some torn curry leaves. Rice vadam 8 cups(about 2 litres) rice(i think this is raw rice and not parboiled rice) 175 gms tapioca pearls 2-3 limes, juiced 1 cup sour buttermilk 175gm green chillies a small bit of asafoetida 24 cups(6 litres) water 1/2 cup wash and soak rice for about an hour. dry well in the shade. grind to powder. grind the salt and chillies to a smooth paste. heat the water in a large enough vessel. stir in the tapioca pearls. add buttermilk. cook tapicoa pearls.(it helps if they are soaked for 30 minutes or so before adding) Add the rice flour. Keep stirring to prevent lumps. Turn down the heat until the rice is cooked. Let it rest for 30 minutes. Add the asafoetida and the salt/green chilli paste. Knead. 'vadam press' is available in the market. Thin/Thick/Serrated noodle like vadam dough can be laid on top of dry, clean plastic sheets. Day 1, dry in the sun. Day 2, turn the vadams over and leave it out to dry. This way, the whole vadam will be bone dry.

I get it, Kit. In fact, that is my point too. The small guy in a new restaurant is willing to please. The poor chef is probably congratulating himself on his brilliant move to interact with the customer. Nowhere in the incident narrated was it indicated that harsh words were uttered. I am tempted to bring to this discussion the Manresa story. It is somewhere in the California thread. I cannot seem to find the link. I think it is we who interpret reactions and label them. There is a thin line between 'gracious' and 'defensive'.

Ptipois, i think one simply mixes the salt to torn curry leaves.(edited to add: apparently, the torn curry leaves are mixed with the salt. in the time these recipes were written, they didnt get salt in its fine powdered form. it was like rock salt/kosher salt. so salt had to be 'ground' and it was possible to assign precise measures for salt instead of 'taste, test and season more if required'.) this is from my mother's notes.(she jotted down instructions from a book. i am getting it) i am against measuring salt. it is better to adjust salt to taste. 'pinched curry leaves' is basically torn curry leaves. for some reason, it is better to tear the curry leaves instead of using them whole or making a chiffonade with the knife. arisithippili is probably a smaller version of thippili because 'arisi' means rice in tamil. i think they are less pungent in flavour and smaller in size. i went to buy some today and couldnt find any! i will ask mamma to send me some and i can take pictures. the garlic version(as ravum mentioned) is lovely. in certain families, due to religious reasons, garlic is omitted. but in this case, i dont think garlic and toor dhal dont mix well. i dont think long pepper(remembering its aroma) will go well with garlic either. the garlic version of this rasam omits the thippili.(trivia: garlic and asafoetida dont mix well either. for some reason, they neutralise each other. you lose both the flavours! fascinating.)

There are different kinds of vadams. appalams and pappadams are a different family. vadams can be made with rice or tapioca. my favourite? the tapioca wafers. the 'vadam' season lasts for a very very short time when the days are mercilessly hot. the vadams made during these few weeks can be stored and usually the stocks last for an entire year. raw tapioca vadam batter is lovely and imo, better than the final deep fried version. my grandmother always kept some in a little bowl. vadams will be made in LARGE batches. i mean..several litres at a time. in the terrace, clean plastic sheets will be laid out and weighted down with bricks. after the vadams are squeezed in its various forms, they'd be let out to dry. usually, it takes two days for them to dry completely. at the end of the first day, the edges of the vadams will be bone dry, but the centre will still be soft. (i LOVE licking the soft heart of the vadam and the saliva literally softened the dry part..it becomes chewy..mm) the vadams have to be completely dry because they have to be stored and moisture/water isnt good for the deep frying. one can add many flavours to the vadam. onion, garlic, tomato, potato..etc. the plain ones have green chillies and lemon juice only. there are also several shapes. the simplest tapioca vadam is to spoon the gooey tapioca batter onto the sheets. it spreads out and then shrinks after it is completely dry. the starch holds it together, but some of the tapioca pearls still retain their shape. they are absolutely lovely when fried. it is with the 'rice vadams' that one can make different shapes. they can be squeezed through a special vadam squeeze. there are different settings...think pasta shapes..except the stuffed versions, of course. the broad strips, thin like singapore noodles..like thick egg noodles. rice vadam dough is easy to manipulate into shapes unlike tapioca version. i am a tradionalist. i like the plain chilli-lemon vadams. the tomato and garlic and onion versions lack zing. of course, in my house, onion and garlic were taboo anyways. vadam memories. wow. i'll have to come back with another seperate reply. the recipes in about an hour or two. guests.

what has this got to do with your breasts? or brad pitt? it is not about people being 'happy' about being embarssed by a big chef. it is just that we tolerate big names more than the small guy. somehow, we are willing to trust the 'big chef' and give them control of our tastebuds. we are happy to let them take control. this happens everywhere. take the fashion industry/haute coutre as another example. occasionally, the emperor wears no clothes, you know. if i were to write a book, a la emily post, to instruct chefs on the subject of social graces, what else do you think i should include? other than a strict ban on grabbing your breasts, that is. No, having a big chef embarrass me isn't going to make me any happier about the situation. If Brad Pitt grabs my breast he's going to get the same slap as if a co-worker did the same. ← very, very well put. ←

There is 'Signatures @ Le Cordon Bleu Paris' in Ottawa. Affiliated to the LCB school in Canada. Signatures.

I found this old link in a egulleter's(Episure) forum/website.. It is an interesting read. Defensive? Rude? Stubborn? Other points of view. I noticed though that most of the chefs featured are women.

It's a good start, and certainly a great coffee table book. Seems to run out of steam halfway through though, the chapters get shorter and more cursory. In a similar vein, the much-beloved Time-Life series, with an installment on Italy, would also be good, but they are becoming collector's items. Marcella Hazan's cookbooks are I think a great starting point, but may not exactly what you specify in your addition at the end. She goes light on history, and sticks pretty much to the Northern regions (although I picked up my interest in Puglia from her). Two regional books I don't have but am looking to get are Rustico by Negrin or Megrin, and Waverly Root's book on Italy. ← ahh..yes. marcella hazan, the godmother of culinaria italia. thanks for bringing her up.

Ahh..so this is how they make the famous apple caviar! It reminds me of 'bondhi' we used to make in India..only the 'caviar' is made from besan batter and is crunchy..because it is fried instead of the calcium choloride solution....it is the base for both spicy and sweet nibbles.

Not being particularly helpful here, but I always stay at Panguitch. It is much closer to Bryce and I like to start before sunrise. That way, you can catch the sunrise. There were wild horses bucking on the road and a young boy trying to rein them in. Promise. This is true. There was this truly awesome restaurant there. I dont recall their name, but the word that keeps coming to me is 'biker' even though it was a family style restaurant and was no biker bar. There were no bikers dining. I think it has something to do with their name or their emblem? Anyways, the breakfast was wonderful. I am yet to stay pancakes as wonderful and fluffy. The maple syrup was to die for..and the eggs..well..we had to wait a while for that...someone came to our table and apologised for the delay..said that they were fresh and from their backyard. My companion laughed and told me that the guy was only joking. I dont know if he was joking, but I wanted to believe that I had scrambled eggs from freshly laid eggs with the world's best pancakes.

I have been reading stuff in the Italy forum. It seems to me that there is a lot about Italian cooking that I dont know about..can someone suggest a book...a fair book...an introduction to Italian cooking? I went to the nearby bookstore and found Culinaria Italy. I dont own any of the Culinaria series. It seems interesting. Worth a buy? edited to add: i dont want a full recipe book or someone rambling about what he/she thinks of Italian food. A mixture of both ..and then a little history, regional specialities, produce etc.

thanks, all. thanks, touaregsand. I'll give it a try.

I'm interested in the rasam. Maybe we can discuss it in the India subforum? ← I have started a thread here.

A request from the France forum for the kandathippili(poivre long/long pepper) rasam. This is what I have in my books. Any other version? recipe: for four cups, black pepper 1/2 tsp red chillies 4 coriander seeds 2 tsp bengal dhal gram 1 tsp 5-6 kandathippili(poivre long) 5-6 arisithippilli cumin seeds 3/4 tsp curry leaves -few a lime sized ball of tamarind a few pinched curry leaves+11/2 tsp salt 1 tsp ghee 1tsp black mustard 2red chillies method: 1.soak tamarind in hot water. 2.fry the pepper, chillies, coriander, dhal, thippilis in a tsp of oil until golden brown. 3.let cool and grind to a paste. 4.seperately, grind the cumin seeds and curry leaves together.(no need to fry this one.) 5.extract juice from the soaked tamarind. squeeze and then strain the pulp from the juice. discard pulp. 6.add to the tamarind water, the ground paste(from #2) made from the fried ingredients and the salted pinched curry leaves. Boil until the 'raw tamarind' smell goes away. 7.finally, add the cumin/curry leaves paste.(#4). 8.continue boiling until the liquid boils and froths over. 9.for seasoning, melt 1 tsp of ghee(or clarified butter) and add the mustard seeds until it sputters. tear the red chillies so the seeds fall into the hot fat when you add it. empty this into the rasam. optionally, 1/2 cup of cooked, mashed toor dhal can be added provided there is no garlic involved. But I dont like it as the broth like quality is lost. Kandathippili is more famously used in 'diwali marunthu'. Translated that means diwali medicine that most south indians adore. It is an acquired taste. It is a bunch of stuff ground to a fine paste with ghee. It used to be made at home by our grandparents and then distributed. The idea is that a little ball of this 'diwali marunthu' heals ailing tummies of indigestion after a particularly gluttonous diwali feast. Although, traditionally, it is made only once a year, I have known instances where people gulp down little balls like snacks. Like I said, it is an acquired taste. When you acquire it, you are stuck with it for life. A commerical, slightly altered version of it can be found in most Indian grocery stores abroad as 'dabur chawanprash'(someone please correct me if i got the wrong spelling) which isnt exactly the same(it has gooseberries and other assorted goodness), but it does well during cold turkey. I remember this rasam making only rare appearances but I do have memories of a slightly altered version of this rasam* mixed with mashed rice and loads of ghee as the sunday afternoon meal. Every sunday, my grandmother would line us, The Cousins, and we'd get a oil massage for the scalp and body. We'd sit glistening for an hour or so. At this time, into our mouths was shoved a tablespoon of castor oil. Yes, this is all true. It was done with the best of intentions. After the ritual oil bath aka head bath and we are cleansed in every sense of the world, we'd be starving. I mean..a gnawing hunger from the pit of your very being. A meal of rasam rice later, we'd sleep like corpses. We'll be good as new to tackle the next week. *the other version of this, cumin-pepper rasam, omits the poivre long and has more of the black pepper. it is not as aromatic. and often it was prepared to clear a phelgm congested chest. inside my head, i'd imagine that the 'sharp' pepper will cut through the coagulation that is the chest goo and the soothing cumin will follow..making it all ok.

fried okra. i have no idea how they retained the green colour. when i first tasted it, i thought it was bitter gourd chips. wrongo.