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Re the urban legend idea: a few years back (1992) I was taking an advanced Chinese language course in Beijing. One quarter of the course was a conversation course called 'Chinese culture', and the guy who taught it was of the opinion that Chinese culture meant food and nothing else (with the occasional excursion into beverages). Long, long discussions about all types of Chinese food went on. My kind of conversation course. Anyway, this guy was so passionate about food that all his vacation time was spent travelling around China for the purposes of eating. (This included things like travelling for 4-5 days straight by train without any place to sleep or lie down - unable to afford that kind of luxury, as the tickets cost so much more). One of the things he mentioned wanting to eat was the monkey brain stuff... Now it's possible that he got the idea at some point from foreign students, as that was who he was interacting with. However, he said that he had learnt the idea from other Chinese. This is also in pre-Internet times! So if it's an urban legend originating in the English speaking world, then it's managed to spread pretty thoroughly (though that is of course what such myths tend to do, particularly when they sound gross). Alternatively, it's origins as a myth may actually lie elsewhere. I don't know. In China, the story was that you could eat them in Yunnan province. This backs up the usual aspect of this story - it's always some weird, foreign 'others' who eat this stuff. For those who don't know, China has 50-odd 'minority nationalities' (the number changes from time to time depending on who is counting, and how they've decided to categorize 'minority nationality'), and by far the greatest number are in Yunnan province - the area down south bordering onto Vietnam, Laos, Burma, etc. For a lot of Chinese from other regions, this is the place around which you centralize your fantasies about what 'exotic other people' do, whether it's bathing nude in public in the rivers, or eating monkey brains... Now, this guy ate everything he could lay his hands on. Including protected species like pangolin (scaly ant eater) and so forth. He couldn't find reference to people actually eating monkey brains anywhere at all, no matter how much he looked. And if HE couldn't find it... More evidence (anecdotal to be sure) pointing to it being a myth. And Daniel, do be aware that most of the less commonly eaten animals in China, such as snake, dog, cat, turtle, etc. are usually reputed to be aphrodisiacs! Strictly speaking, such foods are considered to be 'heating', and this can refer to how it will affect your body temperature, or hmm, 'other things' so if you eat them in winter, you are less likely to have people speculating about why you are eating them, or possibly even laughing at you behind your back! I was living in a fairly small Cantonese town for some time, at a period earlier than studying in Beijing. My (female) friends would only eat snake and so forth in winter, as they considered it embarassing to be seen eating it at other times of the year - small place, lots of people knew each other, speculation about what they were up to, etc. And a slightly off-topic rant. I would always get pissed off by foreign tourists in China who started assuming that any meat they ordered was going to have bits of cat, dog, or whatever sneaked into the dish. Some people would even go vegetarian for the length of their stay in China because the idea bothered them so much. Another urban legend. These are luxury items, you pay more for them - often a LOT more - and usually have to go to restaurants that specialize in their preparation. Also, if ordering snake, don't get snake with the bones still in, unless you like chewing meat out from around numerous small bones, in the same manner as chicken necks!

LOL! Yes, I know exactly what a suribachi is (my screenname should be a clue!). I'd been thinking more along the lines of "food processor" and worrying that it would turn into an oily mass/mess! About carrot halva, the best I've ever tasted was made by a Japanese friend from a recipe she'd gotten from a Japanese chef who apprenticed in fine restaurants in France. (I've long forgotten his name & wonder if he's famous now!) Once upon a time I had the recipe, but that disappeared long ago in my transition from hand-written notebooks of recipes to computer after computer. Wonder if she still has it... I'll have to email her. ←

Suzy, I was using hulled sesame seeds. I was grinding them in a Japanese suribachi (how do I explain this!!). I guess I'd have to call it a type of mortar and pestle that has fine ribs on the inside and a wooden pestle, and which is used mostly for grinding roasted sesame in Japan, though I have seen it used for grinding other things too. I have also made poppy seed halva, which also has to be toasted and ground in the same way as the sesame halva, and in that case I ground the poppy seeds in batches in a coffee grinder. I am sure that sesame seeds would work okay in this too. (There are a few Indian spice mixes which have toasted sesame seeds ground up with other things such as toasted coconut, etc. and I've ground them in the coffee grinder without problems). It's a good question though, as I just realized that one could overgrind it, and make it pasty. You want a light and fluffy texture, so just whizz it lightly and not for too long. One can always do it longer again if it's not fine enough, but it can't be undone if it's turned into sesame paste! Cbarre02, yep. I have to admit that personally carrot halva is my least favorite halva! No particular reason, it just doesn't do much for me. I've tried all sorts of halva, including potato, pumpkin, (beets and peas - not together - are still on my to-do list), and pretty much any grain that ever gets used commonly in India. There are a lot of combinations as well, such as poppy seed with coconut, and so on.

There is no specifically Indian part with this recipe. There are several distinct Indian Jewish communities, with people who emigrated to India at different times. Some of their recipes are 'fusion', but others are not. The halva I grew up with was Greek (lived in a place with many many Greek immigrants). Since then I've eaten so-called Turkish, Bulgarian, and Israeli sesame halva, and each was the same. Well, to be more specific, some come packed in a plastic box rather than as a log from which one cuts off slices. The boxed ones can sometimes be a bit more oily, but that's the only difference. Halva cake with ganache really sound like gilding the lily, doesn't it? I'd be interested too.

To tell the truth, it's been a few years since I made this particular one. I was living in Japan at the time, and there was no other way of getting it other than making it myself. So, I THINK it has the same denseness as the bought one, but I might have changed it a little in my imagination. Like I said, though, all halva of this type is very forgiving. If you wanted to try cooking it a little longer after adding the water, to ensure that the whole mass has dried out a bit more, nothing bad will happen. I usually make my halva from urad flour, etc. in the most incredibly sloppy way. I don't measure ANYTHING, not even how much water I'm adding to how much flour. Then I cook it up a little longer if it's too runny, or throw in a little more water if it's too dry. In the very beginning, I used to measure things out for halva, but doing it more sloppily still got me the same results (even when I was expecting total failure as a result for my sloppiness!). Needless to say, I don't bake like this.

Joyce Goldstein's The Mediterranean Kitchen . Even though I've had it for a long time, and have lots of far more specialized region by region books, there's something about this book that draws me in, and makes me feel, yes, I want to cook that!

I can oblige. I am paraphrasing (and adding a few comments of my own) from Indian-Jewish Cooking by Mavis Hyman. I have made it, and found it extremely straightforward, and that it yielded the same texture as the bought stuff. Toast 1 cup of sesame seeds on a dry skillet until golden brown. Allow to cool, then grind to a powder. Bring 1 cup of water to a boil, dissolve one quarter of a cup of sugar in the water. Keep aside on low heat. Heat 4 tablespoons of vegetable oil, add powdered sesame seeds, and toast over low heat, stirring constantly for 5 to 10 minutes. This is a fairly vague description, but when ready it truly will start to give off a pleasant aroma that wasn't there before. It will also have turned somewhat darker. Turn off the heat under both the sesame seeds and the water. Now add the sweetened water to the sesame seeds (it will splash). If adding nuts or essence, add them at this stage. Turn onto a greased surface and allow to cool. It is still quite runny at the point you turn it out. I line a bowl (about the size of bowl you would eat breakfast cereal from) with baking parchment or greased aluminum foil so that it is does not spread too much. It firms up as it cools. I haven't tried it with the chocolate variation. I imagine you would have to dissolve it in the sugar syrup. The recipe says nothing about toasting the nuts you add into it, but I do that. The plain version probably has vanilla essence added to it. I like Indian flavorings, so tend to add ground cardamom and cardamom essence as well. Isn't it so lovely and straightforward! BTW, there is a huge range of Indian halvas that work on the same principle: try it for example with semolina, wheat, urad dal flour, or chickpea flour. All of these are cooked in the same way as this recipe, with the exception that, as these flours are already ground, you just go straight into the step of toasting your main ingredient with oil or ghee. Some turn out firmer than others. Semolina is often prepared to be quite soft and is eaten warm with a spoon. Urad dal (one of my favorites) turns a luscious chocolatey color, and sets quite firm. I've played around a lot with these, and you can mess around considerable with the amount of sugar, water, or oil. It's very forgiving. (Too much water, for example, just keep cooking it longer until the excess gets evaporated, etc.)

Sandra, I just read through this whole thread, and was amazed after you mentioned the bread with kaymak right at the beginning, and also discussed rabri, that no-one mentioned the Indian dessert called either double ka mitha or shah-e-tukri, which is essentially fried toast with rabri. Incidentally, the two names are quite different, but refer to the same thing. Shah-e-tukri is a Persianized name, (shah - royal, tukri - pieces of bread. e functions here to give shah an adjectival meaning). Double ka mitha is the Hindi name (double refers to 'double roti' meaning Western-style yeast-raised white bread, mitha is a sweet or a sweetmeat, ka shows ownership, so is again serving a type of adjectivizing function). For it, fry pieces of stale white Western bread in ghee until golden. Set aside to cool and crisp up. There are two variations on this. One is quite liquid rabri, the other is very thick, almost khoya in consistency. In both cases, sweeten to taste, and add kewra if you want. For the thick khoya, simply spread on the fried toast and eat. For the thinner version (the one I prefer), break the toast into smaller pieces - cubes of about an inch on either side - and immerse in the rabri. Eat in about fifteen minutes to half an hour of doing this. Ideally, you have a combination between some of the toast remaining crisp, and some of it having absorbed the liquid. Some people argue that this is best warm or at room temperature. I think it is best chilled, eaten on a hot day, and while swooning for more... White bread fried in ghee, sugar, milk reduced until unbearably rich - how can it be anything but exquisite. I think this is the Indian version of a dessert found throughout Turkey and many areas which are influenced by Turkish cuisine. (I've also seen it referred to as a Syrian/Lebanese dish) It's called Ekmek kataif (this last will be spelt in various different ways, such as kadayif, etc.) in Turkish, and Aish el-sarai in Arabic (again, there are lots of different spellings for this in English, such as Eish es-seray, etc.). I've come across Egyptian, Serbian, Cypriot and Syrian versions for it. Essentially, it's bread that you've dried out (dry it out in the oven, again there are variations: some versions use rusks, some areas have a special bread sold for making this dessert). You make a syrup with honey, lemon juice, and rosewater (again, there are variations, the Serbian one I saw used cloves, for example). If you want, caramelize a little of the syrup to darken the appeance of the whole. Pour over the bread and cook the whole lot together until the bread has absorbed all the syrup. Turn into a serving dish and allow to cool. Serve spread with kaymak. There are also fruit and walnut based Turkish variations of this (though these have also spread further afield than Turkey) . A link for the one with cherries here It shoud really be emphasized that you let it get completely cold before eating. Put it in the refrigerator. Again, serve with kaymak, not the whipped cream mentioned in the link! Other seasonal fruits can also be used instead, such as apricots or quince. I am keen enough on these desserts to have borrowed a cookbook in Turkish from the local library, together with a Turkish dictionary and an introduction to Turkish grammar, simply to plough my way laboriously through these bread sweets! A cheating way to do it, if one is really in a rush and wants a fix of it, is to use good quality fruit preserves/jellies instead of cooking up the fruit itself. I use Baktat, which is a Turkish brand, and has big chunks of fruit in many of their products (cherry, quince, mulberry, etc. The only one I didn't like is their small whole figs, which taste somehow odd to me). If Turkish preserves are not readily available to you, the Greek ones are very similar. Thin out the preserves with water, heat, and pour over the dried out bread. I'm just looking at the length of this post. Clearly I tend to get carried away when something dear to me is mentioned! Do report back on how it went with your kaymak making. And if you made the ekmek kataif, how that went too.

Can you tell more about this? You take it dried directly from the packet and simply deep fry it without reconstituting it with water or anything first? Do you spice it afterwards, or just add salt? Milagai: do you find the frozen lotus root so bad to cook with? I sometimes add it to Punjabi dishes - for example, along the lines of mattar paneer, but with lotus root in place of the peas - and am happy enough with the results. Maybe my standards are just low. Pan: (getting away from the lotus root here). The baguettes at your Banh mi place are the same as baguettes at any other place? I mean, are they completely wheat based? In Corinne Trang's Authentic Vietnamese Cooking , she gives a recipe for Banh mi (which she calls Saigon baguette) which has equal quantities wheat and rice flour, and then goes on to say that one can use a French baguette instead if one doesn't want to bake. I've never tasted this rice flour baguette, and wondered if maybe you - or anyone else reading here - had tasted it, and how it compared.

OKAY! You just cleared up something that I've been wondering about ever since I moved to Germany. They're called Amerikaner here, and are available in a great many bakeries, as well as nasty versions sold prepackaged in the supermarket. The standard size is big - almost 4-5 inches across, but mini-Amerikaner are available as well. However, Amerikaner very often only have single colored icing (white). Actually, it cracks me up that people would be looking for Amerikaner in America. There are also cookies called Kameruner (i.e. how you would refer to people from Cameroon), and a type of sweet dumpling called 'Moor's head'. Surpise, surprise, both these dishes are dark colored. I had always thought that ALL these names were hangovers from non-politically correct times. Maybe I'm wrong, and your friends would be looking for Kameruner on their trip to Cameroon.

There is also a newspaper article here with some ideas and recipes.

Mind you, lotus root will go quite soft if cooked for a long time. Takes on the texture more-or-less of boiled taro. I've never actually timed it, but I think somewhere between 20-30 minutes of cooking is the point where it starts going soft.

Chillies cross-pollinate like mad, to the extent that you can never be really sure that the chilli you are about to use will be hot. The amount of water, etc. that the plants got also play a role, but often the really important question is what types of chillies were growing alongside. If they were growing next to a field of green bell peppers, then the chances are that your chilli is going to have only minimal or no heat. On the other hand, I have at times unsuspectingly cooked green bell peppers while living in India that were as hot as chilli peppers. It didn't happen very often. Rarely enough, in fact, that I got caught by surprise every single time, when I started wondering why my hands were tingling from cutting up the vegetables... And I can be pretty sure that those peppers were growing next to a crop of chillies. So while it is not totally impossible that chillies are being modified to make them less hot, it is far more likely that those particular chillies were being grown some place where they were cross-pollinating with peppers that were not hot. And if the trend is for chillies you are buying to be less hot in general, then it might simply be due to the fact that maybe more chillies are being grown in areas where this cross-pollination is likely to occur. Seriously, I wouldn't get paranoid about genetic modification and so on here. When I got chillies in India (I can't say buy here, as the vegetable seller always tosses a handful in for free ), it was never possible to know in advance if they would be hot or not. Some were, some weren't, that's it. The chillies I use now are imported from either India or Pakistan, and sometimes I use chillies imported from Thailand. Same thing with all of them, sometimes hot, and sometimes not. The only rule is not to simply toss them into the pot without checking them for heat first. That could really spoil your food if it does turn out to be really hot.

Ghee Jack fruit Chinese pickled mustard greens Cod livers (working my way though the canned fish offerings available in Germany one can at a time. Best so far: smoked Riga sprats )

According to this website, kek batik is unique to Brunei. It also sounds utterly delicious.

Sorry, CaliPoutine, you're wrong on both counts. The final T is silent in Ragout. In Chevre, the final e is technically called a schwa. It's the faint 'uh' sound you get in english in, for example, the 'a' in alone, the 'i' in easily, the 'o' in gallop, and the 'u' in circus. So strictly speaking it is not 'ra' either, but that is a lot closer to the correct sound than chev rey.

In central and northern China this was what people were doing involuntarily up until as little as fifteen years ago. There are probably still regions where it is still going on. Winter in these regions are long, cold, and miserable. People living in the country may have had a little more variety from plants from summer that had been stored, dried, or pickled. In the cities, it meant that you ate cabbage, pickled cabbage, daikon, and wheat products. For months. Maybe here and there you might be able to afford a little meat or fish. Or then again, maybe you might not be able to afford it... I wanted to slit my wrists after just a couple of months of eating that stuff. And I can't imagine ever doing it voluntarily. But seriously, I think the whole premise is wrong if they consider they are acting as people did in times past. Talking globally here, anyone who could afford it supplemented their diet with foodstuffs brought from further away. And as soon as people get out of utmost poverty, they add such foods into their diet. In the past, this was obviously the case with luxury items such as sugar or spices, but it was also the case with less prestigious items as well. For example, how many people throughout the world were adding locally sourced salt into their food? Precious few, I should imagine. How many people WANTED to add salt into their food? All of them: the human body requires salt to function, and the vast majority of people historically were not living within 100 miles of either the coast or a salt mine. So where were they getting it from? If one takes a look at earlier trading patterns you will see that a hell of a lot of it was moving food from one place to another. I'm not an expert on the entire history of trading food across the world, and my background is historian, rather than food historian. Nonetheless, I do know quite a bit about Chinese trade in previous centuries. People were shipping, among other food products, dried mushrooms, dried seaweed, tea, wine, salt, soy sauce and rice within China, and there were highly established (and controlled by the government and taxed by them) trading routes from China to Japan, the Philippines, Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam (these last two of course then being known by different names), etc. And a LOT of what they were shipping was food items. The distances being covered were a lot more than 50 or 100 miles. On top of that, this type of trade goes beyond just food. It also played an important role in the spread of knowledge such as science, geography and medicine, and it led to borrowings (improvements) in agricultural practices and food preparation. In fact, it had more impact than just these factors alone. For example, it did of course influence the type of economy and food production in the areas exporting those products. The idea of working with a single crop that was chiefly exported is not a new one that has appeared only with the advent of cheap modern transport. And this type of exchange is an ongoing one, and is not always a bad thing, no matter how much opponents of globalisation might like to argue otherwise. Moving away from history to the present day. Can you imagine how the environment of local regions would suffer if EVERYONE went foraging for foods to supplement their diet? Can you imagine how local producers would suffer if the only market they sold to was the local one? Thank goodness more people aren't doing it.

While travelling in China, years back, dog was almost always cooked whole, with a blow torch. Well, I'm not saying you need to be cooking dog. But surely meat of any kind would benefit from a little touch with a blow torch?

Daniel, how are they serving it with the schnitzel? On the side? I'm puzzled 'cause it sounds to me that otherwise the sauce is going to be making your nice crisp schnitzel soggy, and where's the fun in that? I haven't eaten it here in Germany (most of what I cook is Indian, and what the Germans do with curry and curry powder is really not to my taste). However, I just looked it up in Das goldene Kochbuch. This is (sort of) the German equivalent to The Joy of Cooking. Brown 1 chopped onion in 50 grams butter, add 50 grams flour and form a roux. Stir in 2 tab. curry powder, then 1 grated apple and 2 tab. tomato puree. Add 1 liter (this seems an awful lot to me) bouillon or veloute, bring to a boil. Add 1 minced clove garlic, and a small piece finely chopped orange peel. Add salt to taste, and simmer for 40 minutes. Stir in 10 ml. coconut milk shortly before serving. Like I said, I haven't tasted it, and can't vouch for it. And currywurst? Blech. Tomato ketchup mounded onto a cut up cooked sausage, and then the whole concoction sprinkled with uncooked curry powder. It's alllegedly a Berlin specialty, and I can't escape the wretched stuff. German sausages are usually good, and then they do THAT to them.

I think I never said what we eat in northern India for breakfast. In my family (I am SO not a morning person), a drag myself out of bed to make dalia - porridge made from cracked wheat. Uncooked, it's rather like bulgur, but I've tried making it from bulgur outside of India, and get the thumbs down from my husband every time. It's eaten with milk and sugar. Less lazy people might make more elaborate breakfast foods, like curried chickpeas served with deep fried breads (chole batura). Our neighbours used to make this fresh daily. Fresh meaning that they started cooking the chickpeas in their pressure cooker at about 4 am every morning. I never asked them, but I presume they were very orthodox Hindu and, as such, were against the use of leftovers (all foods should be freshly cooked).

Absolutely! I mentioned earlier that I was living in Osaka at the time of the E. coli 0157 outbreak there. There was quite a long period between the outbreak starting, and it being discovered where it originated. On top of that, once it got started, it spread relatively easily from person to person. During this period, people stopped eating out whenever they could help it. The worst-hit area was southern Osaka - where the outbreak started. A huge number of restaurants in that area went bankrupt, and the ones in other parts of Osaka weren't doing too well either. On top of that, people were avoiding all types of food in the supermarkets that they thought might be the origin of the problem - meat sales went way down, so did most fresh vegetables, and so on. I don't know what the final number was of bankruptcies actually was - when you're just getting your information from ongoing reports in the media at the time that information tends to be fairly unreliable - but I think the whole effect was considerable. Not just restaurants, but for farmers as well, and for the people who are making a living from dealing with food at any point between production and consumption.

It is NOT normal for Australia (I am Australian BTW). Normal for Australia is more along the lines of muesli or cereal - these are similar to the US but in general not as many sweetened cereals are on offer as the US. Porridge, maybe, depending on the season and the family. After cereal, or in place of it, is toast. Either with jam (jellly for the Americans ), or with something savoury, such as cheese, vegemite, some kind of fish or meat paste... Fruit juice, millk, and tea or coffee depending on the age and level of yuppie-hood of the person drinking. However, Australia has a LOT of immigrants. The breakfast listed above will still not be representative for many people living in Australia - but those immigrants are probably still not going to be eating beef, gravy, etc. for breakfast either.

There's more information about where Swatow/Shantou is located here. From the location, the cooking perhaps contains elements of both Cantonese and Chaozhou styles (?) Jo-mel, can you tell us more about the sweet pinecream soup in that book? And would you recommend the Shanghai book in general? I've been trying to recreate some of the dishes I ate years back in Shanghai, and am never fully happy with the results, so I'm hoping the book would take me further in the right direction.

I think Episure is talking about this. And if so, I'm jealous. Whenever I'm in Delhi and I try to buy murukku, the seller corrects me, and calls them chakli. If I ask for chakli, I get corrected to murukku... Sigh.

Nullo, how serious was the food poisoning you gave yourself? I'm presuming it was not too bad (?) I realise that it's not possible to convey tone when one is writing. This is NOT an attack here, I really want to know more about your position on the issue. And I'd also like to know your response to the following part of my post. In general, (i.e. not talking just to Nullo here) I've suffered really bad food poisoning six times in all (once in Hong Kong, twice in China, and three times at the hands of my mother in law in India until I finally wrested control of the kitchen there). It took my about two years to regain the weight that I lost in just a couple of weeks of food poisoning. This is why I can't imagine having a blase attitude. Personally, I've ended up with total paranoia. And the places I got food poisoning from? I would NEVER go back to them, not even if I were going to order different food items. Not even if I knew the place was under new ownership. And my MIL's cooking? Well, basically I will never again eat anything she makes. Ever. I was living in Osaka at the time when people were dying from the food poisoning outbreak there (E. coli 0157). To me, outright death is not that frightening, but what about the prospect of permanent kidney damage instead? If you spend some time in India, and read the newspaper regularly, you will come with depressing frequency across articles talking about mass cases of death and/or hospitalization due to cases of food poisoning. A lot of the ones that make it into print involve several HUNDRED people dying due to inproper food preparation at ONE single venue (weddings for example). If you live in India, it is pretty much guaranteed that you will know people, or will know of people, who are suffering from illness related to hygiene - dysentery, typhoid, etc. Some of them die. (BTW, I was living in the capital of India, not some obscure backwater). This type of thing fuels my paranoia even further. Nowadays, if I even think that a place is going to have bad hygiene - a lot of places locally sell doubtful (IMO) sushi, for example - I'm not going to give the place the benefit of the doubt, I'm just not going to go there. And when I have been at the home of friends and seen them lay out lettuce on the same chopping board that they earlier had raw meat lying on - and they have not even wiped down that chopping board - then I will not eat that lettuce and I will explain to them why not in the most polite and unconfrontational manner I can muster. Poor food hygiene can kill you - if you're lucky. If you're really unlucky, it can leave you in such a physical state that you'll wish it had killed you. We should all pay more attention to it.