anzu

To do justice to the topic as to WHY certain foods are good and others are bad in France would require at least a PhD length dissertation. In fact, the issue of why certain types of ethnic cuisine take off in certain ways in certain countries is indeed the subject of sociological and historical research. Lacking both the time and the energy for an in-depth post, I'll confine myself to pointing out a few issues which do affect the way ethnic food develops, and which have not yet been mentioned here. These comments are in additon to the posts above. All of these are pointing away from the thesis that there is something 'in French culture' that is inhibiting the development or acceptance of non-French cuisine. a) how developed is the restaurant scene in the originating country? People have mentioned that Indian food in France is often lousy, and this is something I would agree with. One needs to bear in mind, though, that restaurant food in India itself is even now (frequently) pretty awful. Traditionally, orthodox Hindus did not eat out in restaurants, as they could not be sure about the caste of those preparing and handling the food. Restaurant-going is a very recent phenomenon in India, and a lot of what is served in those restaurants is mediocre and generic "Mughlai" North Indian food served in overly heavy sauces. It has very little relationship with the food eaten in peoples' homes, and gives no indication of the huge regional variations in culinary styles within India. The other foods commonly served in Indian restaurants in India are a generic 'southern' repertoire, such as idlis and dosa. Again, the food is hardly wide-ranging or representative. In the thread on Mexican food in France (I think it was in this thread), one of the posters mentioned that the food was prepared almost as a caricature of itself. It's a good phrase, but it's also worth remembering that the food may actually be prepared as a caricature of itself in the originating country also, and that bad food in France (in this case) may actually have very little to do with the food habits of the French. b) one should not look only at the role of immigrants in raising awareness of new tastes. Holiday destinations and thus the personal experiences of the diners also play a large part in this. Sorry, I can't actually provide the references, but the correlation between travel and the furtherment of 'ethnic' food preferences has been researched. If, for some reason, more French people were to start travelling to Mexico, for example, you can be quite sure that the standard of Mexican food available in France would start improving drastically, as would demand for this cuisine. So again, I wouldn't say that it is French culinary habits, or even a dislike of spiciness, that are influencing the issue. c) EU regulations. It is relatively easy for a person whose citizenship is from one EU country to go to another EU country and get a job. This means, for example, that an Italian can go to France and open a restaurant or an ice cream parlour, or work in such a place, with an AWFUL lot less hassle than a non EU citizen would face (who has to prove expertise in their skill, argue that there is no-one in the entire EU who could do the same job, etc.). Now, this might mean that the Italian food (in this example) available will be better or worse than it otherwise would be. I really don't know enough to say. But it will certainly mean that authentic offerings of certain types of cuisine will be more difficult to come by, and will explain the increased likelihood of those cuisines being offered by someone whose ethnic background is far removed from that which they are offering. d) because of c) the influence of the 'ethnic cuisine' in neighouring EU countries should not be overlooked, as this can also influence the way this cuisine develops in France. One example of this here. The Chinatown area of London used to be (maybe still is?) almost entirely dominated by people from one small village in the rural hinterland of Hong Kong. (There is an academic paper on this, I'm not talking anecdotally here). This happened through a process of 'chain migration' (i.e. families who have already emigrated and have citizenship in the new country sponsor relatives to emigrate, so that more and more people from the same area arrive in the new country). Naturally enough, this means that the food available in London's Chinatown in not just Hong Kong dominated in flavor, but is also going to have a certain sameness of offering and presentation. As the number of immigrants grew, people who originated from this village moved out from London into other parts of the UK, but continued to work in food and food-related indutries. They also began moving into the continent, and their destinations include Paris. Therefore, the food offered in their restaurants to some extent reflects the food of a small village near Hong Kong, but also reflects the menu items that have become 'traditional' in UK Chinese restaurants. There is a very similar scenario with the people opening and working in Indian restaurants, some of whom have gone to France via the UK, and are offering UK "Indian restaurant" food. So to discuss why this food is presented the way it is in France, one would have to look first at the entire 'curry' and 'curry house' issues of the UK. The above list is far from exhaustive, and I don't disagree with what other posters have written. However, I think you've got my drift that, IMO, the popularity (or lack thereof) and quality (or lack thereof)) of non-French cuisines in France do not reside in something in French culinary culture, but instead have a lot more to do with historic and legal factors.

No, it's not the same stuff. This place also sells the smoked tofu you're talking about, and I don't know what is traditionally done with that either. And for Seitch: they list the ingredients on the pack, and sesame is not included (though of course such listings are not always accurate). Doesn't say anything about the type of soy beans, so maybe you're right that there is a difference there (?)

I am relatively sure that in India, a 'cup' refers to 200 ml, and not to 250. This is true for most of Asia, in fact. (Asia being referred to here in the broadest possible sense.) So any recipe from anywhere between (pretty much) Turkey and Japan that calls for a cup is usually referring to 200 ml. Unless, of course, they are actually referring to some other physical type of cup that they have in their own home.That is often the case. Similarly, I was given a lot of recipes in one place with all the quantities given in katoris (small metal bowl), and had to go out and buy a katori in that town so that I could use it as a reference when i got home. I can't help with the actual murukku making, though. Mine have always failed miserably. My SIL makes them fine, but the recipe is very different from yours. She steams the rice and urad flour first, then makes the dough, forms them on wax paper first so they have the right shape, and then fries them. When I followed that recipe, I still ended up with a horrible failure. Do keep us posted though, when you have seen how your MIL does it. Maybe success will someday be mine/ours.

Can I put in a vote for blancmange here? I think because it had so many versions - chicken, the Lenten version with fish, etc., has undergone so many variations, and spans such a wide geographical area - it would really be a lot of fun to play around with this one. For myself, I'd also consider doing a side by side comparison with similar contemporary Indian and Turkish dessert dishes that contain chicken, as well, just to see. And a question to Adam concerning your photo above. What are the red/crimson diamonds? Edited to add: maybe I'm being too hasty. Which were the pies you had in mind?

Actually, yes. They were actually invented by the Japanese. See here for a brief discussion of surimi and kamaboko They're not going to be eaten as sashimi or sushi though. Re samosas. I'm not sure they would be microwaving them. Or is what you're getting not just lackluster, but flabby as well? My personal peeve is with 'samosas' that aren't. A layer of filo wound around some type of filling is NOT a samosa. Edited to add: I have to take back what I said about not using surimi in sushi. I can well imagine surimi being added to hand-rolled sushi made at home in Japan. After all, anything goes in the privacy of your own home, so why not? It certainly is not going to be as widespread as the use of surimi in the US though. Also, a link to various fish stick type products in the Japan forum here. This is the place for discussion of other fish products too , like chikuwa. and (as ever) Kristin has provided some fascinating links.

Even though you've already decided against marinade, I thought it wouldn't hurt to add this. My closest friend is Vietnamese, and had a whole roasted pig at her wedding reception. They did not marinade it. So you have at least one authentic precedent backing up your decision as well.

My mother - who avoids alcohol in all forms and always has - always uses brewed tea to rehydrate any fruits to be used for baking. I believe a lot of other people do too as all the community-type cook books she has aquired over the years also suggest rehydrating with tea.

You do know that the pulp can be frozen uncooked, don't you? My brother in Australia does this all the time. Simply thaw out later and use as desired.

I have a (historical) variation on this recipe somewhere or other (digging it out from the mounds of paper it is buried among would take more time than I can spare right now), that adds a tiny bit of rose water into the mix. Are you still in the midst of playing around with the recipe? If you have have rose water at home, would you maybe be interested in trying a little with that variation and reporting back? BTW, I couldn't get your link to work.

I used to know the full answer to this, but have forgotten most of the details. Others will surely correct what I have wrong. It's not a ranking. There used to be (still is?) a shop (chain of shops?) in Vietnam that had the name Pho and then a number (I've forgotten which number the original was). The number referred - I believe - to the number of variations they had on the menu. As the original shop had a very good reputation, the name ended up getting recycled in various versions as people were trying to establish a link in customers' minds between the high quality of the original famous place and the quality of their own offerings. Cashing in on their fame, so to speak

Can you say more? Which brand, for example? It wasn't 'golden rice' was it? That's the stuff that has been parboiled before milling. The colour and the texture are indeed somewhat different. I was told off by a cook in India for making my pilaf/pulao (whatever you want to call it) with regular Basmati, when he insisted it should only be made with golden rice...

I'm going to add two qualifying statements here (not disagreeing with anything Waaza said above, just trying to head off any problems before they happen). 1. Qualifying what constitutes a suitable pan. Of course the rice should be able to fit in once cooked, but that's not all there is to it. That is, don't use a pan which is very tall and not very wide. If you do, you might end up with undercooked rice even though you cooked it for the time stated. 2. Getting the heat right under the pan once you've turned the heat down. Stoves vary tremendously, and with a few of them you simply CAN'T get the heat right for this. I've been cooking rice for decades for virtually every meal, and never had a problem. Then just recently I moved. New stove. Burnt rice. Now I have to use a flame tamer under the pot even when I have the heat turned down to the lowest setting. This is something I never had to do before. So, conditions do vary. And two questions to Waaza. 1. Murky water the soaking rice would be sitting in? I learnt to wash my rice in China and Japan, and was always taught to wash it until the water ran clear (the starch-containing water from this is quite good if you save it and you use it for watering plants, by the way.) In Japan, in particular, it was emphasized that the very first washing should be done rapidly and the washing water should be poured off quickly, otherwise the rice begins to absorb the murky water that you're discussing here, and will actually taste different. Subsequent washing can be a bit more leisurely. However, I can't see any situation where it would be sitting in murky water. (?) 2. If you're talking about basmati in the U.S., would this actually have vitamins etc. added to it? Won't it be imported from India, and be without the U.S additives? I used to buy Indian rice in the U.S., but I can't remember if it was plain, or if stuff had been added. Personally, I would be in favor of washing, as if it's from India hygiene can be a bit lacking sometimes. It might not just be dust from the milling process you're washing away, but real honest-to-goodness Indian dirt as well. Not to mention the occasional stone, piece of string, nail, etc.

I've been meaning to ask this question for some time. Fundamentally, I want to know how separate 'separate' is when talking about meat and dairy. Perhaps this would be approached most easily simply by narrating the incident that prompted this question. A few years back, a supermarket close to where I lived began stocking a very small selection of kosher products in the refrigerated section (earlier no such products had been stocked). They only had about a foot of space, though, and dealt with the space restriction by piling a lot of stuff together. Some of the food that was all jumbled in together was meat products, and cheese. Both were wrapped very thoroughly in plastic. Now, I understand that it's the cooking of meat and dairy that is a problem, but seeing meat and dairy all mixed together like that really got me wondering if someone who kept kosher (their intended customers!) would actually have found this acceptable. So, okay or not okay?

Oh, that's right. Make us all jealous. Now I have to dig out my books on mithai and actually make something.

Oh, remembered a couple more. Chicken in Cantonese = prostitute. Did anyone mention yet about not being a "spring chicken"?

I seem to be on a daikon roll here (as it were)... In Japanese again, a daikon actor is a bad actor, i.e. a ham actor in English. Two food-related insults for the price of one.

In Japan, 'daikon ashi' (daikon legs). Describing women whose legs are shaped like, well, daikon. And all too often given maximum and unflattering exposure in a mini-skirt.

I read somewhere (don't remember where - mind like a sieve ) that it is better to use somewhat stale bread for making summer pudding. Yes? No? If yes, why?

There were, by the way, threads on fenugreek in the India forum some time back. See here. I am fairly sure that Suvir Saran also wrote SOMEWHERE in Egullet about fenugreek seeds being a good match with savoury Indian pumpkin dishes. I just spent about 15 minutes searching and could not find the reference though.

codling /coddling/codlin definition here. Another source also mentioned them as 'apples suitable for coddling'. I.e. gently stewed (c/o coddled eggs for example). Also the reference to apples turns up with coddling/coddlin moths (species of apple worm).

One of my local Asian groceries sells black bean curd as well as bright yellow bean curd. Both are labelled 'Singapore style', and are pressed bean curd. Well, I've heard of sweet black bean curd, but this stuff isn't sweet. And I've heard of black bean curd from various parts of China (isn't this a specialty of Shanghai and surroundings?) but I've never heard of it from Singapore. BTW, apologies if the Shanghai statement is really wrong. I had searched for it earlier on the internet, but can't remember the details. And I was just trying to search for it in Chinese, but Google wasn't cooperating with my Chinese at the moment - kept searching for 'heiheidoufu' even though I'd typed in 'heidoufu'. Weird... So, is anyone familiar with pressed, unsweet, yellow or black bean curd? Any suggestions for what to do with it? I'm presuming one could just treat it as you would any pressed bean curd?

I'm not in Chicago. However, I think a ban on smoking in restaurants is a great idea. Try living in a place like here, where about 75% (allegedly) of the entire population smokes and seeing children as young as 12 or 13 smoking in public is quite common. Not only is smoking in restaurants the norm, I used to live near a shopping mall where smoking was banned (in itself a wondrous and rare thing for here). In the food area, however, was a large sign telling patrons that, although the rest of the place was non-smoking of course they could smoke in the food area (their italics). I know of only two non-smoking restaurants in the whole of Berlin, and both of these serve only vegetarian food - if you don't want to inhale the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes while eating, then you must be a hippy, granola-eating, vegetarian type, right? Nothing wrong with the food in those two restaurants, but personally I'd like to have a little more choice, and I'm dammed if I'm going to spend an entire restaurant meal trying to avoid the cigarette smoke from every single adjoining table when people are lighting up while waiting for the food to arrive, between each course AND after the meal. The last restaurant meal I ate here, there were over forty cigarettes smoked in the time for us to walk into the restaurant, and order and eat one course. And this was from an occupancy of five tables including our own non-smoking table. And no, we did not linger for dessert or coffee, though we probably would have otherwise. I've given up entirely eating in restaurants in Germany except during the height of summer when one can sit outside (and even then you're still likely to get lungfuls of other peoples' smoke), and after Italy has just instituted a nation-wide ban on smoking in all eating establishments, it has shot to the top of my list for places I want to visit for eating purposes. I truly don't believe I'm alone in avoiding all restaurants because of intolerable amounts of smoke. And I don't believe that smokers are going to stop eating out if they can't smoke inside restaurants. (If there were some places which were forced to ban smoking on their premises, while others were not, that would be unfair, and yes those restaurateurs would maybe lose out. On the other hand, they might acutally get an increased clientele because of customers like me). I don't think banning smoking in restaurants is an indication of a nanny state. If cigarette smoking were banned altogether, perhaps, but that would be a different issue. I'm not telling other people that they're not allowed to smoke, but doing it where it's interfering big time with my eating pleasure is highly inconsiderate. Hey, why not just come up to my table and sneeze or spit in my food while you're at it? What the law is doing is preventing smokers who are inconsiderate enough to smoke in a confined space from engaging in this habit. Sounds fair enough to me.

About two decades back, a company in Australia started selling soft-serve ice cream (if it can be called that) made only from fruit and some type of gum they were using as a stabilizer. No sugar or anything else whatsoever. The flavors on offer varied according to whatever fruit was most available at that particular time, but peach and apricot were (to my mind) the best. It was absolutely delicious, with absolutely nothing masking the flavor of the fruit. After eating it, you felt that sugar, milk, etc. in conventional ice cream were just getting in the way of the flavor. Really. After it, you didn't want to go back to eating ice cream. In texture, it was just like ice cream, not like sorbet. It has since disappeared from the market. I went back to Australia on my last visit with high hopes, and couldn't find it anywhere. All of the snack bars and such places that used to sell it no longer stock it. The product sold in supermarkets under the original name is now a very ho-hum sorbet with a host of other ingredients added. Anyone inspired by this? Want to help me search for the holy grail of fruit 'ice cream'? According to the company way back when, all it contained was fruit, and a gum that they resolutely kept secret.

My Rajasthani neighbour simply called this dish 'Methi ki sabzi'. As a (not very good) but relatively literal translation of that, I'd call it 'Fenugreek as a vegetable'. I had really been expecting a dish with the green leaves when she first told me about it and had called it by this name. Incidentally, Tarla Dalal has a book on Rajasthani cooking (called Rajasthani Cookbook ) in which she also has a recipe with cooked soaked fenugreek seeds. She's called it 'methi ki launji', and it contains a LOT of sugar and jaggery in addition to the seeds. It's very much sweet and sour, also containing cumin, asafoetida, amchur (unripe mango dried and powdered), dates, sultanas, turmeric, chilli, and coriander. I haven't actually tried this dish. As a variation on the Methi ki sabzi above , the seeds can be allowed to sprout, and are then cooked in the same way (I'd forgotten that till you mentioned sprouted methi, Milagai). Indian sprouted dals are usually cooked while still quite short, a lot shorter than Chinese mung bean sprouts. In this case, about half an inch or even less is the stage at which you would cook them for this dish. Fenugreek starts sprouting very quickly, so sprouting is not that time-consuming a task. I can't remember how much time it actually takes - I never paid attention, but simply did it. Milagai: sprouted methi jam?? Please do dig out the recipe! Eden: this is a new one for me! I had only come across the green leaves being used in qorme sabzi. Are you using the seeds whole or do you powder them after heating them first, and then add them to the dish? Fenugreek is not just there in quite large quanties in commercial curry powders, but the seeds are also apparently used in the manufacture of artifical maple syrup flavoring. I came across powdered fenugreek seeds sold in LARGE packets in Paris in shops catering to the Maghrebi community. Can anyone tell me how it is being used by them? I did actually buy some out of curiosity, but found it went stale very quickly as it was already ground.

Ahah! Eden, you must surely be using the green vegetable part of it while I have been talking about the seeds. There are also many Indian recipes where the leaves of fenugreek, both fresh and dried, are used. Any Google search with methi as a key word should bring up a lot of hits. For the Rajasthani recipe, a note first. Rajasthani food is VERY hot. When my neighbour cooked this for me, the entire dish was red from the powdered chilli. I have reduced it here, although you can of course increase it again if you like hot food. As you can see, it's not being cooked in quite the same manner as a standard dal preparation, but it's certainly not being used as a spice either! Half cup (unsoaked) fenugreek seeds 1 and a half tablespoons oil 1 onion, finely chopped 4 to 5 cloves garlic Half teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon chili powder Half teaspoon turmeric 1 and a half teaspoons coriander powder Bring water to a boil, add the fenugreek seeds. Boil 5 minutes, then remove from the heat and set aside 10-15 minutes to soften. Drain. Heat the oil, add the onions and cook till beginning to turn golden. Meanwhile, mash the garlic to a paste with 2 or 3 tablespoons of water, and add all powdered spices to the mashed garlic. Once the onions have started to turn golden, add the garlic and spice mix. Keep cooking, stirring frequently, until all the liquid has dried up. The garlic and spices will fry together with the onion. This second frying stage usually takes about 8-10 minutes. Add a SMALL amount of water to the dish any time it looks as if it will burn, although essentially you want to fry and not boil. Add the boiled, drained fenugreek, fry together with the onion mixture for 1-2 minutes then add a few tablespoons of water. The exact amount is a matter of taste, but the dish should be quite dry. If boiling the fenugreek and frying the onion simultaneously, the dish takes about 35 minutes start to finish. This will serve 4, if served with other dishes. Re the word sabzi in Persian. Yes, it's derived from sabz, meaning green, and is used to refer to herbs. If used in the plural, though, it's used to refer to vegetables in general (at least this is my understanding). Sabzi has also been taken into Hindi as a loan word from Persian, and is used generically to mean vegetable - including those which are not green. And while on the subject of words and their meanings, I believe hilba and halba, both referred to above, are variant pronunciations of the Arabic for fenugreek. And the English name is derived from Latin, and means 'Greek hay.' Someone stop me! A veritable goldmine of worthless trivia...