Ducksredux

I just encountered them for the first time tonight, outside Deux Cheminees. Said they'll be back every Saturday night. Seems to me they could effect much greater social change if they were to stand at the corner of 56th and Kingsessing and protest the murder rate. Tried the Moulin Mahjoub today - very grassy indeed. The DiBrunos folks are all fans of Marques de Valdueza but it wasn't in my budget this time.

yeah, but how often have you had to dry roast an onion with a bunch of other spices mixed in? It's weird, and weird stuff like that should have notes. Maybe I'll keep it for the photos, or maybe sell it. To get back the main topic, we have a new tiffin place in Philadelphia which also has a restaurant. There are about 3 entrees per day for delivery, or the regular menu which has dozens. It's interesting how much more distinctive, fresh, and delicious the 3 delivery entrees are than the regular menu. I'm guessing because they make such large quantities of the three dishes a day they actually cook the meat/vegetables in the curry rather than adding them at the end.

Ader, I suggest you buy the book, then you will see the other recipes and hopefully forget about the 'curry sauce' approach; at best, it may save time, at worst, its generic gunk, IMHO. cheers Waaza ← I've actually been having trouble with the book. Her directions are extremely vague. She often doesn't tell you why you are doing a step and what you should be looking for, only the amount of time you should cook it for. Most recent one that flopped for me was her chicken in black spices, where you roast a bunch of wet and dry ingredients for 15 minutes or so before blending and then frying them. My other cookbooks like dakshin, sahni, batra, and a couple others all tell you what to look for when doing something.

but see, the problem with that is, then i'd have to have an indian wife to make it for me at home. and i don't have one of them. hence the need for tiffin. ← Since it's too late for me (American wife who claims she's French) I've been working on my brother and my brother-in-law to marry an Indian woman.

ordered from them for the first time last night and I'll be buying a package of 23 meals. Fresh, good, cheap and delivered.

Jim, I've been to events catered by them and they are indeed the real deal. I am interested in getting some of this smoked salmon for Thanksgiving but don't need too much, half pound at the most given everything else we'll be having. Where in Bucks are they? ← They're in Buckingham (roughly btwn Richboro and New Hope), if memory serves. They were featured in Saveur 2 or 3 yrs ago. I'm pretty sure Cote & Co resells their lox... Cote & Co is in Doylestown on 611 off of Swamp Rd in th Cross Keys shopping center (great bakery there too). While you're up there there's a great salad greens place on 413 north of 232 and south of 263. Also there's a raw milk place nearby which u can find on realmilk.com would give links and more info but baby asleep on left arm

Erawan on 25th and Sansom serves up spicy Thai food if you call in advance and tell them you want an authentic Thai dinner Chowhound - Erawan thread if you want spicy Indian make sure you let your server know that you want "Indian hot" not just plain hot. As far as where for Indian well I'm no huge fan of anywhere within the city limits. There's Desi Village in Langhorne, and Khajuraho in Ardmore...

Philadelphia. Was skeptical of their fries at first because I thought Maoz sounds Hebrew not Belgian but the Frites shop on 2nd Ave and like 7th street in manhattan is/was owner by Israelis and wasn't bad (not as good as the defunct B. Frites on 52nd or the ex-place on 4th st and 6th Ave but better than the one on Ave A and Houston).

I just wanted to add my own Maoz story although its been at least half a year since my only trip there. I ordered my fries, and the girl behind the counter brought a package of fries out and put it in the receptacle. I took them, went off down the street, and ate a few of them, but then realized that it was the wrong size and these weren't my fries. I wrapped them up, brought them back, stuck it back in the receptacle for completed orders and the girl behind the counter gave it to someone else and then got my fry order out. I got some sauce on them somehow, despite the sneezeguard being so low that I clunked my hand with the sauce ladle all over it spilling stuff everywhere, and despite zero help from the girl who admitted to not being able to speak English. Totally disorganized, run by chimpanzees, and the fries weren't any good. And the sauces were salad dressings. Dunno about their falafel.

Got me a Thai coconut stool and I'm loving it!

You lose about 20 IQ points when the baby hasn't been sleeping. Pauses in the middle of sentences can be 5 or 10 seconds to stare off into space. My girl wakes up only once now. I will definitely try this again with smaller lemons and for only 24 hrs, and wait for a sunny and hot day. My daughter needs her daddy to live! SDSeth, I guess I would never consider cooking spoiled meat to get rid of the bacteria, so your right it makes no sense to do it with lemons.

Thanks for the replies, they clarify a lot. Thing is she always details which ingredients are available here vs. there and modifies her recipes accordingly. But it seems to me that in the past few years fruits here have become monstrous in size and far less tasty, and this book was written decades ago. The English version says 6 lemons in the juice of 3 more, but I think weighing ingredients isn't an American thing, so your version is probably more accurate. Is that 900 grams total or 600 grams pickled and 300 grams juiced? Sahni has lived in Brooklyn for at least 30 years, this book has been around for like 20, so surely this isn't intended for New Mexico style hot and dry weather, or for Indian summers. I'm in Philadelphia which has almost the same climate as Brooklyn: when it's very hot it's almost always very humid. But as much as I worship her she's surely not infallible (or always descriptive enough). So assuming that the bacteria go to town on my pickle in the next few days, would cooking and bringing it to a boil kill off anything that'd kill me off, or should I just chalk this one up to experience?

It's been about 19 hours so far. The thing with the lemons is even if they were in an incredibly wide jar instead of a tall one they'd only be sitting in the juice, rather than covered by it. Maybe lemons as a rule were much much smaller when she published this book?

Howdy! Having for now turned my back on my coconut obsession (I got a $2 grater at the Vietnamese grocery which doesn't work very well at all) I've turned my front to pickling. I tried two pickles from Julie Sahni's books today, a lemon pickle from Classic Indian Cooking and a carrot pickle in mustard oil from her Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking. The lemon pickle calls for 6 lemons to be stuffed with cumin, pepper and salt, stuffed in a jar with the juice of 3 lemons poured on top. It then sits for 7 days before being boiled with sugar and stuff. So I'm not understanding what the lemon juice is for if the lemons aren't even sitting in it. Should they be? Seems like not enough lemon juice if that's the case. Also, is this sanitary or is this a breeding ground for bacteria? The carrot pickle calls for carrot sticks to be tossed in spices (crushed mustard seeds, red pepper, salt and turmeric), fried in oil and lemon juice and then jarred for several days. I have some carrots poking out the top of the oil... will they be fine or should I either squeeze them down or open it up and throw the poker-outers away? Is any of this sanitary or sane? Any help much appreciated.

so I've gone to three different Indian groceries in Philadelphia, including a mega-one, and can't find a coconut grater. Ideally I'd find sometjing like this Coconut grater Anyone know where I might find this?

it was either a ravioli maker attachment for the kitchenaid stand mixer or a beautiful saute pan with the $100 Williams Sonoma gift certificate we got as a wedding present. I kept saying "but kids LOVE Ravioli." So far we've used it once cause our baby is too young to love it yet. She loves my dal though!

ah, forgot to check the archives, thanks. I'll avoid the green ones. I'd love to get one of those crazy coconut graters but my wife would call it the stupidest purchase since the ravioli maker. Maybe I can buy it without her knowing. I used a face shield tonight while opening a coconut. Worked alright and didn't lose an eye, although I did cut my hand grabbing a falling knife. The reason I stopped baking the coconut was that it seemed that the coconut was getting cooked and losing some flavor. Is that crazy?

Howdy! I have some general coconut questions concerning picking out and opening a coconut. Does Indian food usually/aways use brown coconuts, or sometimes green or does it not matter? Is there any way to tell before you buy it if the coconut is rotten, or do you just have to open it and taste the water? I look for uncracked heavy coconuts that you can hear the swishing of the water inside, but this has been fallible. Julei Sahni says cracking a coconut using the back of a knife or cleaver is dangerous. She recommends piercing the eyes, baking it for half an hour, wrapping it in a towel, whacking it and then whacking it some more. I've tried it both ways and much prefer whacking it with the back of a knife to baking it. Why is this unsafe? What body part of mine am I endangering? Should I be wearing goggles? A gauntlet? Chain mail? Buying life insurance?

Yah, somebody named Ravi (owner?) had a heart attack and it's been curtained ever since.

Madhur Jaffrey rejoices in the mangoes for nuclear energy deal btwn India and the US in an Op Ed in today's NY Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/opinion/12jaffrey.html

So I guess there's lots of starch in the chickpea juice. Thanks, that makes sense. Does the starch absorb water faster if the water is hotter? Like in a risotto I would add boiling water (or stock), so should I heat this water up first before adding it to increase absorption? A clarification: I reread the recipe and it says "a pulpy gravy" not a thick pulpy gravy. And it was freaking delicious.

Howdy! Currently have Julie Sahni's Chickpeas in Ginger Sauce from Classic Indian Cooking on the stove, but I've encountered a problem that seems to be recurring with many of her recipes. After frying some onion, garlic and ginger, adding some spices and some chopped tomato, I'm supposed to add the chickpea juices and some water, reduce the heat to low, simmer for about 10 minutes or until its reduced to a thick pulpy gravy. But isn't reducing when the water cooks off? So how can it reduce if it's covered? Sure isn't thickening while covered. My wife always yells at me to not put any water in at all, but I feel her approach can't be right either.

So all restaurants use a curry base and cook their meat in a tandoor? What differentiates the good restaurants from the bad, aside from some restaurants taking some extra time to add ingredients? Is that the only way to get slow-cooked food to the table in 15 minutes? Should I be looking for more painstakingly prepared food at the buffet, since they can make larger quantities at once?

I'm reading Panjabi's "The Great Curries of India" now and she talks about daag being a "fried onion, ginger, garlic, tomato and spice masala mixture"(p.20) which can be refrigerated for a couple of weeks. She says it is a shortcut for making curry - "heat a few spoonfuls of it with some oil, add the meat, chicken, fish or vegetables, and saute... I'm curious if this is one of the shortcuts that many restaurants take. Seems like they couldn't possibly make so many different slow-cooked dishes in one day with three different meats.

The Langhorne one is under new management. Used to love it but since the change it has not been extraordinary.