Haggis

Last night I made an enormous batch of pea soup. I am usually quite successful with pea soup. Normally I use green split peas, however last night's was made with yellow split peas. I used three 1lb packages of yellow split peas and one 1lb package of dried whole green peas (which I pre-soaked). As a guidline for how much water to add, I went by the yellow peas' package directions for soup. Their recipe called for 3 quarts of water per lb which I thought was rather high. In fact a quick 'net search for pea soup recipes ranged from between 6 and 10 cups per lb of split peas, so I knew I was adding 2 cups per/lb more than the highest amount called for. Nevertheless, I reasoned that the manufacturer knew what they were doing, and that maybe yellow split peas could tolerate more water than the green variety (which I mostly doubted). I added a large quantity of chopped celery carrots onions and garlic. I did not add any water with the pound of dried soaked whole peas in mind, just the 9 quarts that the package allowed for the split yellows. I simmered for 3 and a half hours. The result? A thin, watery, almost broth-like consistency, not the thick hearty consistency I am used to. I knew I was going to have to fix it today with more peas. Which brings me to my questions: Given the amounts of everything quoted above, how much more peas should I add? In what form should I add the peas - more dried split, more dried whole, mashed frozen cooked, mashed canned? Should additional dried split peas be cooked separately with very little water as a concentrate to be added when soft, or should I reheat the entire batch for a couple of hours with the dried split peas? I realize I'll probably have to stir very often if I add split peas to the soup to keep them from sticking, even with my heavy copper-bottomed stock pot. One last thing - this morning as I examined the soup, it had separated into I'd say 1/3rd nearly clear liquid on top, and 2/3rds semi-thick pea concentrate on the bottom. Perhaps that visual can serve as a guideline to advise me on how much more peas to add. Thanks for all replies.

I use it very sparingly! You wouldn't want to add copious amounts of anything known as Dyvels drekk to anything you were about to eat, would you? (that is its Norwegian name). I usually let it dissolve in the oil or ghee as it cooks. I think it adds a very earthy flavor to a dish.

Well, I definitely enjoy a phaal in the fall, and some hing in da spring!

One possible reason why French food may not be seen as ethnic in the United States: nothing comes to mind when I try to think of a French neighborhood! The French seem not to have confined themselves to ghettos. This is true of every city or state I can think of. New Orleans is a unique exception, and guess what? I *do* think of Cajun/Creole food as ethnic, perhaps in small part because the Acadians and Creoles did concentrate themselves there. There are Germantowns all over the USA and lo and behold - German is definitely considered an ethnic cuisine. Same deal with Swedish food, especially smorgasbords. Germanic and Scandinivian folk are considered to be as white as anyone, yet because they have enclaved themselves upon immigration, their cuisine falls under the ethnic category. I bet if there were such a thing as a French section of Manhattan at the turn of the 20th Century, that French food would be seen as ethnic to this day. I'm no expert, but my guess is that some Anglo Canadians view French food in Quebec as ethnic food, and it probably has to do with there being such a thing as French neighborhoods there. Either that, or the inescapable fact that poutine is as ethnic as vindaloo ANY day!

Fat Guy, could I ask you to go out on a limb and say where you feel Otto's pizza ranks compared with your top picks as mentioned in this pizza article? There you rank your top 5 as Patsy's, Candido, Nick's, DeNino's, and DiFara. Might the pizza at Otto's fit somewhere in your top 5, thus supplanting one of the above? It may be too early for you to feel you can fairly rank Otto's pizza, so I will accept any ranking you may assign it as a very preliminary ranking. Thanks.

20 ounces according to Channel 5 News which had a nice report about it tonite.

Yes, Suvir, I'd love to have the recipe via PM. Yours too, Monica. Thank you both.

Everything looks scrumptious and beautifully plated. I am curious about the handful of those who opted for the vegetarian meal. Were they served their own vegetarian entrees, or were they simply given larger amounts of the vegetable dishes already listed?

Appropriate to the season, I am wondering how Indians prepare sweet potatoes and yams. This year I have been assigned to bring a sweet potato/yam dish to the Thanksgiving potluck that I will be attending on the day after Thanksgiving, and I thought I'd not make the usual candied dish with marshmallows, and make something with exotic spices. If no other suggestions appear, I will probably make mashed sweet potatoes with butter, yoghurt, ginger, green chiles, garam masala, cardamom, and cinnamon. I'll throw some thinly sliced crisp caramelized onion on top for flavor as much as garnish. Anyone have any tips on how to enhance or improve the above? Better still, what are some genuine recipes that Indians use to prepare sweet potatoes?

I think he meant this kind of faggot: edible faggot

Thanks for the speedy reply. I remember it being considerably better than the Greenwich Village vicinity triumverate of Riomar, Sevilla, and El Faro, but you're probably right - I need to sample Newark's offerings.

Though not in Newark, there used to be a very good Spanish restaurant not far away called Meson Madrid. Fabulous crustaceans, including particularly good garlic shrimp as an app. Anone know if this place still exists, and what town it is in?

How bout a Mulligatawny Nazi, or maybe a Sambar Storm Trooper or a Rassam ReichsFuhrer? Perhaps we can enlist the services of one Babu Baat. In all seriousness, Indian desserts are almost always dissed in reviews of Indian restaurants in America. Those with pedestrian tastes are warned that they are too cloyingly sweet, and should be skipped over. I've always thought this to be very unfair, even though I agree in part. What's needed are skilled dessert chefs, just off the boat, who can prepare the dishes as you and others remember them. How hard is THAT? I am one who has never been to India, so I do not know what I am missing. Still, I have had a handful of what I consider to be very good desserts in Indian restaurants over the years. The part of me that agrees with the caveats of the critics is the part that recognizes that it's a shame that it has only been a handful over the years. I have had good firni, good mango pudding, and good carrot halwah, but I have never had a decent gulab jaman or ras malai. I think American Indian restaurants would do well to cease describing Ras Malai as "deep fried cheese ball" despite its accuracy. Makes it sound unappetizing, dontcha think?

Cured meat on breakfast buffets notwithstanding, a good strategy for a successful buffet is avoid all red meat. Beef, pork and lamb just don't do well on a steam table or over a sterno. There may be some exceptions, for example a stew might soften as it heats. But definitely avoid things such as "carving stations". There is one very good buffet that serves red meat almost exclusively This is Moonlite BBQ in Owensboro, Kentucky. Their chopped mutton and lamb ribs are superb. Just about everything is good. But the type of meat they serve is slow-smoked to begin with. This type of meat survives a buffet atmosphere better than others. Another meat that can do well on a buffet is fried chicken. In New York, I like Charles' Southern Kitchen and Copeland's. Some of the best fried chicken I have ever tasted, buffet or otherwise, is to be found at The Inn at Science Hill in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Delicious, and totally greaseless. Across the river in Starlite Indiana there is Joe Huber's. This is a huge family farm that serves family style AYCE dinners. No buffet, rather, the servers bring you more of whatever you want. They serve very good fried chicken and ham, and all their veggies and sides are satisfying. If you are ever in Northern Kentucky or Southern Indiana, I highly recommend both of these places, as well as Moonlite BBQ a couple hours West of there.

When some folks try PL's steak for the first time, they often remark that it doesn't really have the charred taste they are used to. There are no cross hatch marks, and no overtly blackened areas. This is because PL broils their steak rather than grilling it. The result is an even browning of the surface. I have always loved the way PL does steak. If anyone is in the "don't like it cuz it doesn't taste charred" camp, I don't want to dissuade you from your opinion, but try an experiment. If you return to PL, try cutting into the steak and eating several pieces from just the center with no surface at all. I think you will agree that the taste of the meat itself is superior this way as measured against a similar test done at Sparks or Smith & Wollensky. S&W's steak tastes the most charred, in my opinion, followed by Sparks. All three places do steak great, but PL edges out the other two for sheer quality of the meat. Nina, in my opinion, the best way to prepare Black & Blue steak is by the dry skillet method. Have your beau (Tommy, is it? ) ask the waiter if the chef can prepare it this way for him. At home, I recommend the Craig Claibourne method. Dry cast iron skillet heated for 10 minutes on high heat. Then a sprinkling of table salt to coat the surface of the pan. Allow the salt to turn slightly brown, turn heat down to medium, then sear your inch and a half thick steak for 2 and a half minutes per side. Turn on the overhead exhaust if you have one, and by all means temporarily disconnect the smoke alarm!

I've had the buffet at Dakshin. I agree that it is above average. Two items stood out. The naan that arrived hot at my table, and the mango chutney, which had not been allowed to ferment as much as that dish usually ferments. The result was a golden color rather than brown. The taste was superior - I must have refilled my small condiment bowl 4 or 5 times with it. Saag paneer was also good, but the spinach was pureed a bit too fine for my taste, sort of like the consistency of spinach baby food, which, come to think of it, was my favorite of all the jarred baby foods.

Yes, Anil, it was helpful. Thanks for the confirmation about vadas/bhalla, and for the clarification regarding palak and saag. All this time I thought they were perhaps two different regional words for spinach. Now I know that when I once made a saag paneer with kale substituted for the spinach, that I was still being true to the name of the dish. Do you, or anyone else, know if there is any Indian restaurant in the NYC area which uses a green other than spinach in any of the preparations that are labeled as saag?

Is this the same dish that I have come to know as dahi bhalla? Certainly sounds like it. Is it one of those situations where the same dish is known by two different names, such as palak paneer and saag paneer? I enjoy this dish very much. Do you happen to know if Friday is a traditional day to serve it? Once, when deciding where to eat in Jackson Heights on a Friday, I noticed that three or four of the 74th Street joints offered dahi bhalla on their buffet that day. Is this dish considered a chaat? My instincts tell me it is chaat-like, but I have actually even seen it on an Indian menu as a condiment, of all things! That's right, some place (forget where now) offered dahi bhalla for $1.50 under their condiment section. However you categorize it, it is a beautiful dish to behold, and tastes sublime.

I'm with you on the cheese. Specifically habanero jack from Sonoma Cheese Factory, served on Triscuits, and topped with thinly shaved raw onion. Except it wouldn't be a surprise that I had all three ingredients, since I keep them regularly. Beer goes exceedingly well with this snack, but home alone at that hour, I may opt for a diet IBC root beer.

Thanks, Jordyn. I did a search and came up with shrimp as the other 'meat', at least according to Sietsema. Mini Review of BLCH (and others)

Are you implying that they could stick bits of cuy in there and I wouldn't even know it?

I'm curious about which meats/veggies this Phaal curry is offered in. Is it a set dish offered only one way, or do you have your choice as in Lamb Phaal, Chicken Phaal, etc?

It's pretty easy to ruin a dish by adding too much curry powder to it. Too much is usually not all that much. And of course any Indian dish is ruined by the addition of any whatsoever. I have heard Ming Tsai say that when leftovers were on its last legs, i.e. the 3rd or 4th day in the fridge, that's when his family would break out the curry powder to try and salvage it. I can tolerate some curry powder in a chicken salad, though I'd rather have fresh dill and black pepper. I think the dish I enjoy most where curry powder is used is West Indian rotis. It's perhaps because of this that I feel this spice blend is most honest when it is labeled Jamaican Curry Powder, instead of Madras. The flavor I smell and taste most in Curry powder is fenugreek. Sniff some fenugreek from the bulk bins next time you are buying spices at a health food store, and I think you'll agree with me. Or maybe not - our noses and palates may just be different.

Thanks, Suvir, that is kind of you to say. I do cook Indian food at home. I am not sure about its authenticity, but I can vouch for its tastiness. Mostly I try my hand at curries. My best dishes seem to be simple potato curry, saag paneer, and baingan bhartha. To flavor each of these I use garam masala, and lots of fresh chopped ginger, onion, garlic and green cayenne (which I understand is the most authentic chile to cook with if I want to replicate Indian cooking, is it not?) I will sometimes use serrano, thai bird, or plain old jalapenos if green cayenne is unavailable. I would love to be able to prepare the South Indian favorites, but I am sure that the results would be less than spectacular. I can make very good pancakes from scratch, but somehow I don't think that skill would translate equally to utthapams, would it? My current faves for NYC Indian restaurants are Pongal, Udipi Palace, and Madras Mahal for South Indian; Dimple for chaats and the curries on their buffet; Delhi Palace in Jackson Heights for traditional Mughlai cuisine and surprisingly good iddly, believe it or not; Chola and Utsav for upscale Indian dining (Chola especially, for its diverse regional menu); and Banjara for their Dumpakhts. These are curries that have a shell of pastry surrounding them, and are fun to eat, sort of like breaking through the browned cheese in French Onion Soup. I've never seen them before on any other Indian menu, and I wonder if they are a novelty, or if they are seen on Indian menus or homes in India. But you know, Suvir, Indian restaurants in NYC always seem to be in flux, with chefs jumping ship left and right. Though I feel confident that the above roster represents my favorites in July 2002, by October or November, I will probably have to drop one or two and add a few others. But that's ok, I enjoy the hunt, and am happy to have discovered eGullet and its Indian forum to help me track down leads. I know you enjoy Pongal and Dimple, Suvir, but I am wondering how my other crop of faves stack up against yours?

All the more reason for Cabrales to consider going. Rather than falling apart at the end, there is a small possibility that they will want to go out with a bang, and things could be great. I am hopeful in that way, sometimes. Are you able to recall, Fat Guy, if my beloved Karsky Shaslik was still on the menu?