Jenni

I always say hot chocolate when it's made with actual chocolate (and therefore has cocoa butter and is richer and thicker) and hot cocoa when it's made with cocoa powder.

I spend about £30 a week on food, plus an extra £40 or so a month for spices, dal, etc. So yeah, seems like a high figure to me!

I have never actually had a server get my order wrong doing it this way, but it makes me so nervous that I actually feel very uncomfortable. I get really worried they will mess things up!

There's nothing better than aloo paratha, yoghurt, and some nice achar for brekkie. Particular favourites of mine are mango or lemon. Or mooli-cauliflower. Or green chilli. Ok, so I lied, I don't have a favourite! Can't go wrong with pickles with upma either actually...

The Uk company Pukka Herbs makes some very nice herbal teas. Their "Three Ginger" is fantastic as is their "Three Tulsi", and I also like "Detox", "Cleanse" (don't be put off by the names - detox is a great tea after a meal due to it's digestive herbs and cleanse is a plesent nettle-mint-dandelion combo), "Night Time"...there are tonnes more.

I notice that Quilon has kept it's star this year, which I find interesting, as my family and I went to Quilon last Friday. I have to say, I was rather disappointed by it. Some of the dishes were very good, other dishes were distinctly average. Decor was lovely and staff were friendly and attentive, but there were some blips in the service such as when my lassi came and it was rather warm. I would probably give it another shot in the future, as some dishes did show promise, but considering the price and the michelin star I was not very impressed.

Sofra is an excellent choice for breakfast. As well as full english and veggie full english they have "mediterranean breakfast" (cheese, bread, jam, eggs), lots of eggy dishes (some with spicy sausages, also menemen which is with green peppers and onion), pide, halloumi, etc. They also have a build your own including feta, sauteed spinach and other interesting things. They also have an enormous choice of teas - from green, through black to white. Service is excellent, and we received lots of extras like fresh orange juice and hot chocolate shots, plus a bread basket with warm crusty bread, butter and rose petal jam.

Another language related thing that is really annoying is when the menu uses the right word for something in a different language, and then sticks a word in English in that duplicates it. "Chai tea", "yoghurt lassi", "lentil dal"...you get the idea. Actually, I hate it full stop when I hear dal translated as lentil.

Carob molasses mixed with tahini, eaten on good bread. And it's not a silly substitute recipe, it's a traditional combo, a bit like grape molasses and tahini. Not sure of any other traditional uses, apart from drinks. Would be interested in seeing if any chefs have done something modern and interesting though.

^^^ Fair enough. I wasn't trying to nit-pick, I was just interested. Don't want you to miss out on anything

I always thought that churan was the powder (often ayurvedic formulas come in churan form, to be taken with ghee or milk or some other substance as medicine) and if it was made into a pill it was goli. Jeera goli is one common goli. They look like this to me, only not very round. ETA: You know, I think I am thinking of churna, which is the ayurvedic formula in powdered form. Confusingly I have heard and seen people use churan instead, maybe a mis-spelling or another term. Either way, I can see how these are relate to them, and they do seem similar to goli.

I would agree with MJX on this - just because it has been appropriated for use as a chocolate substitute doesn't mean it is necessarily bad. I know it's used in the middle east and egypt to make drinks, and probably other things. I had an egyptian drink made from carob once, I seem to remember liking it. It is an ingredient in it's own right, away from the chocolate substitution thing. Surely a good chef might utilise it in an interesting way and it might be a really nice dish?

^^ Because you don't like it as an ingredient? Or because you feel the name is bad in some way?

Ok, so are these two more because you don't like such dishes, or do you find something wrong with the name? I am intrigued...

I think they have a completely different flavour, and would never use one to sub for the other.

This will not help you, but I think the papaya tree is a beautiful tree, mostly by virtue of its rather lovely leaves. On a more helpful note, wikipedia says the leaves can be steamed and eaten like spinach and here'sa recipe for spicy pork with papaya leaves.

You should definitely look to the Caribbean for some interesting salt cod (commonly called salt fish there) recipes. My favourite (though my Trini blood does make me biased) is Buljol. Served with fresh bakes and you have a true Trinidadian breakfast.

Oh I should point out that I don't buy baby leaf spinach, just mature (hmm that makes it sound weird!) fresh spinach. Babyl leaf spinach is way too expensive but I can get a pound of non-baby leaf fresh spinach for £1.50 so it's not too bad.

I find that frozen spinach has a very different texture to fresh, and it certainly has less flavour than the fresh spinach I can get. I try to use fresh whenever I can. Having said that, frozen spinach seems ok as a "bulking agent" in mixed veg dishes.

Word of warning: I'm not a ketchup fan anyway so I may not be qualified to participate in this discussion! It occurred to me that Heinz do many ketchup products, including organic, and also their UK product does not contain corn syrup. So what product are you actually comparing?

I've heard of diet bread. I was under the impression that the slices were merely smaller and "airier" so basically you just get less bread per serving.

I was simplifying when I said rice cooked in milk . Basically it is rice pudding. ETA: We need gautam to tell us more about all of this!

There are some pretty good records of food in ancient India because of old religious and medical texts which mention food. Some of the dishes are still made today in a near identical form, whilst others have changed quite a bit. We must remember that ancient India did not have potatoes, tomatoes or chillies. However, turmeric, cardamom (ginger is also from the same family as these two, so it may have been around pretty early but I cannot find a source), pepper and mustard were all cultivated by 3000BC (source: this webpage). Barley was probably one of the oldest grains, but wheat was also pretty ancient. Mung, masoor and urad dal are mentioned in very old Sanskrit texts. Aubergine and sesame were also very early cultivated plants. Bajra and ragi (both kinds of millet) came from Africa pretty early on. Jowar, another kind of millet, may also have come from Africa although it was also an important grain in ancient China so it may have come from there. Sugarcane was a native plant had very early on. Since wheat was also available, it is possible that sweetened pancakes or other kinds of cakes were made quite early on. There are other ancient plants that were available too, but these that I have mentioned are examples that are well known and used today. A few examples of ancient dishes still made today (that I could find references for, and that aren't as generic as "dal" and "flat breads"): Payasa (rice cooked in milk) is mentioned in Buddhist-Jain canonical literature in 400BC according to food historian K. T. Achaya. Today it is called payasam in the South, payesh in Bengal and kheer in the North. This page claims to have a 2000 year old recipe for payasa, still cooked in some form in the Jagannatha Temple in Puri, Orissa today. The Greek writer Aristobolus, who travelled with Alexander, mentioned "cakes made of sesamum and honey". He would not have known what sugarcane was, so it is actually very likely that these were made of sesame and jaggery and of course this is the til ladoo still made all over India today. Anyone interested in the history of Indian food should definitely check out a the books by food historian/ food scientist K. T Achaya. I own "A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food" and "The Story of our Food"

It is true that many vegetables are actually more nutritious lightly cooked than raw, because this breaks down the cell wall structure and allows the body to get at the nutrients. So in theory, I guess it could be true that blending vegetables does a similar thing.

I think that gruel/ porridge would have come before unleavened breads, as the whole grain would have been around before people worked out milling. People would have been boiling barley, millet, rice, wheat and all sorts of other grains and legumes into various degrees of mushiness right from the start.