Jenni

I tried some, and I really wanted to like it but it really wasn't anywhere near as nice as I thought it would be. Whole Earth Cola is better.

Hi percyn, The kadala recipe is from Ammini Ramachandran's book "Grains, Greens and Coconuts". I made the puttu with 2 cups puttu flour (the red rice kind), 1 cup coconut, a little ghee, salt and some coconut to put between the layers. If you want more details on making puttu, you can PM me, as it is usually made in a special tube and I don't want to derail the thread by getting in to too much detail here!

Hi Darriene (again!), I do not make them myself as I do not deep fry things at home. My reasoning is that if I don't make such things at home, I can indulge occassionally outside of the home because they are not a regular thing! Also, I think I will leave jalebis to the professionals, as I am not sure how easy they are to make! In India I would buy them from a sweet shop, and here in the UK they can sometimes be bought in Indian grocery stores. Or if you go to some kind of Indian festival, sometimes they will have them. For instance, I had some yesterday at Bristol Asian Festival. If you live in an area with a good Indian community, I am sure you can find someone to guide you to a good place for Indian sweets!

Hi Darriene, kadala is a keralan dish of chickpeas (the small, dark Indian kind) and it goes really well with puttu. You don't have to put loads of chillies in it, so it can be mild and very good for breakfast, even for the uninitiated!

I do not know why this works for me, as surely the huge amount of sugar should make you very awake, but in Jodhpur, whenever I was out late-ish evening I would treat myself to hot milk with a few jalebis. Hot milk always sends me off to sleep, and it also helps makes jalebis a little less teeth achingly sweet. I think this would probably work better as a breakfast treat though!

Today's breakfast was puttu (a steamed rice and coconut "log"), kadala (spicy chickpea dish) and steamed plantain. Now I am wishing I was back in Kerala...

Not unless you are going to serve them uncooked!

Though I don't adhere to the philosophy myself, I have eaten some raw "cuisine" before. A lot of the really interesting stuff seems to be dehydrated. I've heard of people making "biscuits" and "pastry" from some kind of dehydrated flax seed paste. I have to say, I tried a raw "brownie" and it was delicious! But then again, it was sweet and chocolatey so you can't really go wrong there! Here are some links to some interesting ideas: These look nice, sounds like they might taste good too - http://rawgoddessheathy.blogspot.com/2008/07/sweetie-treaties.html This is a whole site about raw desserts - http://www.therawdessert.com/ And here's a non-raw foodie's view on a raw dessert cookbook (might be interesting to get a realistic perspective of what they actually taste like!) - http://bittersweetblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/raw-for-dessert/ A quick google of "raw desserts" comes up with lots more, so I'll leave it at that for now. Good luck!

Scales are great for getting a recipe written down exactly to share with others. In fact, as others have noted, all UK cookbooks use weights. However, constantly weighing every last ingredient is no way to cook, or live. I don't use my scale unless needed for writing a recipe, cooking a recipe for the first time or for tricky measures like flour. I like to be free!

Tonight's supper was mooli stuffed paratha (I ground the flour for the dough about half an hour before supper!)and a spicy gravy dish of courgette and tomato. Really delicious, and just what I fancied.

Try adding grated carrots, toasted fresh coconut and some mustard seeds, cumin seeds, dried chillies and curry leaves popped in a little oil.

Last nights dinner was simple but delicious. Butternut Squash with Coconut (recipe from my book!), spicy stirfried greens and cauliflower, and chapatis. I ground the flour for the chapatis myself - an hour before I sat down to eat all I had was whole wheat grain! Now that's what I call fresh bread.

We are lucky enough to have a conservatory, so the ginger, turmeric, etc. are all in there. I would love to hear more about you calamansi. Did you get seeds from a fruit you ate, or did you buy seeds or young plants from a gardening store. Our tamarind tree was grown from seeds we got from fresh fruits, and the pineapples were grown by cutting the tops off supermarket pineapples and putting them in some soil! We also had an avocado plant grown from a stone in an avocado. We found that supermarket ones don't seem to work, but we buy lots of avocados from a Caribbean grocer near us, and they seem to work fine.

May have figured out how to do this. Seems that even though you can upload straight from your computer now, you still have to change size. For some reason I cannot edit my previous post, so here are the pictures: *is struggling to use eGullet tonight, lol*

Hmm...the lovely weather, the stunning landscapes, the gorgeous people?! Ok, on a food related basis, I think the dough is much nicer than what you get here in the UK, although the situation has improved a lot in some restaurants (I am NOT talking about pizza hut!). The tomato is also always so wonderfully flavoursome. Good quality mozzerella too. I dunno, I am tempted to think that it's because they take such pride in their pizzas and keep the toppings nice and simple. A simple tomato and mozzerella topping with maybe just a sprig of basil tastes so good when done with care and attention. Sure, I like making home-made pizzas and shoving as much on top as possible, but I don't really regard those kind of pizzas as "proper".

[Moderator's Note" This topic contains posts split off from the "Growing Ginger" topic, branching out into other exotic ingredients to grow at home] I live in the UK, where the weather is not exactly good, and find that ginger is very easy to grow. We also grow turmeric and galangal, as well as tamarind, olives, banana and pineapples. The tamarind and banana are large plants now, but we grow them for pleasure, not for fruit. We have had olives though, and two pineapple off the pineapple plants that were rather delicious. Also, we grow tonnes of chillies, but everyone seems to do that these days. Next project is a curry leaf plant, as we buy so many that it would be really useful to have a plant in the house that we could use. Probably not instead of buying, as it may not do well enough to produce many leaves. Also tulsi, as the plant we grow last year did not last very long.

Tonight I made a soup partly inspired by rasam, and partly by hot and sour soup. I served it over noodles. It was really delicious and warming. I also steamed and sliced a plantain, so people could add it to the broth if they wanted. If anyone wants a recipe and step by step pictures, I put it on my blog. Can't seem to get photos to upload on eGullet tonight. Will come back and put some up when it's working again.

I buy it weekly in Tescos!

One should note that there is a difference between "natural source of free glutamates" and "refined MSG." One person's perfectly natural "kombu broth" is another person's "MSG." ← That's what I was thinking, I have no problem with the natural glutatmate in the form that nature intended it to be! I think many of these things only cause a problem when humans refine them to a concentrated form.

No recipe, sorry, but I often make a hot and sour soup (not a specific kind, just a vaguely east asian soup lemongrass, galangal, lime leaves etc. that is hot and sour) and drop them in at the last minute. Makes the soup much heartier. Then of course there's Korean Chapchae. I make a veggie version, but you of course could use meat. Here is a sample recipe (I have not tried this particular one): http://koreanfood.about.com/od/riceandnood.../r/chapchae.htm

Thanks, but I was merely pointing out the specific way of brewing tea in India, not the different types of tea.

Are you sure, because I know yeast extract as a different product altogether, though it is used in a similar way to msg, according to this wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeast_extract Oh hang on, have just spotted on that page that says yeast extract is actually a source of msg. But I'm assuming when it says yeast extract on the ingredients list of a product, that means it's got all the yeast extract in it, not just extracted msg. And that's pretty much just marmite then!

A common way of making tea in India is to boil the tea leaves with the water and often also the milk. This is obviously quite different to the Western method of steeping tea. By the way, I think I've read that the British introduced tea to most of India, but it is possible that some of the Northern regions near China were drinking some kind of tea before that so don't quote me on it!

Frozen peas Curry leaves Kaffir lime leaves Emergency chillies (it's not ideal, but I am afraid of running out) My Dad puts stock in the freezer, which he almost never gets round to using Ice cream (not for long, heh heh!) Maybe the odd frozen banana or grape - good snack! Mostly I use the freezer for cooling down things like burfi and ice tea

Home-made bread, mattar paneer (with home-made paneer) and channa dal with spinach. Yes I ate that huge chunk of bread!