Jenni

Weinoo, so you don't need to do it to fresh yeast? My Dad uses fresh yeast and dried yeast, and I'm pretty sure he proofs both. Maybe just habit though.

I thought the premixing thing was because there are different forms of yeast. The fresh yeast my Dad uses in baking needs to be activated by putting with a bit of sugar in some warm water. When it froths nicely, it is added to the dry dough ingredients. However, there are also quick yeasts and instant yeasts which are designed to be added straight to the dry ingredients.

Try South Asian and Middle Eastern grocery stores, it will be very cheap there.

I thought ricotta was only made from whey, not whole milk. It sounds like you're making something more like paneer. Incidentally, when I make paneer, I use yoghurt to curdle the milk. I simply leave it out the fridge to sour a bit. The result is a higher yield of paneer and it tastes better. No lemony taste for a start! I also bring the milk to a boil. Once it's boiled, I turn the heat right down, add the yoghurt and stir gently. As soon as it goes, I strain it. I was told that keeping it too hot once you've added the acid (lemon juice, vinegar, sour yoghurt) can result in tough curds. Btw, if you use lemon juice, rinse the curds gently after straining.

I missed this before, but yes! They are a HUGE pain to prepare, but I do love them. My favourite dish is from Kerala, it is a simple dish of whole moong, banana flower, coconut and simple seasonings. There are also some great Bengali and Oriya dishes, including such innovative things as banana flower "chop" or cutlet, which is...well, exactly what it sounds like! Generally I reserve making banana flower dishes for when I have time to sit somewhere for an hour so and leisurely do the prep work on the flowers. Knife in hand and a big bowl of buttermilk (the real kind leftover from churning butter) ready to put the flowers in (to prevent discolouration), and I can while away the time quite nicely so long as I have good company or nice scenery or good music or all three!

Really? easy to find in the UK and found in some shops in India.

Just out of interest, why? Personally, I am all for anything that means less pesticides and so on being poured all over the environment. Not so fussed about supposed health benefits though - I get enough chemical crap from traffic fumes, burning rubbish, etc. to negate it all!

Heidh, yes those frilly leaves look familiar! Bear in mind that for saag you cook it until tender and then mash it with a greens masher (looks a bit like a churn for making butter - can also use blender or stick blender but be sure to keep it coarse and don't make it like soup) so texture will not be as it is now.

What are you making from the leaves? If you are making the dish sarson ka saag, then you can very finely chop the stems and use them in it. Make sure there are still plenty more leaves than stems though. Because of the long-ish cooking time and the fact that you mash it into a coarse puree, the stems work fine. Also, there is a kashmiri dish called haak which when made with sarson does utilise some of the stem because you keep the leaves whole. For this you have to cut the stem before it gets to thick and tough and just keep the slimmer bit. It's very good. Slightly jealous that you are getting sarson still. Here the season has ended, and even the other greens are starting to get rather pricy and less luscious. Summer must be coming....

We must be using very different definitions for the phrase "nothing like", since dosa are pretty widely defined as "a crepe" by people who make and sell them. Sure, they're crispy and made of rice and lentils... but they're still a thin batter-based crepe. Yes Indian menus often have "cute" ways of describing dishes, like saying that vadas are savoury donuts, that idlis are rice cakes (vaguely true but misleading when the Western use of rice cakes is so different), calling upma semolina risotto or semolina pulao. I find such inaccurate descriptions to be incredibly tiresome. Just because it is common, does not make it a good thing. Dosa are made from completely different ingredients than crepes. They are fermented. The texture is different. The taste is different. Yes, it is true that they are both round flat things cooked on a flat pan. But if someone told me they really craved crepes and were sad that they couldn't eat them due to x reason, I would never ever recommend they try dosa as an alternative. I might however try to get them into dosa as a completely different eating experience that is, IMO, far superior.

I might point out that dosa are nothing like a crepe...

I don't think it's about particular products. The education and empowerment of women has lead to families where everyone works and time for food preparation is minimal. If food and/or nutrition is not important to them, they will opt for covenience products or domestic help. I'll give you two examples from India. One friend of mine lives in a large traditional joint family of around 40 people of different generations. They are well to do but she works as she is educated and her family are enlightened enough to realise there is a positive mental effect of work that goes beyond money. She gets up early each day to join in with communal food prep before she goes to work. All the women in the house pitch in to make meals and they also have household help (very common in India). It works because there are many if them. Junk food, convenience products and eating out are "treats". On a daily basis the family prefers traditional home food. Another friend lives in a nuclear family with just her husband and two teenage children. They are lower middle class (ie. comfortable-ish but not super well off). She also works and does some prep before she goes to work. She has some household help. She often expresses disappointment that she cannot offer super fresh exciting meals everyday, but she just does not have the drive to do so. Making roti in the morning and reheating later is easier, routine dishes are easier, etc. Convenience products save her time and her kids like them, though she likes the idea of fresh traditional food more. Looking at these examples we see a clear dilemma: It is very easy for those of us who like food and cooking A LOT to rave on about the importance of fresh and from scratch meals. But this means someone has to make it. In many societies this task falls to the women of the house, though I will stress that this is not always the case. This person may not enjoy cooking. Having to cook may stop the from working or pursuing leisure activities they enjoy. There are people all over the world who spend hours each day cooking and turn out amazing meals that would impress all of us here. A number of them do it because they "have to" and they hate doing it. BTW if I must pick one thing it would be maggi noodles. Many housewives in India no longer whip up traditional snacks and breakfasts because their children beg for maggi! They would rather have maggi than a meal! The second friend I mentioned struggles to stop her kids from eating only maggi!

Not really sure about the OP's theory. I eat Indian food everyday and I can certainly eat a lot of it if I want to. Certainly I am satisfied by a normal portion, yes, but if I really like the taste of something I can easily eat a large portion of it. I think the feelings you are describing about not being able to eat much of the food are to do with eating restaurant Indian food, which is made with more fats and also tends to be richer dishes (because most people want to eat something special when they eat out, not every day home food). Everyone knows Indian food in the West is heavier and richer but it is also true that in India, restaurant food is probably always going to be heavier and greasier and even if you eat at somebody's house they will tend to make you richer foods like poori and put extra ghee on your portions to honour you as a guest. On the other hand, maybe even though you obviously love Indian food, it is stronger flavours than your body grew up with and therefore you find it more overwhelming. Who knows. All I can say is that there are PLENTY of Indians who will testify that good tasting, spicy and rich foods are still very easy to eat a lot of! ETA: If it's a glutmates thing you should know that ajinomoto is thrown about hither and thither in restaurant food in India so that could be it too.

Ok, I went on a chocolate expedition. Bournville turns out to be Rs.80 for 80g!!!!! Plus I looked at the packet and it says it's only 44% cocoa content which sounds pretty crap, so I left that. I did see another option today in the form of "Choco Swiss Cacao Premium Dark Chocolate". I immediately bought it and upon getting home I regretted it even more immediately. First of all I thought it was 120g which made me feel slightly better about paying Rs.90 (still cheaper than the bourneville when you go gram for gram!) but confusingly there are two labels on the packet and one of them says it is just 60g! Plus it doesn't list the cocoa content anywhere on the packet. In addition to this entirely stupid development, I remembered that I don't have a scale with me. All the recipes I have found on google seem pretty crazily precise so that could be a problem. And I don't have a whisk. Hell, I don't even have a fork! All in all, I am annoyed, and I may now go and eat 60-120g of chocolate (of undetermined cocoa content) to make myself feel better.

Whatever it is, it doesn't sound good! Sent from my HTC Wildfire S A510e using Tapatalk

Any particular kind of oil? It is common for recipes to instruct you to heat mustard oil up to smoke point as this turns the oil from pungent to something more docile and sweetish.

Oh you bastards. I googled this chantilly thing and now I want it! But I'm in a country where there isn't a particularly wide range of different chocolates easily available, and certainly this little town doesn't have much beyond a bit of Cadbury's. Will it work with Bournville? I know I can get that....otherwise I think I may have seen some kind of 70% Cadbury's but I'm pretty sure it had almonds and things in it so that won't work. Damn you all!

Don't you love how I confidently told you to post a pic and now that you've done so my response is....er...I don't know! I suppose it does look a little strange but then kombu already looks a bit weird so honestly I think if I had kombu like this I might perhaps just break off anything that looked really suspect and then use the rest anyway...

Can you post a pic? As you clearly know, kombu can get sort of a whiteish build up that is completely normal, but it's hard to say without seeing and it sounds like you are pretty sure it is something else. How old is the packet? I have had packets of kombu in the cupboard, open, for over 2 years and never had any mould grow on it. By the way, it sat in the cupboard because I forgot I had it and it got lost under clutter, it's not something I would intentionally do!

I don't know if this is available where you are, but where my parents live a couple of Thai restaurants and grocery stores make and sell their own pastes in plastic jars. Since they are fresher than the canned kind and even the commerical plastic jar kind, and also definitely made by Thai cooks and carefully and authentically formulated, they are a better option than most of the stuff on the shelf. My Dad buys them quite frequently as he likes Thai food but since he is the only non-vegetarian in the house he cannot be bothered to make stuff from scratch when only he is going to eat it (not a philosophy I follow but whatever works for him!).

My personal belief, which I have seen proved correct amongst friends, families and acquaintances on numerous occassions, is that different people prefer different levels of saltiness. Therefore, I do not believe that there is one exact degree of salting that will please everyone. For this reason, I cannot understand why certain chefs are so horrified by the thought of allowing salt shaker or some other salt-serving-device on tables. It is not a comment on their cooking if I prefer a little extra salt, it is merely a comment on my taste buds. There is no need to be offended, it does not mean that I dislike the food. Actually I would far rather that restaurants were on the conservative side when it comes to salting (by this I don't mean not bothering to season properly, I just mean to remember to go a little lighter to allow for less salty palates) and put salt on the tables. That way, I don't have to worry about getting a dish that is ruined by too much salt (and then I have to ask for a slice or two of lemon as this seems to help make excessive saltiness more bearable, to my taste buds at least) but if a dish comes out the opposite way, I can correct it for my tastes.

This is an interesting question. Personally I am vegetarian and if I ever have children I suppose I would feed them vegetarian food in my house because that's what I make and eat. But as soon as they were old enough to have their own thoughts on the subject (I don't know what that age would be...could be anywhere from around 5 or 6 if they were a thoughtful child) I would make it clear that they are absolutely welcome to choose to eat non-vegetarian food if they wanted. Just don't expect your dear mummy to cook it for you because she doesn't know how! I know some people would get really outraged at a parent "depriving" their child of meat, but honestly the kid has the rest of their life to choose to eat what they like. So long as it is done healthily (and yes this is possible), I don't see the problem. I lot of people grow up eating things that they later on renounce as being utter rubbish. An example: many people have mothers and fathers who raised them on, in their own words, "awful awful food from cans and packets" but they then grow up to be excellent cooks and make amazing food. Does it really matter that much that they didn't get gourmet food when they were kids? They survived, no?!

I feel that the real question here is why are people so obsessed with what everyone else is eating? Why do you care if I don't eat meat/do eat meat/dislike 90% of all vegetables/eat brussel sprouts like candy/never eat fast food/visit McDonalds every week/put soya sauce on my sushi/always serve completely authentic and traditional "ethnic" meals/enjoy a glass of wine here and there/never ever touch a drop of the stuff/etc.? I really really don't care what you eat and I have no idea why everyone else is so fixated on the contents of other peoples' plates and shopping baskets. Whether it's being snarky about what "guilty treats" people enjoy or going on and on and on about why particular diets (low carb, no carb, complex carb, only raw food, nothing after 6pm, only soup on the second tuesday of every month beginning with M, etc.) don't or do work, it seems that it is impossible to escape from people telling you what you should or shouldn't be eating. In my ideal dream world, everyone enjoys what they enjoy eating, and respects that not everyone in the world has the same tastes and beliefs about food.

Can you get unsweetened rice crispies? That would work. Indian puffed rice grains look longer than the kind of puffed rice often found in the West, but otherwise basically no different. The only problem might be if the rice crispies products have sweetener and flavourings added. I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that there is a Kallo brand puffed brown rice with nothing added that I used to be able to get in the UK and I liked to use that because it was just a little bit healthier than white puffed rice. By the way everyone in this thread has focused on bhel puri which is a particular kind of puffed rice snack from a certain region of India. But actually there are lots of different puffed rice snacks. I just think that sometimes people think that bhel puri refers to ALL of these things, and therefore they call everything with puffed rice in it bhel puri, which is infuriating. Anyway, one that people should really try is jhal moori/muri. The name literally means spicy-hot puffed rice and it orginates in West Bengal. The key thing about this dish is that some raw mustard oil is mixed with everything to bring it together. This adds a bit of punch and is really delicious. There are many variations but a vague combination might be: *Puffed rice (this is the "moori") *Boiled potato, chopped *Chopped raw onion *Minced green chillies *Roasted peanuts *Sev *Fresh coriander, chopped *Masala - some kind of mixture of roasted cumin, chilli powder and chaat masala seems common but it varies between who is making it. The simplest would be a bit of roasted cumin and maybe some kala namak. *Salt *Lemon juice *Mustard oil *Some thin slices of fresh coconut to put on top You don't need a lot of the two wet ingredients. It all has to be tossed together at the very last minute and served quickly. Other add ins may include chopped cucumber, sprouted beans, bits of crunched up papri, tomato, etc. but I tend to think of the above combination I have given as being simple and good and I like it a lot. By the way one of my favourite places to have this is on trains. The vendor comes around and he will likely be able to make a wide number of puffed rice based snacks as you desire, but jhal moori is a firm favourite of mine. He tosses it all together and gives it to you in a paper cone (this is how you get served the snack basically everywhere) and you can then while away your time blissfully munching and stop thinking about how many hours late your train is! On my list trip through West Bengal I got a cone of this as soon as we crossed the state border, along with a steaming cup of kulhar chai. Small pleasures. but so good.

Fabulous thread. Please pig out on labneh for me, can't get enough of the stuff!