Suvir Saran

Nina I agree with you about Oriental Bakery selling amazing stuff. It is superb. I often find green dates there, when in season, better in quality than anywhere else. Thanks for the pita bread suggestions.

Could you have been the source I was referring too?

I have heard from a reliable source on eGullet that they are great for savory foods. In fact this source also suggested I try Oriental Bakery for the sweet stuff. I have been going to Oriental Bakery for 10 years now. A friend from Lebanon introduced me to it.. I believe many restaurants buy from here and serve as if it was prepared by them. Maybe the reliable Atlantic Avenue source can chime in and tell us what they think of Waterfalls in comparison to Oriental Bakery. I have never been to Waterfalls restaurant but have heard amazing things about it. And if they have exceptional sweets, all the more reason for me to make a new years resolution to get there in the first week.

Why do you not try doing a test at home... Next time you make pasta or whatever else, add just a tiny amount of MSG into it. See if you have any reaction.... and if not, you know it is not what you react to.

Damascus bakery does sell some other confections including their famous Pita bread. But the really good store in that area to buy Middle Eastern sweet confections is Oriental Bakery. On Atlantic Avenue as well, just across the street from Sahadis. Superb selection.. and made fresh in the back. The basboussa (semolina cake) is the best you could find in the US. It is the real thing. Made like it would have been by a Syrian grandmother.... moist, full of honey and nuts and delicious beyond belief. They also have great baklava and with many different fillings. They also have a fruit and nut basboussa that is decadent. Oriental Bakery is worth a visit as well.

I don't believe it's common for msg to be used at the table. It's generally used in the kitchen. That said, I recall having a meal in Tokyo where the waiter put a small scoop of a white powder in our bowl before filling it with broth. My wife asked if it was msg and we were told it was. She asked to have her soup without the msg. I'm not sure if one could as easily add msg to a solid food as easily as to a liquid. Yes one can add MSG to solid foods just as easily. One treats MSG as one would salt. There is no difference. MSG has a unique taste and it certainly is not tasteless. You may want to try some Bux, you will realize how it is just as important as any other ingredient.

Their Pita bread can be found all over the city.... It is great for packaged Pita. I prefer the baked stuff sold at Oriental Bakery diagonally opposite it on the same street. Have you tried that? You may like the store.

Thanks for all that information Dave. Great stuff! Would you be able to share a recipe for that delicious looking pear upside down cake?

Good to know it was not too sweet. I am not much of a fan of very sweet marmalade. I give away many jars of my jams and marmalades each year. Think in terms of several dozens. My mother brings them back to India. It was there, from her, that I learned these recipes, but she has stopped making them They have no need for them she says.. the kids are gone... They need no extra sweet intake. But she is eager to bring back jars of what I make for their daily breakfast consumption And now I have cousins in Bombay who have eaten at their table and want their own supply.. I try and make as much as I can.. With little effort, I am able to make many people happy...Thus I can.. so around the world, I can send safe and tasty jars. Your description of testing it for consistency is great. Thanks for sharing.

I have only canned jams/jellies/chutneys and preserves. Never known any other way. It does keep the food safe for a long time. And I assume it keeps it safe from microbial and other activity. Have you checked the Tomato Chutney thread? You can find some great canning tips on that thread. And also links to related sites. Tomato Chutney Click Me for important canning tips.

Steve, just tell us eGulleteers how the owner of Zaytinya had to pay for this review? Amazing! And I hear very well deserved. Congratulations. When are you all doing a DC eGullet dinner at Zaytinya? I will attend for sure. I am in for 2.

Liquids containing MSG are quicker than solids in inducing an effect to those of us that do react. But most of what MSG does to a human body may not necessarily be picked up by a diner. A lot of the symptoms are part of what is considered the silent killer (high blood pressure), and these symptoms are very different from the ones most people seem to have. Those are a puzzle to doctors for the most part. They are still not sure how much credit can be assigned to MSG for people that do get Chinese Food Symptoms.

The most likely explanation for many of the serious symptoms and diseases many people attribute to MSG poisoning and the lack of confirmation of these health problems in controlled studies is: The symptoms are pyschosomatic responses and the connection with serious disease is due to misinformation and irrational fear of MSG. It is thus I have been trying to explain from my first post that MSG is added to a lot of stuff. And where one is not aware, one does not seem to react. But certainly there are reactions our bodies will have after eating MSG. But those are not always reactions that we may ever know if we do not know that MSG has been added into something. It is important to understand the psychosomatic connection of many food allergies. My own allergy with Chinese food was like that. If I do not worry myself too much, I hardly feel as much pain. In fact Ed Schoenfeld may have unknown to him, helped me understand MSG and how it really cannot bother my system as much as I allowed it to before I met him. And those needing a low sodium diets should certainly stay away from MSG. One or two times will not make much of a difference. But it is not a wise thing to indulge in for the longer run.

MSG and High Blood Pressure Google can make life so very simple. Chinese restaurant syndrome It is interesting that my fathers cardiac physician never asked him to stop eating Chinese food. He only endorses light intake of foods in restaurants. He has always suggested a careful use of salts and MSG.

I have not seen studies. But my father has history of blood pressure and I remember that was one BIG reason for our home having no MSG. It is not considered good for those that are hypertensive. I have been told it is worse than table salt. It would be great if an intelligent source could tell us if this is just an urban legend or what.

I said it during Ed's Q&A and will say it again, MANY restaurants and chefs (non Chinese or even Japanese) are using MSG and certainly without the diner realizing it. Home chefs have used it for many different cuisines and to great success and without anyone knowing. They are added to more things than we know. But all true... very true.

Tommy, what is so bizzare about a juicy chicken breast? Please explain.

I hope we can taste the ice cream at Batalis new restaurant. And we may be in luck, for the ice cream is not Batalis but a very well respected and talentd NYC pastry chef.

And I love you for being honest. MSG is used in more than just Chinese professional kitchens. What we do not know often does not bother us. I react to MSG and do so every time I eat Chinese food. It is a rare occasion where I am not home sick after a Chinese meal. And I am not a soup drinker. Since I was a child I have had this problem. An aunt would use MSG to make her Indian cooking take new depths... and the food tasted great, but I would come home sick. Now, as an adult, I have realized the choice is mine... and if I am going to eat foods with MSG, I enjoy them in my consumption and deal with MSG related symptoms after. No one forces me to eat them. I enjoy them and am willing to make that compromise. It gives me great joy to enjoy Chinese food. In fact I can eat it more than most any other cuisine. And I know it is added to more than just soup in Chinese kitchens. And it also finds its way into foods in other kitchens. And the great thing is that a little MSG can make that little difference that can elevate good cooking to great cooking. PS: In India one can only find Japanese Ajinomoto.

The 10 minutes of processing is for canning. And it will help keep the marmalade safe for cosumption for a long long time. How do you like the taste of the marmalade? Was the sugar OK for you? It was not too sweet was it? How was the consistency? Did you not do any freezer testing? And thanks for posting about your experience. I have bought meyer lemons.. will julienne tonight and proceed with the recipe. How do you use your mandoline for this? I have never used a mandoline... (actually I have), but am not very confident in my mandoline using skills... YOu have inspired me to try and get enough courage to begin playing with it... Maybe tonight I shall.

Amazing! Inspiring and hopeful, thread this is.

Anna you have taken the thread to its most logical next step. A cookbook (a well written one even more so) would be a failure if it cannot lead its reader to cooking Nirvana (freedom, liberation). If all a book can do is to have a reader depend on it, it shows the book had no heart or soul, no generosity of spirit and not infectious personality. When I teach cooking, I have found some souls come into my class not to learn cooking, but to simply feed their need for wont and desire to be gathered around others. I quickly understand these are the students I need to focus on even more than the others. I need to find a way of sharing with them the freedom that they have in them, but have not found for it is trapped somewhere inside the big palace of fear that they live in. What I do Anna in my classes (and I have tried in my book as well) is to begin with very short recipes, but I add through my presence what my recipes share in words. My words throughout the class are geared to give confidence to those learning to never fear trying something new, even though it seems risky. I always share the importance of not fearing the unknown and above all failure. I encourage my students to use my cheat sheets (what unfortunately lazy writers and careless editors make into recipe books) as a beginning, but to use what they saw me doing as I gave a new life and form to the recipe in the cheat sheet, and make that a routine as they cook without me. Some find that freedom after one class, some find it only after 5. But I take pride in knowing most all my students have become chefs as good as me in my genre of cooking. And many others have become chefs that make me eyes full of tears as I see that little pearls of culinary wisdom that I had assimilated through my years of cooking, were able to give confidence to those that for reasons other than just bad recipe writing, had lost faith in themselves. A good recipe, a cooking class that goes beyond just a demonstration done by a professional, and gift of love from another can all shatter the glass house palace where fear resides and maims us from finding liberation. A good recipe is most important so that anyone who cooks with it (Why should a writer think their book is not the first one someone is using. I assume that each recipe of mine has the potential to be the first one someone has ever cooked with. I do not even think that it may be first Indian one. I give my reader the benefit of the doubt.) can find in it all they need to learn in their first attempt at cooking. It should leave them with a desire to come back into a kitchen (or to read a cook book). It should leave them knowing cooking is more than demos by chefs and recipes from food writers, it is about their own relationship to food. If a recipe can share that, it succeeds. Otherwise it can have great ego and great bones, but no soul and substance. It is like those palaces, places of worship, and humans that have great ego and mammoth potential written all over, but little if any real sense of place and self. Anna, I thank you again for a great thread. And I am glad you found liberation and with it cream and other wonderful ingredients that the recipe did not have. You have in essence found a new beginning, or at least a new calling and comfort. Cooking.

Congratulations! I follow Jinmyo and Sandra, but with just as much appreciation.

Bux, just reading your little post, I envy you and those that enjoyed the ice cream made with those berries. And yes who cares if it were little granular or had other flaws.. that you made it yourself, with berries grown on your roof, is enough to charm and leave a lasting impression on anyone that may have been lucky enough to taste it. When can I come over for some? I may even bring you some strawberries that I grow on our roof. Some of the sweetest and tastiest berries you can find in NYC.

By the positions favored by some, I may be the best chef around. I hardly follow recipes ever. And certainly I leave behind recipes wherever I cook. But I would be a SHAME, nothing more than that, and nothing less, if the recipes I left behind failed others. That would kill me. The only reason to have a recipe-book is to have recipes that work. Let us not forget what a recipes purpose is. Why would we need recipe testers, editors and test kitchens if recipes played as little a role in the larger world of cooking as some want us to believe. That cook books are written with poor recipes does not mean it is a trend that needs credit or acceptance. That cook book recipes are not friendly to a novice chef does not mean it is written for an audience that knows better. In face an audience that knows better, often times will enjoy a well written recipe. They will enjoy it for its clarity and precise manner. Not all recipe books that have poor recipes need to be labeled as books written by a master chef. Not all master chefs have written books with poor recipes. We are not talking about those cheat sheets that chefs use in kitchens. Those are great and have their essential place. Why bother wasting time, money, natural resources and great advertising dollars if after all that money spent, we are getting something that claims to be more (wants to be called or is called a recipe) than those kitchen sheets that guide a trained chef, but hardly does anything to train the untrained chef. I am all for diversity, maybe that is why I can see the purpose behind a recipe. If I were not diverse or accepting of diversity, I would find no need to waste time documenting what I do with little if any difficulty. Diversity is never equal to mediocrity. But since I am being paid to write a cook book, I feel obliged to live up to what that entails. My recipes shared in my cooking classes are like those preferred by people on my opposite side in this thread. Those recipes are spare and basic and almost deliberately incomplete (not omitting ingredients but some measurements). But those recipes come as a package that also includes time with me. Those people that get those recipes from me, also have the advantage of taking notes after watching me prepare those recipes or preparing them with me as their guide. My life would have been much easier had I followed some of the posts on this thread. I could have written a great cookbook (Great for my editor and agent believe in me. Great for those that know me swear by the taste of my food. Great for my mother thinks my food is tastier than hers. Great for my friends keep coming back to my kitchen for more meals) with less than great effort. But I tested my recipes (not just to write ingredient lists and sentences that made sense, but to actually test my recipes and see if I could find some sensible way of sharing what comes very naturally to me, but may not be so spontaneous for another) in the hopes that those cooking from my recipe book can cook at least what I consider the very bare minimum of what I would expect to eat. And those that know as much as I about food I share recipes for, can take my recipes into a world that is greater than what I could have realized even if I shared every detail (which I have tried to in my book) that I could think of. But recipe books do not get written to share the brilliance of a chef or cook. They are written with the purpose of documenting the art of cooking certain dishes. They certainly have the voice and style of the person behind them. And if that person has no respect for their food, maybe they really do not care how people prepare foods with their name associated with it. But if one really enjoys their own cooking, has great respect for what they do, I can hardly imagine any such person not ensuring that their name will never be equated with a dish that is mediocre or bad. And to ensure that this does not happen, most any chef would be happy going the extra bit and taking a few more minutes in writing recipes. But as has been pointed out by Steve Plotnicki and some others on the thread on cookbooks, unfortunately, some chefs and cookbook writers and publishers too, hardly care anymore about what has their name. I was of the opinion in that thread that not all chefs, cook book writers and recipe writers are that callous. But maybe I am wrong. Maybe I would have been best off saving the monies I spent in ensuring the accountability of my recipes. I would have been smarter to not worry about their accuracy and functionality, and instead, I should have used that time and money to enjoy other stuff. I may be a fool, but I hope home chefs around the world, even if only a couple in each city or state or country, can someday hold my cook book in their hand and thank me for sharing with them a recipe that anticipated what their questions could be. And also, I hope the professional chef that holds my cookbook in their hand can enjoy it for what I share in terms of content and not get lost in those few extra words that make my recipe more complete for a novice, but really are not supposed to be words that should make them under-estimate my worth as a writer. I would not be a cookbook writer if I were not writing my recipes for cookbook cooks. The other option I have is to remain a professional chef and cookery teacher. I could enjoy writing recipes that only those that cook with me and those that cook professionally or know my food can work with. It would save me a lot of time and effort. Recipe writing is a challenge for every chef or cook book writer. If it were easy, all cookbooks would be well written. But it is tedious and precise and has a purpose. Some are naturals at writing recipes that work. Others like me (chefs that cook from inspiration alone and not cookbooks or recipes) need professional assistance and then can find a new meaning in the purpose behind cookbooks and recipe writing.