Pan

Suvir is really busy with his restaurant. It's my impression that since he opened Amma, he has posted to the threads about his restaurant, but almost nowhere else.

In this period in my life, I seldom cook. However, I like to have some Sambal Oelek around to add to chicken brother in Chinese chicken noodle soups and such-like. I also like for there to be some plain yogurt around to eat. But how about my parents? I know a lot about what they never like to run out of, because I'm their designated shopper for all Asian ingredients (whether Indian, Chinese, or Korean) and often help my father in the kitchen simply by finding stuff for him in the spice cabinet. I won't say my parents never run out of these things, but they'd rather not and try not to (in no order other than the order I think of them): Onions, shallots, garlic, fresh ginger, salt, black peppercorns, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cayenne pepper, soy sauce, rice wine, turmeric, coriander, cardamom, asafoetida, fenugreek, urad dal, black mustard seeds, dried basil and oregano (fresh used in season), rosemary, thyme, fresh Italian parsley, potatoes, saffron, non-fat milk, coffee, non-fat ricotta cheese which my father eats mixed with fruit (I hate that stuff, but he's used to it), some kind of hard cheese like cheddar, imported parmeggiano, belacan (shrimp sauce), basmati rice, bay leaves, curry leaves, salam leaves, EVOO, sesame oil, mustard oil, canola oil, rice wine vinegar or/and cider vinegar, dried whole hot peppers, fresh jalapenos. [Edit because I forgot the plain yogurt, so useful in many Indian recipes. My father also likes to have cans of organic plain chicken stock around. And now I realize I left out dried pasta.] As you might gather, my father cooks mostly Indian, Chinese, Indonesian, and Italian food, and my parents have a very full spice cabinet. But whenever they're running out of their basmati rice, coriander, rice wine, superior soy sauce, etc., I bring them some more on my next trip. As for the European ingredients, they do fine on the Upper West Side.

Thanks for your detailed report, but neither your picture of the room nor your picture with Chef Boulud came through. (Or is it that those pictures show other people who might not have consented to be web-posted?) By the way, your mother is right: You write very well about food. Oh, about the "house wine": No-one should ever get anything without asking the price, unless they don't care what price they get charged. I agree that it would have made sense for the wine list to have been provided, though.

Thanks, Kris. That was interesting. One thing that surprised me was that remark that brown sugar is high in minerals. Could anyone elaborate on that?

Yeah, Elyse, but ordering Malaysian food in a Terengganu accent doesn't seem to prevent clueless waitpersons from questioning my order or being surprised and incredulous that I would want and enjoy spicy food.

I used to go to a creperie in the old city of Nice. With some hard cider, I'd have ham with gruyere cheese, mushrooms and gruyere cheese, ham with mushrooms and gruyere cheese, or chicken with one of the aforementioned, most often. They also had dessert crepes. [Edit to say that my favorite dessert crepes there were Nutella, sugar with cinnamon, apples with sugar and cinnamon, chocolate, chocolate with Cointreau, and various other combinations with liqueurs. Reading the article made me feel a little less likely to be ridiculed for admitting to an appreciation of Nutella. :laugh: ]

Don't feel bad. I was confused for a while myself.

Seriously? If so, what do you think could explain that?

Naturally, and your question was certainly appropriate here. It's just that more specialists in Indian cuisine (including professional Indian restaurant chefs, etc.) frequent the India and Indian Cuisine board.

Some New York dim sum places also put slices of sausage in sticky-rice-in-lotus-leaf. Worth considering if you can get appropriate sausage.

Yeah, I left out olive oil as a basic ingredient Provencal and Italian cuisines share in common.

Here's my take. Essential spices would include: Cumin, coriander, green cardamom, turmeric, black mustard seeds, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, black pepper, fenugreek, cloves. (Also ginger, but it usually has to be fresh, not powdered.) Nice to have: Asafoetida, curry leaves (again, those are best bought fresh but unlike ginger, take well to freezing - and I find them essential for many southern Indian dishes, but your taste may vary), white poppy seeds, yellow mustard seeds, black cardamom. You may get more response to your question in the India and Indian Cuisine forum, however.

Not according to Merriam-Webster: And on another topic, everyone speaks with some kind of accent or other. For those Americans who doubt that, see what happens if you visit South Africa or New Zealand.

I feel like some of you are picking on Nice. I think that Provencal cuisine is in a lot of ways a regional Italian cuisine much more than a regional French cuisine, based as it largely is on garlic, onions, red wine, tomatoes, and herbs. In addition, though, I had very good pasta in Nice, and I remember one place in particular that served Spaghetti Bolognese that really tasted like the "real thing" that I had eaten in Italy. Is it possible that those of you who were unable to find "authentic" Italian food in Nice simply didn't find the right restaurants?

God, talk about clueless!

Oh, and I love winter melon soup.

You can participate in any old thread. Just post a reply to it.

Good customer service from Kikkoman!

I see you've decided on congee, but I was going to suggest that if you didn't want to serve congee, you could consider shrimp dumpling soup. I always like to have chicken feet at dim sum, but most of my friends don't eat it. Crab claws are fun to eat and popular.

Where do you plan on going in Malaysia, Joel? By the way, a month is a good amount of time to spend in Malaysia, or at least I thought so (I did spend 10 days in a village I used to live in, though, as my trip last summer was partly personal).

Put me down as preferring not to hear Bocelli anywhere. Some opera arias performed by really good singers would be fine, however.

Have you done a careful comparison with the situation poor people are in in more egalitarian countries - like most other industrialized countries - such that you can make this statement authoritatively? And, to get this back to the topic of food, how about the diets of poor people in Canada, Europe, and Japan? Are they better (more nutritious, less pesticide-laden, whatever) than the diets of poor people in the U.S., and if so (how would we establish that, though?), isn't that a measure of being "better off"? I think we'd all be better off not posting rhetoric and slogans and sticking to things that are quantifiable or at least qualifiable. Otherwise, we'll just have a "Yes it is!" "No it isn't!" shouting match, which will neither serve anyone nor be entertaining. Tsk, Pan, there you go again, trying to insert sanity and reason into a topic that was CLEARLY intended to invite nothing but bombast and hot air. Will you never learn?

Busboy, I think we should be careful about implying that poverty is associated with dissolution and wealth isn't. I wouldn't want to compare the behavior or moral character of wealthy people with that of poor people, and I suggest that we might not want to go further down that road. All of which goes to show that even well-intentioned posts that make generalizations about poverty other than "poor people lack capital" or "poor people owe more than they earn and are having difficulty attempting to pay off their debts" are fraught with danger. Let's get this back to food.

Have you done a careful comparison with the situation poor people are in in more egalitarian countries - like most other industrialized countries - such that you can make this statement authoritatively? And, to get this back to the topic of food, how about the diets of poor people in Canada, Europe, and Japan? Are they better (more nutritious, less pesticide-laden, whatever) than the diets of poor people in the U.S., and if so (how would we establish that, though?), isn't that a measure of being "better off"? I think we'd all be better off not posting rhetoric and slogans and sticking to things that are quantifiable or at least qualifiable. Otherwise, we'll just have a "Yes it is!" "No it isn't!" shouting match, which will neither serve anyone nor be entertaining.

I know how to cook but seldom do. Is that a moral issue? I think not. Do you think it is?