BBhasin

As always, Good Luck Monica.

the old man is gone. his son runs it now. the brain curry was my fav too and is still on the menu. but like most places, either it is too expensive or scarce, it tends to be more 'masalla' than brain. tastes more like bhunooed onion and tomato with seasoning. the place is airconditioned and fancier now.As a kid I used to love going there with my father, who knew those folks from pre-partion Lahore and we got special treatment. Memories!

Left India for the US in 86. t that time all beers there were 22oz or 650 ml. Believe they have some 12 0z bottles now but mostly it is 22oz.

Chew on the following and draw your own conclusion. I came to the US in 86 and there were a handful of Indian restaurants serving mediocre Indian cuisine doing mediocre volume. Today the number of Indian restaurants has more than tripled and they are doing a fairly good volume. The number of diners has definetly increased. The knowlege of the diner has also increased as has his search for ' beyond the regular stuff'. To cater to that demand restaurants are offering South indian, Indo Chinese, and numerous other twists, fusion etc. In 86 a curry cook or tandooria was paid an average of 800-1200 bucks per month. Today you are looking at 2200-4000 per month for a decent kitchen employee. Olive Garden & PF Chang's kitchens are run by cheaper ( and easily available ) hispanic immigrants. That's not the case in the Indian kitchen which still appears very intimidating to most non Indians( or Bangladeshis or Pakistanis) though recently because of acute shortage we are beggening to see Hispanic Tandoorias. We do see non Indian waitstaff which is a good sign. Tougher immigration laws make it difficult for Indian restaurants to get good chefs in and the current pool is too little for all the Indian restaurants to draw from. Someone had recently posted a link to an article about the acute shortage of Indian cooks in the UK. The situation is the same here in the US. Indian cuisine is definitly ' hotter' than before but nowhere near the levels in the UK. England has had a close association with India, and things Indian, for a long time but it was only recently( my understanding) that the cuisine became popular. When a lot of Indians, from Africa were allowed into England. There were no jobs for them and they went into curry ventures popularising the cusine. Perhaps something like that has to happen here in the US to give Indian food a big boost.

anil, those yellow idlis with the cashews look good. They almost look like desset, are they sweet. tell us more about them. thanks

posting on and off suman but always lurking

Soft, granular and sour. with sambar and roasted channa dal & coconut chutney. or dry rubbed with hot ghee tempered with an MTR spice mix( cannot remember the name). But then I am only an ignorant punjabi.

you will have to scroll this thread a bit for the red tandoori chicken. the part about the scotish chef's pale tandoori chicken is funny. Tandoori Chicken

IMHO it should be a sin to even mention these two restaurants together. For those of us who have missed one or the other, why? Minerva is vegetarian only, right? Heritage & Indique are on top of the pyramid, serving very good food in a wonderful ambience and charging for it. Minerva on the other hand serves average quality at popular prices. They are simply in differrent categories. Minerva is not vegetarian though. Call me old school, but in certain moods I prefer the extraordinary graciousness of dining at the Bombay Club near the White House. I think the food is nearly as good as Heritage and as good as Indique, the martinis are stupendous (made with Bombay gin, of course) and both the room and the service elegant and relaxing. And on a temperate evening, it is the only one of the three restaurants to offer outdoor seating. I agree about the service at Bombay Club, none better, though I am not sure about their food being at par with Heritage and Indique. Heritage prepares traditional recipes, while Indique does some 'fusion' takes with great emphasis on presentation but none tones the food down to the extent that Bombay Club does. That said they each have their own niche and are very good places

Thanks. we carried a Louis Jadot but patrons tend to stick to the cabs, merlots and the chards

IMHO it should be a sin to even mention these two restaurants together. For those of us who have missed one or the other, why? Minerva is vegetarian only, right? Heritage & Indique are on top of the pyramid, serving very good food in a wonderful ambience and charging for it. Minerva on the other hand serves average quality at popular prices. They are simply in differrent categories. Minerva is not vegetarian though.

IMHO it should be a sin to even mention these two restaurants together.

Thank you, everyone. I shall keep returning to this thread for more enlightenment & insperation. thnks again.

While the fruity and flowery whites with their sweetness like the Gwerts, reislings, fume blancs, the chennins etc are much touted with spicy cuisine I would be very grateful to all the knowlegeble wine folks out there,who are also familiar with Indian cuisine, to steer me towards some reds that my guests might enjoy. Thank you

Good Cooking = ???

Wine Historycheck this out monica

Pinky has been sent a link to this thread. I hope she responds as I am sure we have a lot of questions for her.

When are you going and where would you be staying ? good question. also how adventerous do you want to be. all your shots current, haha

A good cookbook to me should 1. communicate clearly a. the ingredients, their measurements b. the method c. and preferably a brief description/ history/origon, of the dish 2. It should have a good picture of the finished product so I can compare my results with that of the author. 3. all recipes should be very carefully kitchen tested, preferrably by people other than the author, to ensure standard end product each time. Good luck with your book. Ps. Unless you edit your post to read ' Indian Cookbook' the bosses will probably move your post to another general forum.

The washington Post publishes a list of fall Cooking Classes each year which lists numerous restaurants that offer the same. You should be able to get this from their online archives. Any reason why restaurants ? Sur La Table offers pretty decent classes, very proffessionally orchestrated and covering a wide spectrum of interests.

For starters, the range of flavors and textures- spice, cream, fruit, rose, noodles,etc. is interesting. In recent years, pastry chefs have been layering flavors and textures in coupes and shot glasses. The similar presentation has inspired me to assemble some of the traditional flavors (rose, cardamom, pistachio, etc.) but utilizing perhaps different techniques: foam, gelee, etc. Any background/insight I can get will simply help inform my decisions! FALOODA to most North Indians, or should I say Punjabis, refers to spagetti thin noodles which are usually colorless, flavorless and kind of gelatinous with a lechee like texture. These noodles are usually sitting in an ‘ice bath’ to keep them from drying up and sticking together. I have seen them served two ways. 1. As a topping on Kulfi ( a dense kind of semi hard Indian ice cream set in individual moulds) The Kulfi is de-moulded cut up into roundels, a handful of the falooda noodles is grabbed from the ice bath, the excess water is shaken off and the noodles plonked on top of the kulfi. This may further be topped with a syrup, usually rose. The falooda noodles blend very nicely with the syrup and the ‘juice’ of the melting kulfi to produce a much liked taste and texture sensation. 2. You can order FALOODA on its own. In this case the vendor takes a tall glass and half fills it with shaved ice, a handful of the falooda noodles are placed on top of the ice, the noodles are then topped with some Rabri ( reduced sweetened milk with some cardamom or saffron, very similar to the kulfi ice cream mix) A little syrup ( usually rose) is poured on top, a parfait spoon inserted in the glass a you are ready to go. The cool combination is heavenly on a hot summer day. Some vendors will dye their falooda, add flavor and also sprinkle slived almons or pistachios or add silver leaf to their falooda. I do not know how these vendors make their falooda but I was taught a simple falooda reciepe in a hotel kitchen. Take some water in a Kadai ( I guess you could take a regular saucepan) bring some water to boil, dissolve some cornstarch like you were making a custard but use about three times the amount of cornstarch. Add the dissolved cornstarch to the boiling water stirring vigorously until it is cooked and a kind of thick lump forms. This was then filled into a noodle making tool( essentially a tube with a plate with holes at one end and a corkscrew at the other) the noodles were formed by pressing the cooked cornstarch through the holes. The falooda noodles were pressed directly into a container with water and ice. Some people also use the thin ‘ rice noodles’ available at oriental stores as a good substitution.

Just think you are making a basic chicken curry and when the ' masalla' is done add water to your preffered consistancy, cook a little bit more for a homogenous sauce to form and instead of chicken just add shelled hard boiled eggs which you have deep fried until a skin formed and pricked with a fork. Simmer a few minutes and enjoy with your rice. You can also make an omlette curry with left over chicken curry gravey where you make a masalla omelette with diced onion, green chilles, clantro and tomato, cut into cubes and simmer a few minutes in last night chicken curry.

what have you been told?

water my dear

On the subject of Feni. When I was in college if anyone went to goa we always wanted a bottle of feni. It cost just three bucks ( about 50 cents then) had a great kick and stank like hell but if you coupled it with some dum it took you way beyond! A friend from Goa sent me a bottle recently, now this is totally different, doesnt have much of a smell and is actually very pleasant and smooth. Very different to the stuff we were used to growing up.