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Diwali is on Tuesday ,November 1st.What is everyone cooking?Any special dishes-Mithai,namkeen etc? Diwali Lunch in my home always consists of Puri,Kachori(either urad dal,or potatoes),Alu-Gobhi,Bhindi,Boondi Raita,Rase vali Alu ki sabzee,Kheer,and sooji Halwa.All this is cooked without any onions and garlic.The tadka is a very simple hing and jeera,but still everything tastes just great. My mother always made tons of gujhiya,gulab jamuns,barfee,mathri,sev,chakri etc.I can never make all that stuff,but i try to make atleast a few things.So this year ,i plan to do gujiya,gulabjamun(from scratch-with mava),coconut laddu's and mathri. I would love to know what others are cooking up and how they will celebrate Diwali.

We have a some fresh mango pickle that we brought back with us from Chicago. When we were in Chicago we ate it with the rest of the haul from Malabar Catering: avyial, long bean thoran, beef curry, fish in banana leaves, palappam and a besan/yogurt soupy stuff I would love to be reminded what it is called. We had to pass up the kerala style dal and the mutton curry since there were only four of us! Sigh. Oh, for Malayalam food in little old Portland, OR. So now I'm wondering what I should make to eat with the pickle that survived the trek home. I assume I've only got a few more days with it, since it's the fresh crunchy kind. Suggestions? thanks, trillium

I'm looking for an indian buffet place near chinatown area. Any suggestions?

The terminology appears to vary from country to country, and region to region, but I'm wondering if anyone knows what the words "SEEK" and "SISH" means, and where they come from -- as well as what they apply to. I was introduced to these kind of kebabs at Abdul's Takeaway in Manchester, England. There, the seek kebab was made of minced lamb -- and it tends to be the same here in the US, except they tend to substitute beef due to local preferences. Their sish kebab was chunks of lamb, marinated. I just heard someone refer to a ground chicken kebab as "Chicken Seek Kebab" and I wondered, does seek mean lamb? Or does it just mean ground? And what does sish mean? Would really appreciate some enlighted comments on this one... Thanks! Edit: Okay, I snooped around a bit, and have found that "Sish" is a generic term for anything that's skewered, possibly of Turkish origin. Wikipedia lists "Seek" as Pakistani in origin, but it doesn't say anything about the word's original meaning. So I guess what I'm asking is, does seek mean minced, or lamb, or something else?

I'm trying to work out what a particular fruit/vegetable that I saw in a local asian (indian/pakistani) grocers is, can anyone help me? It is quite a bright slightly lime-ish green (with yellow tints), about the size of a large kiwi fruit and the skin is spiky & tough looking. It was also floating in a tub of water! It is more spiny than a lychee, but the spikes aren't as long as something like a rambutan. It was near the vegetables rather than the fruit, so I assume its a vegetable, but I can't be sure! I did actually try asking someone who worked there but he couldn't remember, although he was quite young so maybe not the best person to ask! I know that the owner is quite friendly & helpful, but he hasn't been around the shop recently to ask. Anyone have any ideas? And if so, do you have any recommended recipes/serving suggestions? Thanks!

JHlurie and I went to check out the Indian Food Fair at the Sadhu Vaswani Indian Cultural Center in Closter today. Terrific food all around. Sadhu Vaswani Center 494 Durie Avenue Closter, New Jersey 201-768-7857 Some Indo-Chinese food to start off Chowpatty Chaat The Dhosa Man Dhosa Filling Dhosa Vedai Vedai with soup and coconut chutney Samosas The Hindu God Ganesh bringing good luck Pickles for sale Kulfi Dessert -- Indian ice cream with rosewater and glass noodles and crushed ice Falafel, Indian Style

I love the fresh green chili/cilantro/mint condiment (relish/non-cooked chutney) that is offered at some Indian resto's, one place has a tub of it at the till (sort of a fast-food type of establishment at the mall), and I load up on it before going to my table. I've been searching for a recipe, and am wondering if anyone here might have one available. I know it doesn't have mango in it. I think there is green chili, mint, cilantro, onions?, garlic?, tomato? ....... spices? Would anyone know the amounts of the different ingredients etc., for a reasonable size for one persons use over a few days? Oh, and I could eat lots, with whatever, I love it! TIA ETA - p.s. sorry about the spelling mistake, should be desperately, but I don't know how to correct the topic.

mostly brought up on vegetarian Indian food, I would like to know the wonderful uses of the two spices. I did find out from internet searches that kabab chini is all spice but have not much clue how to use them in Indian cooking p.s. I am a converted non-veggie so feel free to encompass meats in your suggestions

Hi guys, I was wondering if any of you knew what we could use as a substitute to Khoya? Ricotta cheese and paneer mix is what I was thinking...but aint sure. Rupen

Hema's is great but the service (lack thereof) amd wait is really a drag-Have taken friends to Hema's, Viceroy, Ghandi and Tippen. Looking for another place for variety sake. Prefer nonvegetarian. Heard that Bhabi's on Oakley is really good. Anyone been? Thanks.

On a trip to a local Indian grocer I picked up a couple of sauce packets and I was planning to make one up tonight however when I read the directions it says to add 300g of curd to the pan with the chicken and sauce pack. What do they mean by curd? If it helps any the dish is Chicken Sukha and the brand is Parampara.

Howdy! Decided to be adventurous and buy 5 different brands of Mango pickle: Swad, Ahmed, Patak's, and two others. Have tried 3 so far and each is so incredibly salty that I can't bear to take another bite. I like salty food, but this is unreal. I threw away a ginger pickle a few weeks ago because it was way too salty. And when I ordered a mixed pickle at local restaurant it was also inedible. So what's the secret here? Is it an acquired taste? Should I be burying a miniscule amount of it in a huge bowl of rice?

I'm not an expert on Indian food, although I'm quite fond of eating Southern dosas and utthapam, and probably can make a few passable vegetable or channa masalas, some ugly chapati, and a really nice mushroom cashew curry, one rare case where I actually follow a recipe. I feel no problem improvising with Japanese, Chinese, or vaguely Italian foods, but I'm never quite comfortable calling my Indian-influenced dishes Indian. When I'm improvising, without referring to cookbooks, I would say this is "Jason cooking with a little too much garam masala in the house." I never really follow the cookbooks precisely anyway. But every once in a while I crave something with some mustard seeds, cumin, coriander seeds, ghee and salt, some garam masala, etc. More particularly, last night I was craving some lentils and some light soupy thing. So I made three dishes. One was a simple grilled eggplant dish with some lime juice, chilies, cilantro, and sweet onions. The other was something like a rasam, though slightly big in proportion compared to how I've usually had it served to me. Another was a kind of lentil kofta with a spiced tomato cream sauce. I'm not sure what it would take to feel like I'm not cheating somehow by improvising. In my Chinese cooking, after my Chinese neighbors in Germany started requesting me to make something, I started to feel like I had passed a certain point of knowledge. With Japanese cooking, my favorite cookbook encouraged improvisation, and I was later better informed by frequent travel to Japan. I cook Indian-ish dishes so rarely that I think it would take a few months of obsessive experimentation, dinner parties and so on before I would feel like I know anything. So here was last night's dinner... Blog entry: Craving soup and lentils

My wife keeps telling me that our kitchen smells like dead rodents courtesy of the tiny bottle of asafoetida I have in the spice drawer. It's wrapped in 3 ziplock bags, but apparently that isn't good enough to keep it from smelling up that sector of the kitchen. Any suggestions on how to store it?

In a few weeks I'll be hosting a wine dinner at a favorite Indian restaurant. For sure we'll be having vegetable pakoras and tandoori lamb with various naan for starters and continue on with a few curries with kashmiri biryani. For the starters I plan to go with whites, probably an Alsatian Gewurztraminer and a demi-sec Vouvray. But for the curry, I'd like to switch to some reds. Would Burgundy work? Cru Beaujolais? Amarone? Anyone tried a successful red wine matching with curry?

I love eating Indian food, especially curries, tandoori meats, and of course the breads. And I do love the taste of biryani dishes, both meats and Kashmiri style. Unfortunately, with eating biryani I get some kind of stomach allergy. I still eat it every now and then, though, sometimes mixing it with plain rice to make it milder but I still end up with the stomach upset. I wonder what's causing it? Anyone have the same experience or venture a guess? Thanks.

Is ketchup a commonly used condiment in the Indian kitchen? Yesterday I attended a wonderful Indian festival here in Tokyo and on my first trip around the food booths, I picked up samosas, pakoras and shish kebabs. These were ordered from 3 different booths and they were all served with a side of ketchup, for the shish kebeb it was actually squirted down the whole length of the kebab. A later purchases of more pakoras at yet another booth was not served with it though. Are these foods normally served with ketchup? I have never been served them this way in a restaurant.

I wonder if any of you have had a similar experience.Often when i make a paste of onions in a blender,it gets very bitter.The first time this happened,i did not even realise it and proceeded to fry it in oil,add the usual masalas etc and made a gravy.But when we ate it,the gravy was positively bitter.After that,everytime i made the onion paste,i would first taste it raw and throw out the whole lot if it were bitter.All this was very wasteful,not to mention irritating.After that i started either grating the onions,or chopping them very fine and than proceeding to fry in oil,but when i needed a really smooth gravy,i had to put the whole thing in a blender after it was done or use my stick blender.The cleaning was painful,because the paste would be oily after having been roasted in oil.All in all very cumbersome! Of late ,this does not happen,and also if i process the onions in a food processor as opposed to a blender,it seems to help too. Wanted to know if any of you folks had encountered the same problem and if you have any solution for it. thanks

We've been asked to do a theme dinner for some students and one of the suggested recipes is for "Makkai di roti". It calls for maize flour as well as wheat flour. I think of maize as corn but that doesn't seem right. There is also no leavening in the recipe. So - what is maize flour and should we add a leavening agent?

A new restuarant recently opened in vancouver with a Sri Lankan family making hoppers. Are these a staple item in Sri Lankan homes? This restaurant gives you three on a plate, one with a soft poached egg in the middle, along with a choice of curry, shredded coconut and chutney. I've never seen these before. Any background information would be great. Stephen Vancouver

Tonight we tried frozen Peas Paratha, made by Pillsbury, India. We thought it was very tasty and I'd like to know how to make it from scratch. I can probably figure out the dough from other paratha recipes on eGullet, but would like to know how to make the nicely seasoned filling. Ingredients are: flour, peas, water, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, coriander, salt, glycerol [dough conditioner ???] onion, modified tapioca starch, cumin, green chillies, mango [amchur powder???], turmeric, chilli powder. TIA!

I recently made a recipe from Everyday Food Magazine called Tandoori chicken. Having actually had Tandoori chicken once I knew there's more to it than yogurt, tumeric, garlic, ginger and two bone-in skinless chicken breast halves. Then recently I was watching Mark Bittman on TV and he was using tandoori paste. I didn't know there was premade Tandoori paste, so I went to a nearby market that I pass often named Chatterjee Grocery which I suspected was an Indian market. With the help of a very polite elderly gentleman I bought a bottle of Nirav tandoori paste. It was a very funky place but as I reminded myself, while gingerly examining things, it wasn't quite as High Funk as my favorite oriental grocery. The bottle gives a recipe for Tandoori Chicken, which starts off "mix the beaten yogurt wit the tandoori paste" so I went to the Nirav website which seems to assume you wouldn't even be there if you didn't know the basics. I then googled Tandoori and found two recipes, one for Cornish Hens (which is what I wanted to cook) but requires making your own Tandoori Masala. The other was for tandoori turkey bits and said to mix 1 tablespoon tandoori paste to 1 teaspoon lemon juice, and 3 tablespoons yogurt. Since I was doing a Cornish Hen I doubled the ingredients, and the resuslts were disaqppointing. Also there wasn't much to the tandoori paste, yogurt mixture, and on the show with Bittman, the food was dripping tandoori paste. I also broiled the hens, since I only have an electric range. So, assuming I would like to cook tandoori chicken legs, using two whole legs, what proportion of tandoori paste to yogurt should I use, what else should I add to the mixture, and how long should I marinate it? Should I bake or broil, and if baking, at what temperature? I know it won't be the real thing, but I would like to achieve a result that is a bit less unlike the real thing.

Were you adult, or did you start very young? Did you get it right away, or was there trial and error (funny stories please?) Mine: I was raised "good for nothing" in typical middle class Indian style, as kids we were told mainly to study and housework was seen as time-waste. This was often a point of argument between Amma and Appa, as Appa would order us out of the kitchen and tell us to study or play sports, saying "fumes will make you cough, the knives and stoves are dangerous" etc. Amma would grumble "how come it's OK for me to stew in the kitchen, but for the three daughters it's off limits?" etc. So I never learnt to cook until young adult, and I left home for college, and suddenly discovered the joys of home cooking and I used to telephone home for uppuma recipes, and Amma used to screech: You are paying long distance charges for upma recipe? Rs 300 to learn to make uppuma? Are you crazy? etc. But I finally got the hang of it.... My mother's story was even more drastic; as her father was a senior govt official and they had (rough estimate) 2 servants for every domestic function. So she was in for a rude awakening after marriage. She used to try and make from cookbooks and produce awful messes, and my dad would patiently eat them while keeping the cookbook propped open so he could at least feast his eyes and imagination on the glorious pictures. Her first dinner party, she owed many other families in Appa's regiment, and by that time she could manage almost everything except the non-veg. So a khansama was arranged from the military mess. THe party was at 7 pm and he did not show up until 3, and came dead drunk, carrying a live chicken upside down, hanging by the feet. He parked it on the verandah and instructed my horrified mother to feed it a few drops of vinegar from time to time to tenderize it. Then he disappeared and Amma was stuck with this crazy situation. Much panic later he showed up at 6: 30, even more drunk, and Amma disappeared. A few squawks and feathers flying later, the chicken was perfectly cooked and on the table in time for the party.... edited to add: Amma is now an absolutely fantastic cook, though she still claims to dislike it and hates all housework (I mean, who really likes to clean?) In stark contrast, my Montessori educated kids learn "life skills" in pre-school (ages 3 to 6) and can already slice veggies, grate and peel things, and my now 8yo has taken to cooking very handily and can make chapatis and all kinds of other things that still challenge me... My father still insists on shooing them out of the kitchen and I have to go in and rescue them. Everyone is still horrified when both kids love to sweep and swab (jhadoo poncha) and I hear muttering behind my back (paying so much for expensive education to do this kind of thing??) So: how was it with others? Milagai

I had lunch today at the Indian Supper club in the worldgate center in reston. They have the lunch time buffet for $9. I have been to a lot of indian buffets and i can definetly say that this was the worst indian buffet I've ever eaten. The rice was greasy (i'm assuming alot of ghee), the quality of rice used was poor, the selection of condiments and dishes was limited. What was there was bland and poor. I will not go back to this place. What a waste of time and money.

I asked this question previously on another thread - but we are looking for a good South Indian or Sri Lankan restaurant in the lower mainland. Something seriously spicy. Any leads would be much appreciated.