eG Foodblog: mongo jones - how to lose friends and annoy people

[mongo_jones]

so what should i do with the chicken tonight:

1. make my usual bengali'ish chicken curry/stew

2. make a kerala christian pot-roasted chicken

3. make a kerala style curried chicken

the votes are in and here's what they say:

3 clear votes each for options 2 and 3. 1 vote for option 1 (thank you ludja). the tie-breaker for 2 and 3 will be gingerly's post, which is either merely an endorsement or a vote in itself. i'll go with the latter--so the easter chicken roast it is! must go clean, skin and marinate bird now.

[NulloModo]

Mongo - I'm with you on the $10,000 to explore the off-the beaten path culinary treasures the world offers. However, were someont to give me that money, I don't know what area of the world I would head to first.

I have relished the eCGI course on Indian regional cookery, and even tried a few of the dishes myself. I have to admit that before reading it all I had no idea that Indian cuisine was so varied from place to place. My own worry about this however would be that as a foreigner I would end up choosing the wrong street stands and not get the best examples of local cuisine. Walking the streets of Philadelphia one can find some absolutely phenomenal meals in the Italian American and U.S. Street Food styles, but one can also find some phenomenally bad ones. I suppose I would have to survey lots of local little places in each city visited...

[mongo_jones]

I have relished the eCGI course on Indian regional cookery, and even tried a few of the dishes myself.  I have to admit that before reading it all I had no idea that Indian cuisine was so varied from place to place.  My own worry about this however would be that as a foreigner I would end up choosing the wrong street stands and not get the best examples of local cuisine.  Walking the streets of Philadelphia one can find some absolutely phenomenal meals in the Italian American and U.S. Street Food styles, but one can also find some phenomenally bad ones.  I suppose I would have to survey lots of local little places in each city visited...

nullomodo, for $10,000 in india we could both eat like royalty. of course, if you wouldn't want me as a travel companion (even in fantasy land where $10,000 is being distributed) i can hook you up with many people who will happily guide you should you ever actually go to india. in fact, episure will be highly offended if you go to bangalore and don't let him create an itinerary and even cook for you (and after that meal a lot of others might not seem as good).

Edited June 17, 2004 by mongo_jones (log)

[mongo_jones]

well the chicken is marinating. i hope you can tell by looking at it just how much of an expert i am in skinning chickens...

i cannot tell you how good this already smells--i was ready to eat it raw. and by the time i was done rubbing the spice-paste on my hands looked like i'd just got done with a day of holi festivities (the hindu festival of color--perhaps the most joyous of all indian festivals, strange given the gory mythological story behind it).

by the way, some of you may remember that when i described my roast croaker last night i said that while i had "improvized" the dish myself it doubtless resembled already extant malayali and goan dishes. as it turns out this chicken pot-roast preparation is very similar--almost exactly the same paste: mine also has amchur and black-pepper, and i used garam masala powder instead of ground cloves and cinnamon; i rubbed my spice-paste onto fish and put it in an oven; this one goes on a chicken that cooks in a pot. other than that they're identical. well, maybe first cousins. goes to show that you can reinvent the wheel, and that sometimes there can be more satisfaction in "inventing" something that you later discover is a classic, than in really inventing something new.

[Behemoth]

Due to this blog'S hydra-like ability to grow two new pages for every one I read, I can't find the old quote, but in response to your question about good restaurants outside metro areas -- I need to give mad props to a bunch of people here in central Illinois:

Bacaro

I just found out about this place recently & have not had a chance to go there yet, (I commute to champaign for work) but I have become a frequent customer at the wine shop where this guy used to work. That place (The Corkscrew) is clearly a labor of love. They have extensive comments on their wines, really unusual stuff from indy wineries, they send their buyers everywhere to find new stuff, and have a wide range of prices. I am barely out of novice wine-drinker stage (thanks, Philadelphia blue laws!) but they will take time with me and are extremely helpful and informative even though I don't have all that much money to spend. Having seen a menu at Bacaro, I have very high expectations as to its quality. As for why its not in Chicago -- It is nice to raise kids around here (from what I've been told), and some people who grew up here like it enough to stay.

[bloviatrix]

i wish i could have actually been in delhi for half of this blog--could have shown people not just the fancy and non-fancy restaurants but also my mother and aunts' cooking. wait, i already did that with the trip photos from january--linked to here and related discussion of some of the home food here .

Mongo, I'm nominating you to blog again then next time you go back to India.

Please, please, please take us with you. :beg:

[reesek]

i wish i could have actually been in delhi for half of this blog--could have shown people not just the fancy and non-fancy restaurants but also my mother and aunts' cooking. wait, i already did that with the trip photos from january--linked to here and related discussion of some of the home food here .

Mongo, I'm nominating you to blog again then next time you go back to India.

Please, please, please take us with you. :beg:

right?! i actually drooled.

[mongo_jones]

the wife made her fortnightly pilgrimage to komart--the large korean/japanese grocery in aurora, a suburb of denver--today. she went largely to replenish her stock of korean soap-opera videos (the woman scoffs at my love of crappy action movies but does not find this inconsistent with her support of this stuff), but also brought home some stuff to eat with tea. now, i don't want to give the impression that high-tea is a regular meal at the jones ranch. we only ate the samosas on tuesday because they arrrived fresh at the store while i was there and i have a feeling that mrs. jones (as bemused by and uninterested in the blog, and egullet in general, as she claims to be) is feeling a little competitive. how else to explain the arrival of these pastries? or the fact that she says she's going to make kim-chi at home over the weekend (she says i can only post pictures of the process and results later IF the kim-chi turns out well--here i am flying without a net with tonight's roast chicken and she insists on a tape-delay; but as i've said our characters are quite different).

as per my laconic informant these "pastries", available at every korean bakery, are korean versions of french pastries and one of them even has a name that sounds like croquette, even though neither looks like one. readers more familiar with korean food will have to confirm or deny. the one that looks like it is stuffed with butter is actually stuffed with a sweet custard; the other with a savory mix of sauteed onion, egg etc. etc. both very delish and great with a cup of green label tea.

[Behemoth]

she went largely to replenish her stock of korean soap-opera videos (the woman scoffs at my love of crappy action movies but does not find this inconsistent with her support of this stuff),

Um, yeah that's what I thought until while working on my thesis late one night I happened to catch an episode of To Be With You. Next thing you know I am studying Han-Gul and flying to Korea in July. (Okay a conference, but still -- I didn't have to go!)

edited to add -- do you have to bury the Kim-Chee if you make it at home? Those pastries are making me hungry.

Edited June 18, 2004 by Behemoth (log)

[mongo_jones]

not sure what most home kim-chi makers do but neither my mother-in-law nor my wife buries their kim-chi. she does look at me sometimes like she would like to bury me. (wife, not m-i-l, m-i-l loves me.)

[sacre_bleu]

Here's my take on the question of why there aren't more innovative restaurants in small towns. It's pretty simple: There aren't enough paying customers to support it. Since opening an independent restaurant is a pretty big gamble even under the most helpful circumstances, most restaurants in non-top-10 markets have to practically have a suicide wish to even try.

First, let me define my frame of reference.

I live near Buffalo, NY. Erie County, which includes Buffalo and its suburbs, measured 945,000 people in the 2000 US Census. So it's actually a decent-sized metropolitan area. It ranked 42nd in 2000, just after Austin, TX and Memphis, TN, and just before Louisville, KY and Hartford, CT. Boulder came in at 158, by the way.

The metropolitan area is probably a better unit for describing restaurant viability, because people will travel an hour for a good restaurant. The French Laundry is in the country, perhaps 40 miles north of the city, but it draws on the massive culinary tourism dollars available in San Francisco and the Napa Valley. (Twelfth on the census list.)

People fly in just to go to FL, but judging from Keller interviews, they are in the minority. Even the greatest restaurants need local customers to keep their doors open.

In Buffalo, the national awakening to culinary diversity over the last decade has given diners more choices. There's an upscale pan-Asian place now, in addition to the single top-flight French restaurant. Semi-authentic Chinese? One, and General Gao still seems to run amok. One Korean barbecue, thank God. Three or four half-hearted Thai. Blue-collar Vietnamese, one. Indian, four or five decent, none outstanding.

Yes, there are four sushi places. But one is retreaded Koreans cooking out of a franchise binder, one is an appendix on karate-influenced teppanyaki, and one is a soup-to-nuts-to-toro place.

There are four or five excellent places that might get two stars from the New York Times in Buffalo. No threes, surely. But the places that make innovative pairings of ingredients and challenging flavors the heart of their menu don't last a year, usually.

There just aren't enough people who are willing to support that kind of place here. By support, I mean go back two or three times a year. In New York City, your WD 50 might survive if adventurous couples only went there once a year. Here in Buffalo, there just aren't enough of them.

Why aren't there more? It's probably related to demographics again. Buffalo's population skews older and blue-collar. So when those people go out to dinner, they disproportionately go for the safe "value" dining. Which equals chains.

You don't want to try to get into the Red Lobster on a Friday night. It's hand-to-hand combat. Roadhouse Grill or Outback? An hour wait.

But serve roundeye tuna sashimi with lemon ginger emulsion and you can count down the months to unemployment.

[winesonoma]

The French Laundry is in a destination food wine area. While I live but 30 minutes away I hesitate to give up half my mortgage payment to eat there. There are many fine restaurants here. But $50.00 for lunch with wine is average, $120.00 for dinner . Thanks but I'm cooking at home. To double or triple that is a long stretch for the average wage slave.

[mongo_jones]

okay, dinner's almost ready--the dal is done, chicken 5 minutes away. man, we're eating late tonight even by our standards. maybe just a brunch and early dinner tomorrow.

pics of chicken and dal in a little bit.

edit to add pics:

marinated chicken goes into pot with heated oil, gets turned with tongs till browned on all sides. (am i the only one who hadn't figured out till tonight that the creature effects for "the alien" were based on skinned whole chickens?)

some time later. (after browning the chicken, you pour a cup and a quarter of hot water over it, cover, turn from time to time till done--at the end remove the chicken, thicken the sauce by evaporation, coat chicken with it and serve)

and this is the cooked kali urad dal

thoughts:

the dal was amazing tonight. again i don't want to be inflationary about my own cooking but because i've been posting pictures for you guys i've been cooking exceedingly carefully; not wandering off to do a thousand other things between steps and burning or overdoing certain things as i am normally often wont to do--i am able to recover from minor missteps, of course, but this week i haven't ever needed to and everything that i've cooked for the blog has been in the top 3 renditions all time for its recipe. the irony, of course, is that you can only see the pictures and so it wouldn't have mattered if i had in fact fucked up the flavors. i only wish i could have fed some of you some of this stuff.

now the chicken: as i said, usually not a good idea to cook something for the first time for other people (even if they're just watching). but this i think is a recipe built for those kinds of fears. as gingerly put it, simple and great. i also realize that i've eaten similar chicken dishes in homes of malayali friends for years without knowing its general name. now that i've made it the way the recipe called for it to be made i'll tweak it in future renditions: experiment with spice proportions in the paste, try it in a regular oven with a water-bath, try it with a cut-up chicken (for convenience) etc. etc. i'm thinking this might be also good with some honey or other sweetening agent added to the paste. thoughts gingerly?

we ate all this with rice and the okra (which still survives)

one dal (moog) left--probably saturday, but definitely sunday. maybe we'll coast on saturday with leftovers and scraps, and go out with a huge bang on sunday (talk the wife into an indo-korean feast). but let's not make promises we might later be too lazy to keep...

Edited June 18, 2004 by mongo_jones (log)

[kellycolorado]

this is what happened in the dream:

<snip>

5. this is related to interpretation 2: due to certain interactions with fatguy over the last few months i have entered into some unhealthy psychological relationship with him a la charlotte rampling and dirk bogarde in "the night porter".

this i certainly hope is not true--if nor no other reason than because that movie ends in starvation and death,

OK, finally found what I wanted to quote...

I spit on my keyboard at the phrase in bold. I'm really enjoying your blog, and I can't wait to try the nadan fish curry and okra. I would *love* to find more fish dishes served in Indian restaurants (and less cream).

[kellycolorado]

I agree with sacre_bleu that the number one reason smaller metro areas don't have a good food scene is the lack of affluent people (or people who want to spend their disposable income on dining). Not far behind I think is a lack of availability of quality produce and meats and the lack of adventurousness (is that a word? Some of us engineers don't write too good ) of the people. I also think the last reason is why the chains can be so prevalent in the smaller towns and "middle america" for people who want to stay in their comfort level. Don't get me started on the chain dining in my neighborhood and how packed they always were. Or how any dough but pizza dough never turned out right for me at 6000 feet.

I had a lot of time to ponder this in my 3 years in Colorado about an hour south of Denver. It was suburban sprawl chain restaurant hell for the most part. Luckily I am back in Silicon Valley now where we have abundant mediocre Indian restaurants and once in a while we get lucky and our Indian friends invite us over to eat.

[mongo_jones]

pics of dinner edited-in upstream--kelly posted twice while i was fiddling with the edit!

[Behemoth]

I agree with sacre_bleu that the number one reason smaller metro areas don't have a good food scene is the lack of affluent people (or people who want to spend their disposable income on dining).

I live in a relatively affluent midwestern town of about 100,000. Very frequent restaurant goers (supposedly 3rd in the country!)

From what I can tell of the shopping stiuation around here, they seem to spend tons of money on big houses, big cars, big TVs, but not on good food or clothes. I now think it is less about money, and more about some notion of "midwestern values".

[gingerly]

oooh-guess i'm too late then..

anyway,for anyone who's interested-i double the turmeric and chilli powder and in trying to replicate the(remembered )chemical strength of 'mohuns'malt vinegar'(industrial strength acid),hit upon a perfect-for me that is-mix of heinz malt vinegar and that beloved of club cooks-worcestershire sauce.(sugar right there)

r.i.p.

that chicken looks amazing.

channel now and then to us pitiful ones left behind

[mongo_jones]

day 4 of the blog comes to an end. one more weekday left. see you all tomorrow--when we'll actually go out for a meal for a change.

[beans]

Hi mongo.

Great blog. You've actually made me laugh and learn a few wonderful things. You will be one of the toughest acts to follow.

[binkyboots]

*massages eyeballs*

wow... I just finally got the chance to read this blog cover to cover, and well worth the reading it was!

thank you mongo, I've not really ventured into any of the country specific forums, but I'll definately be lurking at least from now on!

[bhelpuri]

there does seem to be enough of a hispanic population in colorado/denver to support good hispanic cuisine

Not that i'm any kind of expert on Colorado, but I'm pretty sure that my experience of hunting down Mexican food in other places will be valid.

It's out there, Mongo, and it's likely to be hard-core, earthy and delicious. But it may not be in a place you'd call a restaurant, or want to take your wife. It may be being sold right now out of a plastic bucket near a construction site, or from a makeshift counter in a store selling phone cards, or from the front porch of a tiny house in a rotten neighborhood.

The fact is that states that feature as many migrant workers as Colorado - with a high proportion always being single, part-transient, men - always feature a small, mostly-underground, economy servicing them. And food is a huge part of it, because it is one item that the migrants can afford that is completely "authentic' and reminds them of home.

So, don't necessarily expect helpful reviews in the mainstream newspapers, or even a signboard. Ask the illegals, ask the construction guy you see chowing down happily on barbecued goat when you walk by at lunchtime, ask the cleaning lady.

[mongo_jones]

good morning.

15 pages into this blog, i think we are all exhausted. to think i have three days left to go. unless people really want to know details i am tempted to make entries like "cooked", "ate lunch", "ate dinner" and so on. then again i am barely awake and not feeling particularly gregarious.

[Lady T]

There, there...sit down, have a good cuppa, relax while one of us massages your shoulders and someone else picks out a wonderful book for you to read later. No worries, none at all, at all.

After a while, we'll check back in and see about (drooooool) planning lunch or supper with you...

[bloviatrix]

Where do you come up with 15 pages? I've only got 6.