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


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a discussion on Indian Biscuits

speaking of biscuits, here's a picture of today's breakfast (as you'll see, considerably more extravagant than yesterday's):

teabiscuits.jpg

my usual favorite for dipping into the morning cup are brittania bourbon biscuits (an indian brand). tragically my local indian grocery has stopped carrying them. here's a discussion of these biscuits in the india forum, along with monica and nessa's incredibly generous offers to ship me some. however since they're available online here i decided not to trouble them.

in india there's a wide variety of biscuits suitable for tea-dipping--though the brittania bourbon, in my opinion, bestrides this world like a veritable colossus (well, insofaras something without legs or feet can bestride anything). among these other, inferior, biscuits are butter-biscuits, thin-arrowroot biscuits etc. etc. there's a french butter biscuit available in large grocery stores that is a good dipper but they're expensive and i go through tea-biscuits like a thing what's voracious goes through another thing it likes and so. i am currently experimenting with a biscuit (maria's something or the other) from costplus that resembles an indian thin-arrowroot biscuit. it is passable i think--the flavor is nice but clearly this biscuit was not invented to be dipped in hot tea: it has a very low disintegration threshold. what were these italians thinking?

but the mind is beginning to uncloud and soon the business of the day's blogging will begin. today should be a much calmer day at the blog. yesterday was an aberration--everybody came to see the dogfaced boy speak.

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Lemon juice in Indian cooking does more than add sourness or tang to the dish. It actually makes 'discrete' all the complex flavours of the various ingredients. Sort of like getting your speakers in Phase.

This may sound too far fetched for even the pros to fathom but try it out. Make any Indian recipe and taste it before and after adding lemon/lime juice. It expands the spatial taste Stage.

i've never thought of it this way episure but it makes a kind of sense. as you know a lot of indian dishes call for a squeeze of lime to actually be added at the table (like the bengali mushoor dal and rice). it does clarify the flavors beautifully.

by the way, i want to clarify something. yesterday in two separate posts i first noted that a number of experts from the india forum were reading along, and then at the end of my longer post from the middle of the day i said i was suspicious of the narratives of experts. by this careless juxtaposition i didn't mean to say that i am suspicious of people like episure, rushina, bague25, monica (or vikram who hasn't yet checked in and bhelpuri who just did today); i am suspicious of people who set themselves up or who are set up as experts with a big e and who then become a repository of all information for a particular culture. the people i just listed, and others on the india forum such as ammini, edward, bong, rajsuman etc., are not people who set themselves up as experts in this ambitious, expansive way. they know their areas, often in incredible depth, and they're all very careful to mark the limits of their knowledge. of course they all know more than me (and i'm not being coy here or fishing for disavowals). within this group there's two people who stand out, in my opinion, as knowing the most about the widest range of indian food practices: episure and vikram. i'd urge anyone who wants to learn more about indian food to read as many of their posts (and those by the others i listed, and i know i've forgotten some key people) on the india forum as possible.

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didn't he just open a new place in addition to his steak-house? anyone been? what is it with ex-football players/coaches and steak-houses anyway?

Elway's steakhouse isn't open yet, is it? It's supposed to be in the old Canyon Cafe space near Cherry Creek Mall. It's listed on opentable.com, but says it's not available for online reservations until after October 10th. I chuckled that the entertainment is listed as being live music featuring the "80's to today's upbeat ballads." What, pray tell, is an upbeat ballad?

“When I was dating and the wine list was presented to my male companion, I tried to ignore this unfortunate faux pas. But this practice still goes on…Closing note to all servers and sommeliers: please include women in wine selection. Okay?”--Alpana Singh, M.S.-"Alpana Pours"

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Elway's steakhouse isn't open yet, is it? It's supposed to be in the old Canyon Cafe space near Cherry Creek Mall. It's listed on opentable.com, but says it's not available for online reservations until after October 10th.

oh, so the steak-house is the new one. he already is part owner of another restaurant in cherry creek right?

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the day's food related plans

lunch:

vegetarian left-overs from last night

dal

chicken-liver curry

rice

post-lunch:

shopping at the local indian grocery. they get fresh veggies on tuesdays at 1. being familiar with the notion of indian standard time i will go at 3. hopefully they'll have fresh curry leaves, okra and raw mangoes.

dinner:

depending on how much of the vegetables survive lunch i may make bengali style alu-gobi or fried okra as a replacement

mushoor dal (which will survive)

catfish made in an upcountry malayali style (can't eat liver two meals in a row).

rice

if i don't have to cook a vegetable as well i'll make a bengali raw mango chutney for "dessert".

let all non-indians (india forum regulars don't count) who have ever eaten a liver curry raise their hands. raise both if you ate it at a restaurant. ditto for raw mango chutney. one of the things that i'm trying to do in this blog (and it doesn't take special effort since this is the way we eat normally) is give the non-indians on egullet a sense of the difference between home-made indian food and restaurant food. as you'll see there are some dishes that don't show up at all on restaurant menus; others do in cognate versions that are cooked very differently. (see my introduction from yesterday and the longer piece from the afternoon to get a sense of where in india my home-made food originates.) i hope this is of interest to people. of the dishes that i posted pictures of yesterday it was the sexier fish dish that got the most attention--the evening's food got less of a response. i know this stuff is less exciting to look at but it is the kind of thing most indians eat on a daily basis, and it is delicious. but enough about the agenda.

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Lemon juice in Indian cooking does more than add sourness or tang to the dish. It actually makes 'discrete' all the complex flavours of the various ingredients. Sort of like getting your speakers in Phase.

This may sound too far fetched for even the pros to fathom but try it out. Make any Indian recipe and taste it before and after adding lemon/lime juice. It expands the spatial taste Stage.

i've never thought of it this way episure but it makes a kind of sense. as you know a lot of indian dishes call for a squeeze of lime to actually be added at the table (like the bengali mushoor dal and rice). it does clarify the flavors beautifully.

by the way, i want to clarify something. yesterday in two separate posts i first noted that a number of experts from the india forum were reading along, and then at the end of my longer post from the middle of the day i said i was suspicious of the narratives of experts. by this careless juxtaposition i didn't mean to say that i am suspicious of people like episure, rushina, bague25, monica (or vikram who hasn't yet checked in and bhelpuri who just did today); i am suspicious of people who set themselves up or who are set up as experts with a big e and who then become a repository of all information for a particular culture. the people i just listed, and others on the india forum such as ammini, edward, bong, rajsuman etc., are not people who set themselves up as experts in this ambitious, expansive way. they know their areas, often in incredible depth, and they're all very careful to mark the limits of their knowledge. of course they all know more than me (and i'm not being coy here or fishing for disavowals). within this group there's two people who stand out, in my opinion, as knowing the most about the widest range of indian food practices: episure and vikram. i'd urge anyone who wants to learn more about indian food to read as many of their posts (and those by the others i listed, and i know i've forgotten some key people) on the india forum as possible.

Doctor Jones,

Stop wasting time on being polite for errors, slurs and ommission, just blog away man, hit the keyboards.

I'm selling off all my Woody Allen books and VCD copies of his earlier Films.

I fry by the heat of my pans. ~ Suresh Hinduja

http://www.gourmetindia.com

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of the dishes that i posted pictures of yesterday it was the sexier fish dish that got the most attention--the evening's food got less of a response. i know this stuff is less exciting to look at but it is the kind of thing most indians eat on a daily basis, and it is delicious. but enough about the agenda.

Excellent point, Mong, excellent, excellent. Your dal was the picture that excited me the most last night. Looked exactly like my mom's dal. That's comfort food right there, that is.

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of the dishes that i posted pictures of yesterday it was the sexier fish dish that got the most attention--the evening's food got less of a response. i know this stuff is less exciting to look at but it is the kind of thing most indians eat on a daily basis, and it is delicious. but enough about the agenda.

Excellent point, Mong, excellent, excellent. Your dal was the picture that excited me the most last night. Looked exactly like my mom's dal. That's comfort food right there, that is.

Dal M for mongo.

"I've caught you Richardson, stuffing spit-backs in your vile maw. 'Let tomorrow's omelets go empty,' is that your fucking attitude?" -E. B. Farnum

"Behold, I teach you the ubermunch. The ubermunch is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: the ubermunch shall be the meaning of the earth!" -Fritzy N.

"It's okay to like celery more than yogurt, but it's not okay to think that batter is yogurt."

Serving fine and fresh gratuitous comments since Oct 5 2001, 09:53 PM

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does green mango pickle count?

No? oh well.

Please, I'm looking forward to this.

Soba

this is a chutney/chatni with a thin syrupy consistency--with slices of cooked unripe mango floating in it. saying cooked raw mango sounds funny, but i'm also hesitant to use green mango as synonym for raw mango since many of the greatest indian mangos (for instance the queen of bengal, the langda) remain a lustrous green on the outside even when fully ripened. unripe is probably the correct usage here anyway, right?

i hope they have the unripe mangos--they didn't last week. this chatni is one of the most refreshing things imaginable in the summer and is incredibly easy to make. if they do have it and whenever i make it this week i will document all the steps.

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Mongo_Jones is so dreamy :wub:.

MJ, you've got me inspired to cook up something spicy. I even have some ajwain, some asafoetida and, if I'm not dreaming, some amchoor powder and black mustard seed in the house (in addition to cumin, coriander, fenugreek, and turmeric).

Now all I need is a little time. :wacko:

nightmare creature shurely--come on, it is important to my self-image.

i think all the indian cooks reading this blog (of indian or other origin) should strategize recipes for ggmora based on her list of available spices. i mean, why should i do all the work in my blog? goddamned freeloaders!

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I have a question. Did you introduce your wife to Indian food or did she already like it? If she had never had it before, how long did it take for her to like it? What is her favorite? What does she dislike? Does she like cilantro?

Conversely, did she introduce you to Korean food or did you already know all about it? Same questions as above but reverse.

I love cold Dinty Moore beef stew. It is like dog food! And I am like a dog.

--NeroW

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Please, Doctor M, include all the steps in the liver curry, if you do one dish like that, because I want to make that one at home.

:blush:

I want to add that you don't have to, because I know you are very busy and everything. But if I could make one request that's what it would be.

Edited by bleudauvergne (log)
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let all non-indians (india forum regulars don't count) who have ever eaten a liver curry raise their hands. raise both if you ate it at a restaurant.

Long ago, when I was a college student in Lubbock, Texas, there was no Indian restaurant within several hundred miles. My dad had recently introduced me to Indian food in Houston, and I had developed a jones. So I bought the closest thing to an Indian cookbook I could find in that benighted place (Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cookbook ) and taught myself to cook. There was a chicken liver curry recipe in there that I probably made every other week for a couple of years. Still would, if chickens hadn't become such scary foul industrial products. Does Whole Foods sell organic chicken livers?

"Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside." Mark Twain
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Mongo, your dal made me drool. If I haven't responded to the food yet, it's merely out of breathless ignorance; I'm too busy trying to learn.

Yes, we were all off searching through the India Forum, trying to figure out what happens between the cutting board and the dinner plate at Mongo's house, and then getting sidetracked as we read all of the interesting conversations. That explains it.

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let all non-indians (india forum regulars don't count) who have ever eaten a liver curry raise their hands. raise both if you ate it at a restaurant.

Am I an India Forum regular? I'm not sure. But during September of 1975, I spent a month in Kuala Lumpur going to the Sekolah Bahasa-Bahasa Moden (School of Modern Languages) to study book Malay. The school was near the Pasar Chow Kit, which despite its Chinese name was in a mixed Chinese/Indian neighborhood with lots of representation of Indians. For breakfast, my father and I had the large roti canai they made in those days or chapatti. A man standing outside would cook up these breads on his griddle and add some kind of curry sauce (chicken or goat, it might have been) or/and dal to it. For lunch, my father and I went to Restoran Alim, a Halal North Indian Muslim restaurant (Punjabi, I believe, and "Alim" means religious in Malay and Arabic and, doubtless, Urdu) that had framed calligraphy of "La illaha illaLah Muhammadur Rasulullah" ("There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Messenger") and Qur'anic inscriptions on the walls. The food was really spicy there, almost too spicy for us, but we enjoyed it. One of their specialties was liver curry, and I liked it a lot and ate it often when I wasn't going for the goat curry or something else.

I can't remember ever having had raw mango chutney, only cooked mango chutney, as far as I know.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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okay, so let me pick up on the second sense in which i asked the question: "what do you think of when you think of indian food?"

probably the biggest reason (other than taste) that anyone anywhere likes food from anywhere else is because it is from somewhere else. the foreign is always exciting (the word "exotic" carries a certain baggage with it so i won't use it). the question then is why does food from some places become more popular globally than food from other places? why, for example, is indian food so much more popular the world over than, for example, chilean food? (this is a separate question from whether it is any good the world over.)

of course, this matter is somewhat overdetermined. which is merely a fancy-pants way of saying that it is a phenomenon with multiple causative factors, none of which can be identified as the originary one. for indian food at least the following factors come into play (and none of these are unique to the indian example):

1. india's long history of functioning as a locus of desire not just in western europe but in other parts of the world as well. "india" as commodity is something a lot of cultures have desired, coveted for a long time--and after a point food becomes both synecdoche and symbol. kipling, rushdie and a.r rahman are only the most recent benefitters of this interest (which is not to say that that is all they are).

2. indian food tastes good.

3. indian food is globally available: indians have travelled all over the world and taken their food with them--from ancient and medieval trade to the colonial forced emigration of indentured labor and babus to other colonial possessions (in the caribbean, africa, south east asia and fiji) to the current diaspora.

4. some kinds of indian food have blended well with the high traditions of european food (indo-french fusion, for example). thus it has become possible for some people to assimilate indian food/ingredients/approaches to cooking into the narratives of high cuisine in a manner that it hasn't yet for, say, korean food.

5. there's a lot of vegetarian indian food which is attractive to vegetarians adrift in cultures that have animal fat in everything.

etc. etc.

i think it is always interesting to ponder how the things we like come to us and how we come to them. none of this changes how something tastes but it may have a little to do with what we are willing to taste. in the end you only eat the food you like a second time. but not every cuisine gets a first taste, and not every cuisine is able to travel the world in the same way (or some slip over the border while others travel with a green-card). anyway--these are the kinds of things i think about (and yet i don't constantly suffer from indigestion). i'll be very interested in other people's takes on these ideas or their application/relevance to other cuisines with which they're more familiar or which they prefer.

sorry for going on rather a lot yet again.

mongo

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Please, Doctor M, include all the steps in the liver curry, if you do one dish like that, because I want to make that one at home.

oh, okay, okay. do you want photos, or will just the description of the steps do? i ask only because liver cooks very fast and i don't want to overcook it while trying to take a decent photograph--if you insist i can try to rope the evil mrs. j into taking the pictures, but she is, as i say, evil and may not cooperate.

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2. indian food tastes good.

That would be first and foremost for me. There are many foods that are difficult to enjoy unless you grew up with them and are used to the taste or texture, or pairings of flavors that don't necessarily translate well to most people. Somehow much of Indian fare tastes good to just about anyone, which makes it more globally appealing. Then there's the rich diversity of Indian culture and style of cooking. There really is something for just about anyone to enjoy, since India encompasses so many different ways of preparing food.

But I'll stick with Indian food tastes good :biggrin:.

PS - the alu palak looked delicious. I can guess at most of the preparation, but could you share a general overview?

Kathy

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. - Harriet Van Horne

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So I bought the closest thing to an Indian cookbook I could find in that benighted place (Charmaine Solomon's The Complete Asian Cookbook ) and taught myself to cook. There was a chicken liver curry recipe in there that I probably made every other week for a couple of years. Still would, if chickens hadn't become such scary foul industrial products. Does Whole Foods sell organic chicken livers?

excellent. was it a dry curry? most traditional liver curries in india tend to be dry, and they mostly tend to be made with goat liver. i'm guessing the chicken liver recipe is a concession to american tastes/availabilities--that's the only reason i make mine with chicken liver too. and my version has quite a bit more gravy/sauce.

whole foods may well sell organic livers--mine are some doubtless toxic versions from king soopers'. now you've got me worried...

Am I an India Forum regular? I'm not sure. But during September of 1975, I spent a month in Kuala Lumpur going to the Sekolah Bahasa-Bahasa Moden (School of Modern Languages) to study book Malay. The school was near the Pasar Chow Kit, which despite its Chinese name was in a mixed Chinese/Indian neighborhood with lots of representation of Indians. For breakfast, my father and I had the large roti canai they made in those days or chapatti. A man standing outside would cook up these breads on his griddle and add some kind of curry sauce (chicken or goat, it might have been) or/and dal to it. For lunch, my father and I went to Restoran Alim, a Halal North Indian Muslim restaurant (Punjabi, I believe, and "Alim" means religious in Malay and Arabic and, doubtless, Urdu) that had framed calligraphy of "La illaha illaLah Muhammadur Rasulullah" ("There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Messenger") and Qur'anic inscriptions on the walls. The food was really spicy there, almost too spicy for us, but we enjoyed it. One of their specialties was liver curry, and I liked it a lot and ate it often when I wasn't going for the goat curry or something else.

pan, i'd love to eat indian food in south-east asia. i'm guessing the liver there too was goat? do you have a sense-memory of it? and did they do the punjabi brain curry as well?

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PS - the alu palak looked delicious. I can guess at most of the preparation, but could you share a general overview?

i could have sworn i'd posted the recipe to the india forum--but even i can't find it now. here's the dal recipe by the way: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=32300

quick steps for the alu-palak (have to go start the liver-curry):

1. boil the potatoes till almost done, cool and dice

2. wash the spinach thoroughly and coarsely chop (don't drain all the water)

3. heat oil, break up a couple of dried red chillies and drop 'em in.

4. when the chillies darken add 3/4 tspn turmeric, 1/2 tspn fenugreek seeds, 1/2 tspn red chilli powder and stir

5. when your sneezing fit subsides drop in the potatoes, mix and saute till potato surfaces crisp a little--reduce heat to medium

6. add the spinach and salt to taste. stir till spinach begins to wilt, add 1 tablespn kasoori methi (optional) and cover

7. how long you leave it covered depends on how done the potatoes are--the water adhering to the spinach will steam it all

8. uncover, raise heat to high, evaporate most of the water and serve.

happy?

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