eG Foodblog: therese - So, you want to remodel your kitchen?

[therese]

From the same shop as my breakfast this morning came the children's dessert last evening. The Man and I often go out some place casual on Thursday for "date night", and the kids are left behind to either fend for themselves or consume something I've prepared for them.

In this instance I'd "prepared" grocery store sushi. Both my kids really like sushi, and there's some great stuff available here in town that I'm not going to have the opportunity to show you.

And I'm not going to show you the grocery store sushi either. Not bad, actually, but not worth a picture. To "prepare" grocery store sushi means saying "Hey, there's grocery store sushi in the fridge for you guys. Make sure you're in bed by 9:30."

Dessert's another story. The shop packages them in a little box:

This is the box 0.2 seconds after it's been opened:

Sort of sad, isn't it?

I could show you the outside of the box, but that would give it all away...

[therese]

Okay, everybody, last chance to tell me what this might be:

Does this help? Darn, I feel like I'm just giving this one away...

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Some hints:

This item came as part of a combo platter in an ethnic (if you live in Atlanta, anyway) restaurant. It's just big enough to eat in one bite and you chew it for a long time so as to release all the flavors of the varied ingredients. You eat it after you're done with the meal (or in between meals), and one of the ingredients can be tobacco (though this sort did not include that item).

[SobaAddict70]

paan.

Soba

[spaghetttti]

W i l d guess here: something from an Indian restaurant? Lassi and pan masala, you know those beetle nut palate cleaners?

I'm so totally in love with your blog, therese. So informative, educational & engaging (and the riddles are so puzzling & too much fun! ).

[Milagai]

W i l d  guess here:  something from an Indian restaurant?  Lassi and pan masala, you know those beetle nut palate cleaners?

I'm so totally in love with your blog, therese. So informative, educational & engaging (and the riddles are so puzzling & too much fun! ).

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i am also certain that it;s paan,

and lassi, and some kind of burfi type dessert?

love the pictures of your kitchen, but am little puzzled

by the title of the thread: have you already remodelled

your kitchen (it looks wondrous) or are you planning to?

if the latter, why? it looks perfect as is....

milagai

[therese]

paan.

Soba

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Another winner!

Soba, do you remember the Time Life India book? It had this picture that showed the makings of paan. Very cool.

There used to be a restaurant right down the road from the one where we ate dinner last night (which was Madras Saravan Bhavan, more on it later) that actually had a paan vendor who'd custom make it for you right then and there. The restaurant was called Dehli Dharbar and it was just the slightest bit disorienting going there because it used to be a Shoney's and inside, well, it looked like a Shoney's. But instead of a breakfast bar with hellishly bad food it had a buffet with food that was just not great. It burned to the ground a few months after it opened, so thoroughly obliterated that I've always wondered about the possibility of arson. I can assure you that I did not set the fire, even if they did put green food coloring in their raita.

Anyway, this paan comes as part of the dinner thali (which I ordered). If this looks like enough food for a family of four, that's because it is:

But in case you were still hungry it comes with naan:

[arbuclo]

Here's an evening shot of the range, hood, and adjacent counters:

That is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen!

[SobaAddict70]

Oh yes.

And a pic of women drying a sea of chile peppers.

Soba

[therese]

W i l d   guess here:  something from an Indian restaurant?  Lassi and pan masala, you know those beetle nut palate cleaners?

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i am also certain that it;s paan,

and lassi, and some kind of burfi type dessert?

love the pictures of your kitchen, but am little puzzled

by the title of the thread: have you already remodelled

your kitchen (it looks wondrous) or are you planning to?

if the latter, why? it looks perfect as is....

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Full marks for both spaghetttti and milagai as well on identification of pan/paan.

The sweets in the box for the children's dessert are, indeed burfi (also spelled, somewhat unfortunately, barfi). Chocolate this time, Girl's favorite flavor.

The beverage, however, is not lassi, but something else entirely. It can be made a number of different ways---this restaurant uses ice cream (as do most in Atlanta) and no yogurt (so not lassi) and some other things that you can see if you look closely at the glass. I'll give you another look:

A hint: this item is actually described somewhere up thread in a discussion of one of the ingredients.

[therese]

Here's an evening shot of the range, hood, and adjacent counters:

That is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen!

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Thank you. I'm blushing now.

I am very happy with how it's turned out, and it really is very cool getting to share it with others who appreciate this sort of thing.

[therese]

love the pictures of your kitchen, but am little puzzled

by the title of the thread:  have you already remodelled

your kitchen (it looks wondrous) or are you planning to?

if the latter, why?  it looks perfect as is....

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Heh heh. Yes, the title of the blog is directed at others who might be considering doing a kitchen remodel. There are a number of ongoing kitchen remodels being documented on eGullet right now, but the process is too long to work for a week-long foodblog. Since we'd recently completed a kitchen (and house) remodel I decided to incorporate the new kitchen into my blog (which also looks at southern food and ethnic food in a large metropolitan area of the U.S.).

I give some information about just how very not perfect the original kitchen was early in the thread.

[Mooshmouse]

The beverage, however, is not lassi, but something else entirely. It can be made a number of different ways---this restaurant uses ice cream (as do most in Atlanta) and no yogurt (so not lassi) and some other things that you can see if you look closely at the glass. I'll give you another look:

A hint: this item is actually described somewhere up thread in a discussion of one of the ingredients.

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Well, it looks like bubble tea... what's the Indian equivalent of bubble tea?

[therese]

So, back to dinner last night. I'd ordered the thali (which I can describe in detail if anybody wants to know---the restaurant's all vegetarian), but my husband was less adventurous, instead choosing vegetable korma:

The restaurant's known for it dosa, so we had to get one (plain, no filling, for maximum crispiness):

As good as these are hot, they are addictively good the next AM, right out of the fridge.

The restaurant's located in an area of town that's increasingly dominated by Indian merchants and restaurants. This is a huge improvement, as this is another restaurant (like the ill-fated Delhi Dharbar, previously a Shoney's) that had been "re-purposed".

A hint as to the original restaurant in this location may be found here:

The wooden thing on the door is a rolling pin, and until recently bore the sign "Belles". The mens' room was for "Gents". The first time we took the family to this restaurant my daughter (who uses the WCs in all restaurants we visit, and rates them) returned to the table, saying that the restrooms were labeled in some foreign language, and that I needed to come help her figure it out. A foreign language indeed.

Anyway, in a previous life this restaurant was called Po' Folks, and it served downmarket southern food, sort of like Cracker Barrel.

Here's the present interior:

[therese]

[Well, it looks like bubble tea... what's the Indian equivalent of bubble tea? 

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Yes, it looks a great deal like bubble tea, and drinks like bubble tea as well, but the "bits" are not tapioca pearls. There are actually two different types of "bits" in this item, one of which has been discussed in some detail up thread.

[Jensen]

Yes, it looks a great deal like bubble tea, and drinks like bubble tea as well, but the "bits" are not tapioca pearls. There are actually two different types of "bits" in this item, one of which has been discussed in some detail up thread.

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Must be the basil seeds. I have no idea what the longer thingies are though.

[therese]

Yes, it looks a great deal like bubble tea, and drinks like bubble tea as well, but the "bits" are not tapioca pearls. There are actually two different types of "bits" in this item, one of which has been discussed in some detail up thread.

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Must be the basil seeds. I have no idea what the longer thingies are though.

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Correct, the dark thingies in there are basil seeds.

The longer things are actually a sort of pasta, and the name of the beverage is also the name of the pasta (a skinny little sort made with cornstarch). Apparently the pasta's hard to come by, so you can either sub conventional pasta (like vermicelli) or some other sort of "bit" (like agar jelly). Or you can make the pasta yourself.

So does anybody know the name of the beverage?

[shanta]

So does anybody know the name of the beverage?

Falooda!

[therese]

My lunch. The chocolate bar is left from yesterday (turns out I didn't need chocolate after all, but it came in handy today) and the gai lan and quinoa are left from dinner the other night (you can seen the "curliness" of the quinoa here). Strawberries have apparently come in in Florida, as they're practically giving them away at the supermarket, and these were very nice:

I ended up taking Boy to the supermarket (mostly for stuff like dishwasher detergent, which DFM doesn't have) with me yesterday. Cool, because we were practicing his French and he knew a lot more names for fruits and vegetables than I'd have though he would. Ananas, noix de coco, oignon, pomme de terre, pomme, champignon---maybe he is learning something in school after all!

[therese]

So does anybody know the name of the beverage?

Falooda!

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Woo hoo! Another winner!

Falooda it is. For those of you who'd like to do some more reading on the subject of falooda, check out this site, as well as this one, and this one.

[edited for careless typing]

Edited February 18, 2005 by therese (log)

[therese]

So our after dinner stop to pick up burfi for the kids and my breakfast (which is a sort of sweetened cheese item that's like ras malai without the sweet milky sauce on top) and some rasgulla (which I wasn't planning on getting but the owner had just made fresh and so suggested) was here:

It's a small family-run shop that has both sweets and chaat. Here are some of the other available items in no particular order. They were closing up, so lots of things had already been wrapped or put away:

[therese]

Another picture of the item that I like so much for breakfast:

Royal Sweets calls it julli, but I've never seen it elsewhere, and web searches don't show much (possibly because julli and alternate spellings turn up so many other results). Anybody else familiar with it? Each piece is a serving, about 5 inches in length.

[Milagai]

Another picture of the item that I like so much for breakfast:

Royal Sweets calls it julli, but I've never seen it elsewhere, and web searches don't show much (possibly because julli and alternate spellings turn up so many other results). Anybody else familiar with it? Each piece is a serving, about 5 inches in length.

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these are so mouthwatering!

you take great food pictures.

i desperatately wanted to claw that dosai

off my screen......

i can't seem to find a drooly emoticon,

which is a sad omssion for this site

thugh there's a " barfi" one

and julli is a totally new thing for me.

are the owners of this shop bangladeshi by any chance?

is this a bangladeshi item?

eastern part of subcontinent much has

much more of a milk products subculture,

especially sweets. bangla sweets are legendary

especially seemingly endless variations on

the chena theme.

and do you have any indian background?

if not, you are one of the (apparently) few

non-desis who really enjoys indian sweets!

most who have not grown up with them find them

not that appealing, even if they like indian food overall....

[TheFoodTutor]

It burned to the ground a few months after it opened, so thoroughly obliterated that I've always wondered about the possibility of arson. I can assure you that I did not set the fire, even if they did put green food coloring in their raita.

That's exactly what I think every time I drive by that building. We can't be the only people who've noticed it.

I like the julli from Royal Sweets, and I'm also a non-Indian who likes several of those desserts, but I must admit that I wouldn't know that I liked them if therese hadn't told me about specific things to try.

Was the lady at Royal Sweets satisfied with how much you bought?

[therese]

Enough about food for the moment, and back to the endlessly interesting topic of my kitchen.

Somewhere up thread somebody asked me how we picked appliances, and I have to admit that I didn't go absolutely wild looking at every possible option. I knew that I wanted a range with two ovens and more than four burners, but I also knew (because my husband is good at reminding me ever so gently of the fact) that we are not made of money, and so I wasn't willing to sink huge amounts of money into a Viking Range or Sub Zero fridge.

So the appliances I got were a step down from that sort of thing, status-wise, but still at the upper end in terms of functionality.

You've seen the range already, so I won't go into that. The dishwasher was the lowest end Bosch that would accept a door panel and hide the controls entirely.

So that brings us to the fridge. It's Kitchenaid, counter depth, with the freezer on the bottom and a stainless steel exterior. Some people are chagrined to find that magnets won't stick to stainless steel, wheres I was delighted: we've got other places outside my immediate food prep area to post notices and photos. I despise side by side fridges, and the freezer on the bottom means that the fridge (which I use much more frequently) is up at my level. The freezer's also more usable, as the drawers (there are two levels inside) pull out so that I can see everything. Much preferable IMO to the freezer on top arrangement.

Not a built-in, but we had the cabinet that houses it built so that the small cabinet over the fridge would be flush with the front of it (easier because it was counter depth). That cabinet's theoretically difficult to use unless you're a giant. Or unless you design it such that one need only access the front bottom edge of it:

Cutting boards, cookie trays, muffin tins, serving trays---all the stuff that's flat but bulky and difficult to store goes up here. The fact that I can only reach the bottom bit of the cabinet isn't an issue. Every time I use this cabinet I'm delighted. I'm particularly delighted to know that nothing will ever be stored on top of the fridge itself.

[therese]

Was the lady at Royal Sweets satisfied with how much you bought?

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I didn't see her. Her husband waited on me, and he seemed happy, as usual.