Food

[dr_mabeuse]

Aside from sex, what's better than food? But we never talk about food here. Let's start.

I want to sing the praises of Indian food here, which seems to me to be the last realtively undiscovered frontier of food. In an era when every ethnic food seems to have been done to death, why do so few people appreciate Indian food? Sure, it's usually vegetarian (esp. South Indian food, which is my current passion), but given that, Indian food has to be the most complex and sensual food in the world. Things melt, sizzle, and crunch in your mouth. Flavors explode, merge, and shimmer on your tongue; you can feel the spices segue from sweet to hot to fragrant in your mouth. A universe of flavors and textures unknown in the West, and all animal-free. You can eat like a king with a cow staring over your shoulder and not feel even a twinge of guilt.

I used to think that it was the heat that kept people away from Indian food, but it can't be that. Thai food is a lot hotter. Maybe it's the lack of good Indian restaurants?

The floor is open for food fights.

---dr.M.

 

[shereads]

30 kinds of flaky flatbread.

I had been to a dozen so-so Indian restaurants before one opened here that put the others to shame. Just hearing the waiter explain the types of bread could make a hungry person keel over in a faint.

There was a vegetarian menu, but there was also a roast chicken so tender it was still dancing. (Sorry, Perdita.)

 

[TheEarl]

Dr_M: Are you talking about Native American food? This isn't pedantry - I'm fairly sure, but if you say Indian food in England, then you're talking about currys from India.

Indian curries are the national pastime in England. The perfect accompaniment to beer, there are few things better than enjoying a madras curry. Most curries in England are meat based, around beef or chicken and range from very little spice to Phaal, which was invented solely for English people (seriously!) some of whom consider it a challenge.

The Earl

 

[shereads]

I'm pretty sure the Doctor is referring to India-Indian food, Earl, as you are. American Indian cuisine probably exists, but the only evidence of it in metropolitan Miami is the Steak & Lobster Special advertised at the Seminole tribe's casino.

Typically, when you ask for "spicy" at an Indian, Thai or Schezuan Chinese restaurant in the U.S., it's assumed that you mean "American spicy" and not "spicy." I have a friend who insists on having his food spiced as hot as it would be served to any of the regulars, and he's always met with some resistance by the waiters. Probably too much experience with tears and trauma.

 

[MercyMia]

Indian food is close to top of my list of favorites too. The spices used are so complex and amazing. I used to think "curry" was a flavor until I went to an Indian supermarket and saw a shelful of different blends of curry spices, in varying strengths, combinations and intensities. Some were for lamb, others for chicken, still others for beef and vegetables.

An Indian meal, in my experience, is designed for slow, chatty dining, a family and several friends gathered around a large table laden to groaning with bowls of food, platters of breads and rice. There is something for everyone, carnivore and vegan alike. I like the involvement of having side dishes of pickles, yogurt salad, and a range of beverages to drink, from salty to sweet.

There is a small, inexpensive sidewalk cafe attached to an Indian department store here. I walk by once in a while and envy the dusky-skinned ladies and bearded men, sitting with each other, eating with their nimble fingers, scooping white basmati rice topped with curried vegetables into their mouths, white teeth flashing.

And we haven't talked yet about desserts that accompany a typical Indian meal. Mmmmm! (Burp!)

 

[shereads]

Dammit, I'm hungry.

I love curries but I always have heartburn later, so I have had to wean myself away from them. Fortunately 30 kinds of bread and a bit of roast chicken and some cucumbers in yogurt are enough to entertain me until dessert. What do you recommend?

 

[MercyMia]

Mint or ginger are good for heartburn. My sympathies, shereads. At some Indian restaurants, as you leave, there is a bowl of mixed seeds on a table by the door. Anise, fennel and other seeds. These are good to help digestion too. A couple of pinches will help.

 

[English Lady]

We have the most delicious indian takeaway near here and when we feel extravogent (it's fairly expensive compared to ordering pizza or from the local chinese chippy) we will order form there. The naan bread is to die for! My favourite curry from there is a lamb passanda. It is quite mild but still spicy.It is creamy and rich and has the most wonderful almondy nutty flavour. My husband hasn't settled on a favourite but he tends to prefer the more tomato based slightly hotter curries to me but he used to live in birmingham and used to dine with indian families all the time and ate lots of real authentic indian food. lucky bugger!

 

[MaxSebastian]

I love Indian food, but although it may be relatively undiscovered in the States, it certainly isn't in Britain.

In the last decade, Chicken Tikka Masala overtook Fish and Chips as the most popular dish in the country. And very nice it is, too.

But Indian food in Britain is anglocised - apparently in India, they don't use so much meat.

My favourite is still Chinese, though. Mmmmm.

 

[TheEarl]

I have to say my personal favourites are either Italian, or Australian. Many people wouldn't have a clue what Australian food entails, but they do some superb things with fish and chicken.

The Earl

 

[dr_mabeuse]

No offense, but I've heard that English curry is to East Indian food as American chop suey is to authentic Chinese food: a bastardized, everyone-into-the-pot kind of thing. From what I understand (this from an East Indian friend who taught me how to cook in the Gujarati style), East Indian cooking has no such thing as curry dishes. Each dish has its own masala or spice mixture, whereas UK cvurries use pretty much the same mixture for all.

As for Amerindian cooking, aside from pemmican, wild rice and raw buffalo liver, I don;t think it's very popular.

---dr.M.

 

[damppanties]

apparently in India, they don't use so much meat

They're not supposed to, but they do.


Interesting thread doc.

 

[minsue]

As for Amerindian cooking, aside from pemmican, wild rice and raw buffalo liver, I don;t think it's very popular.

---dr.M.

Reminds me of going to Havasupai Falls. The reservation is in the canyon and I really felt for the poor souls working at the cafeteria that was the only restaurant. This one woman, with way too much makeup & too nice clothing to be hiking a canyon in, went off about the tacos she was served. Never mind the fact that the big chalkboard menu went into great detail that they were not Mexican tacos and explained exactly what was in these delicious fry-bread concoctions. I got the impression from the tired way she spoke, that the woman behind the counter had to placate people over this on a regular basis.

 

[MaxSebastian]

No offense, but I've heard that English curry is to East Indian food as American chop suey is to authentic Chinese food: a bastardized, everyone-into-the-pot kind of thing. ---dr.M.

You've clearly never had one, Dr. M. What you describe sounds almost exactly like my own attempts at cooking curry!

In a good Indian restaurant in the UK, (and there are plenty), curries're v. nice indeed.

I think if you compare anything to authentic food prepared by the local guru in some tiny village in the middle of the outer province of wherever, it's going to look bad.

 

[oggbashan]

No offense, but I've heard that English curry is to East Indian food as American chop suey is to authentic Chinese food: a bastardized, everyone-into-the-pot kind of thing. From what I understand (this from an East Indian friend who taught me how to cook in the Gujarati style), East Indian cooking has no such thing as curry dishes. Each dish has its own masala or spice mixture, whereas UK cvurries use pretty much the same mixture for all.
---dr.M.

There are good Indian restaurants, and bad ones, just like any other food outlet.

If the staff know that you appreciate the food they can be asked for a recommendation. It depends which cook is on duty. Most Indian restaurants produce basic curries for English drunks. Most can also produce exquisite dishes - if you ask.

If the staff are South Indian, then ask for South Indian food.

I have a choice of two Indian restaurants and three Indian takeaways. Each has a different speciality.

Og

 

[gauchecritic]

Personally I never eat food that hurts. Having said that nearly all my friends and many of my family do. I was at college in a place near Bradford in the 70s. Everybody loved curry and went regularly to the many restuarants there.

I tasted my very first curry in Birmingham (Chicken Tikka) and hated it as much as I knew I would.

Curry sauce for chips ("they've don't do curry sauce", "Have you got nowt moist?") is not exactly authentic or even Indian but is the closest I can manage.

My cousin (by marriage) is first generation English from an Indian parentage and regularly visits Goa with his wife (my cousin the most beautiful woman I have ever known) and my brother and his wife. They tell me that Indian curry is not all that different over here than there.

I can't see the point really, in eating food which has to literally burn off the tastebuds on your tongue so that you can't taste how bad the rotting meat is. But that's me.

Gauche

 

[Icingsugar]

My favourite is still Chinese, though. Mmmmm.

Ah, yes. Just too bad that nearly all Chinese (or generally East Asian) restaurants in thos bloody country have been so sadly bastardized by the swedish mentality.

It's the same bland menu with the same meek spicing everywhere. Still pretty good for a regular belly-filler, the way a Big Mac and fries can be good, but nothing like it could taste.

There are a few places I've found that actually serve real Chinese and Korean dishes, but they are not on the regular menu. There's one place in Stockholm that recieves one or two daily busloads of Chinese and Taiwanese tourists, and they all come there for a dinner "like home". Big table, lots of bowls and a selection of tastes and textures that is far from the muck they serve us Swedes. It took a bit of persuation, but these days I, Lin and her work-buddies are always welcome to sit in on a table. The tourists seems to appreciate it too, picking our brains about all things Swedish, while enjoying a real meal to cure the homesickness.

 

[shereads]

We have the most delicious indian takeaway near here and when we feel extravogent (it's fairly expensive compared to ordering pizza or from the local chinese chippy) we will order form there. The naan bread is to die for! My favourite curry from there is a lamb passanda. It is quite mild but still spicy.It is creamy and rich and has the most wonderful almondy nutty flavour. My husband hasn't settled on a favourite but he tends to prefer the more tomato based slightly hotter curries to me but he used to live in birmingham and used to dine with indian families all the time and ate lots of real authentic indian food. lucky bugger!

Damn this thread! Cut it out!

First I read this, then I turn on the radio and there's a travel program on NPR that today is doing an episode about all the little hidden local restaurants that are dotted throughout the Southern U.S.

I have to say, of all the fabulous cuisines from around the world that I've been privileged to sample in Miami and Houston, and on business trips to New York and Los Angeles - if I had to choose one type of food to live on forever, it would be Southern-style cooking, the old-fashioned kind that my mom's family have always been so great at. My mother's sister who died last year was one of the great cooks of all time, and my mom is a fabulous cook too, though her health prohibits her from doing a lot of the kind of cooking she learned from her mother.

Southern U.S. food requires that you not give a damn about the condition of your arteries, and that you forget anything you've learned about nutrition. Like a lot of country cuisines that are heavy on butter and flour and eggs and milk, old-fashioned Southern cooking grew out of people in poverty making the most of the things that were plentiful. A cook like my Florida "cracker" grandmother, armed with nothing but milk and butter from her own cows, flour and salt and baking powder, could make baking powder biscuits so flaky and puffy and light, they'd rival anything you've ever bought at a pastry shop. I make a pretty fair biscuit myself, when I take the time. It's a matter of using far too much butter, and just enough fluffy floury bake-y things to hold the butter together.

In the Low Country of Georgia and South Carolina, Southern cooking is made even better by the presence of fresh seafood. My dad grew up during the Depression, and lived for a while in a small coastal town where fresh oysters were so cheap, the poor practically lived on them. Oyster Stew, made with cream and butter and oysters, with saltine crackers crumbled on top, was his favorite food all his life. Granted, he had a quadruple bypass operation when he was in his sixties, but his arteries were just along for the culinary ride.

This program on NPR today was by a New Yorker who drove 1300 miles to spend his vacation exploring the locally recommended restaurants in and around Tuscaloosa Alabama. He's sent to a hole-in-the-wall lunch shack known for its biscuits and chicken pot pies.

"What goes into your chicken pot pie filling?"

"Chicken...Butter."

"No vegetables?"

"Vegetables? Lord, no. We try to have some of that on the side, for people that want it. But it doesn't belong in a pie."



When we do eat vegetables, we cook them into submission and then continue cooking them until they offer unconditional surrender. Al dente? Ha. Al dente vegetables can't hold enough butter.

The best vegetables, like the best oysters and the best chicken, are of course fried in light batter.

And that's what I like about the south.

 

[shereads]

Should any of you ever find yourselves near Savannah, Georgia, and want to dine like gods, bribe your way to the front of the lunch line at the restaurant called "The Lady & Sons." Genuine, old-fashioned homestyle Southern cooking, with the occasional portobello mushroom thrown in for visiting sophisticates.

"The Lady" has her own program now on the Food Network (fortunately, I don't have premium cable or I'd watch her show all the time and be hungry constantly and gain 100 pounds). This was one of those hole-in-the-wall restaurants that suddenly was "discovered" and hasn't lost its originality.

The Lady's web site: http://www.ladyandsons.com/

"GRIT LIT" for exploring Southern, Cajun & soul food: http://www.gritlit.com/index.shtml

Below, is what a plate of food should look like (Note that the iced tea will be sweetened with a lot of sugar unless you ask for unsweetened tea; you know you're leaving the official South when you drive far enough in either direction that waitresses no longer ask "Ya'll want sweet tea?")

 

[SummerMorning]

I like raw vegetables and fruit with cheese...

boring, huh?

 

[shereads]

I like raw vegetables and fruit with cheese...

boring, huh?

Oh, honey. Your poor arteries must be so over-oxygenated! They're starved for Buttermilk Pie and Cheese Grits. Some inspirational reading:



Storming the Beaches of Gourmandy

USA Today Ranked us #1 International Meal In America for 1999!
Published Dec. 17, 1999

By Jerry Shriver, USA TODAY

I normally don't gobble my food. At least not in public. Gobbling can stain your Hermes tie and your USA TODAY reputation._ But during a mid-November lunch in Savannah, Ga., I shamefully lost control. And wound up ingesting my meal of the year.

In the months leading up to it, Pierre Gagnaire's daring cuisine in Paris made me recalibrate my culinary horizons (and my credit card limit), and I tasted artistry in every one of Rick Tramonto and Gale Gand's whimsical presentations at their new Tru in Chicago.

But there in Savannah, Paula Deen's home-style Southern menu at The Lady & Sons turned me into a ravenous beast unmindful of manners, cholesterol, North-South diplomacy and the dropped jaws of my companions.

I had doubts going in: A line of tour-bus riders snaked outside. An all-you-can-eat buffet commanded the rear. I wasn't particularly hungry.

However, the welcoming platter of hoecakes drizzled with syrup tripped something primal in me. I stormed that buffet line three times, digging deep and often into pans of fried chicken, cream corn, black-eyed peas, turnip greens, mashed potatoes, candied sweet potatoes, and macaroni and cheese. When I waddled back to my table, I found heaping platters of fried shrimp and oysters, cheese biscuits and endless refills of super-sweet iced tea.

If someone had reached for something on my plate, he'd have lost a limb.

In between shovelings I grunted to my friends, "This can't be this good, can it?" They kept grunting back in the affirmative.

The onslaught ended with bowls of banana pudding and pineapple cobbler.

Someone finally led me out the door.

I'm not proud of what went down on that sunny Saturday afternoon, but I learned something about myself: Though I had stuffed my face on two continents during the past year, apparently I had starved my soul.

The Lady & Sons, (311 W. Congress St.; 912-233-2600)

--------------

Happy waddling...Off to torture myself at the gym now so I can do justice to this thread later on.

SR

 

[SummerMorning]

Hehe! Sounds familiar...I used to be into Gourmandy (and still am) - but it's just such a... LIGHT... feeling when you're eating light. It's incredible...

...and of course a fruit salad can be incredibly erotic...

 

[Icingsugar]

...and of course a fruit salad can be incredibly erotic...

So can a two pound steak. If you know how to wield it.

There are two kinds of satisfaction here. There is the too-fed-to-think-straight satisfaction, and the had-something-light-so-I-feel-healthy kind. I think a good variety of those keeps you sound and happy.

 

[destinie21]

...and of course a fruit salad can be incredibly erotic...

Anything can be erotic (provided that you have the right kind of serving dish)

 

[NoJo]

I'm not sure if your post and your Avatar are in some way connected... knowing you, I think they are.