Some finds from Kalyustan's
I'm not sure whether it has anything to do with the warmer weather, but lately I've been enjoying cooking from Alford and Duguid's Mangoes and Curry Leaves.
This week I finally made it back to Kalyustan's near Grammercy Park to pick up some of the ingredients that make typify food from the Subcontinent--dals, curry leaves, and spices such as nigella and fenugreek. What a fun place to shop for food! I understood so much more of what the book was talking about once I could see, smell and taste the ingredients.
One thing I especially like about this shop is that each package is carefully labelled with the food's place of origin, as well as its name in various cultures. Since cookbooks often use different names for ingredients, an "emerging" cook can accumulate a lot of ingredient mysteries. So well-labelled packaging is very educational. For instance, I learned that Borlotti beans are the same thing as cranberry beans. And arbol chiles are also known as bird's beak chilis. I found myself nodding appreciatively and thinking, "Oh, that clears up a lot!"
One ingredient, though, left the shop's employees scratching their heads. "Sawtooth herb? I've never even heard of it," said the employee behind the counter, implying that she cooked a lot. She went and asked the owner, who said they didn't carry it. Oh, well. There's still plenty that I can make with the pile of groceries that I brought home. You'll see some of my finds above.
I've made a lot of things from Mangoes and Curry Leaves this week, so many in fact that I ended up calling Bob at work a time or two and saying, "Do you mind eating Indian again tonight?" ("Indian" is my catch-all phrase for any food in this book. Actually the dishes range from Nepali to Sri Lankan.) As long as there's some meat now and then, he doesn't seem to mind!
Among the recipes I made this week are: dal with coconut milk (Sri Lanka), Nepali green bean-sesame salad, Nepali grilled chicken, fresh green chile chutney, and (shown below), Hasna Begum's mixed vegetable curry (Bangladesh). Hasna Begum is one of the many interesting people the authors met on their travels. Begum means something like "Madame."
At any rate, I'm finally learning my dals from my chutneys from my masalas, and it's really fun!
Mixed vegtable curry. I wish you could smell the nigella, cumin and fenugreek!
5 comments:
Mmmmmm, I wish I could smell it, too. Whenever I cook Indian food, everyone wanders in the house following their noses and salivating! Such aromas!
Ah, well, since you've been to India, you know the real thing! I'm just poking around a cookbook. I'd think I'd enjoy dinner at your house!
Sounds, at times, like you're speaking a foreign language. Laurel does that to me too. She'll be talking about what she's making for dinner, and I'll say, "What are you talking about?" I'm just a southern cook at heart. Talk about collard greens and fatback and I'll know exactly what you mean!
Wow, that does sound amazing - maybe I should try some recipes from that book too?
I really enjoy reading your blog - thanks for all your helpful insights on home schooling too. I'm thinking of starting eventually with my little one... Just need to pluck up the courage!
Debbie, I speak Southern, too! And I cook collards and cornbread. Sometimes I even fry ;-). It is true, however, that sometimes as we're sitting around the table to eat something completely new, Bob laughs and says, "My dad would *never* eat this!" There's a lot of comfort in familiar foods!
Sian, the Alford and Duguid books are really nice. They have photos and travel vignettes as well as recipes. But you could really start with just about any of the classic cookbooks--Alice Waters, Deborah Madison, Mark Bittman, and many others--just start reading and experimenting. The nice thing about cookbooks is that they are meant to be largely self-educational.
And thanks for the nice words about my blog. Sometimes I don't think I should be talking about homeschooling much yet, we're still so much "in progress."
But you should be encouraged. I think plucking up the courage to homeschool was the hardest part for me. Sort of like jumping off the high dive. After that, it was normal and we got used to the whole life. And I don't regret it!
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