India : Day 5 : Post 4 : Lodhi

By sheer coincidence, we landed in Delhi the night before Lohri.

Eating sesame and jaggery is customary, and naturally, we partook too.

Pulao and a Salad

I Really Want Some Black "People" on my Pasta!

BBC reports: Cook-book misprint costs Australian publishers dear.

An Australian publisher has had to pulp and reprint a cook-book after one recipe listed "salt and freshly ground black people" instead of black pepper.

Penguin Group Australia had to reprint 7,000 copies of Pasta Bible last week, the Sydney Morning Herald has reported.

The reprint cost A$20,000 ($18,000; £12,000), but stock in bookshops will not be recalled as it is "extremely hard" to do so, Penguin said.

The recipe was for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto.

If anyone complains about the "silly mistake", they will be given the new version, Penguin said.

Now there's a problem of relying on computer programs to do your "spell-check".

The recipe sounds delicious. Now if only the CC can get some black people black pepper.

Brunch

There is only one rule for scrambled eggs. Extremely low heat (and the CC does mean "extremely"!)

Do it over a double-boiler (pot heated by simmering water underneath) just for practice, and you'll get the hang of it.

Creamy, meltingly creamy. That's all there is to say.


Salad, prosciutto di parma, scrambled eggs, Turkish pide

Spring Mac 'n Cheese (with Truffles)

Who the hell is the CC kidding? He can't afford truffles. But nearly as good is using a cheese that has truffle skin built into it. Yes, it's exactly as good as it sounds.

Cassinelli's

One day the CC came home to find a large empty package sitting on his kitchen floor.

Break-in?

Hardly!

Thieves don't leave stuff. They take stuff.

Turns out the friend of a close friend owns one of the best fresh pasta stores in the city. One that supplies many of the restaurants. He dropped off a "restaurant-sized" package for the CC to try.

The freezer was stuffed with the pasta. Take a look!

Well, enough about the freakin' back story, CC! How was the pasta?

Absolutely top-notch!!!

The CC is in love (oh no!)

(Minor caveat: The cooking times printed are a little off. You want the pasta al dente - you gotta cook towards the lower end of the cooking times printed. Or just do what the CC does. Sample. DUH!!!)

You want pictures of the pasta? Well, you'll just have to wait.

Cassinelli Pasta Products
31-12 23rd Ave.
Long Island City, NY 11105

718-274-4881

Pasta with Cauliflower, Almonds & Raisins

(Recipe: link)

Hey! You people want entertainment daily but the CC only has so much time. At least, the photographs are a lot better!

Easter

Easter dinner at a friend's place.

The Colomba Pasquale (Easter Dove) is a Italian specialty in the shape of a dove - if you squint - and use your imagination. It's somewhere between a cake and a bread in texture, and has candied orange, almonds and black pepper!

(Based on the ingredients, you should be able to spot the recipe's medieval origins. If not, shame on you. You haven't been reading the CC carefully enough.)



Deviled Eggs
Bruschetta

Colomba Pasquale

White Bean Risotto with Mushrooms

We've encountered something like this before but the CC can't invent new tricks all the time. You gotta revisit the old ones from time to time.

Difference is he added dashi (= umami) infused with mushrooms as the broth, and added some wild mushrooms to the mix.


(Recipe: link.)

India : Day 5 : Post 3

Glorious golden oranges!

Squid Ink Pasta with Squid

Blast-from-the-past 1: Harvesting Squid Ink.

Blast-from-the-past 2: Pasta Nero.

Low-Key Breakfast

Croissant and some soft scrambled eggs.

That Oppressive Crushing Feeling

Whenever, you are pressed for time, and worn down yet you need to crush roasted nuts for a recipe, and think that a mortar and pestle or a food processor (cleaning, cleaning!) are too much work, here's a useful Help for Hapless Harried Housewives™.

Put them in a plastic bag and/or plastic wrap, and crush them with a rolling pin.

No mess, no fuss! Just good food.

Asparagus Advice

Asparagus season will soon be upon us.

From Jane Grigson's Good Things:

How would you describe the best asparagus? Thick, certainly. Fresh certainly, as, whatever kind is grown, its flavor will deteriorate with delay. No argument here.

But after that, would you prefer it to be blanched white? Or white with a yellowish head? Or green and white streaked with pinkish purple? Or as green as possible?

The answer will tell me more about you than about absolute standards of asparagus perfection. Italians like white asparagus with a yellowish head. The French like their violet and green and white spears. And the English and Americans like unblanched, tender greenness. In our favor, I will modestly add that European chefs working in England have said, do still say, that our fresh asparagus beats all for flavor.

That’s the theory anyway. In practice, your answer would more likely have been curt, rather than considered: “The best asparagus is the asparagus I can afford — when I can find it.”

The CC bows in all humility to the wisdom of the sensei.

Astoria Shopping Trip

India : Day 5 : Post 2

These are vegetables on sale in a "slum" in New Delhi which ain't exactly a rural backwater. This is better than anything you can get for top dollar in New York or California at the height of the summer.

There's a serious problem somewhere, and since the CC likes to keep this blog apolitical (good luck, smartass!), you can figure out for yourself what the problem is.

India : Day 5 : Post 1

The fruit markets in Chandni Chowk at dawn.

Possibly the only "unknowns" are the guavas (first picture in the foreground) which might be "exotic".

Sharper viewers will note the Japanese in the background (hawking engine oil, if you read carefully.) There can't be too many Indians with a demand for engine oil who also happen to know Japanese. Which tells you that "exoticism" always sells.

On a related note, in his wasted youth, the CC once hung out with a buncha drunken Italians in a square in Florence. The CC found Florence exotic. The residents of fair Firenze found the CC (who lived in Chicago at the time) endlessly exotic. (Chicago!!!)

The movie being shown in the square was Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt. (German!!! Silent!!!)

The drink of choice on that lovely summer night was Long Island Iced Tea (not making this up.)

You takes your exoticism where you can find it.

Dim Sum in Flushing

As promised here, a few pictures of dim sum in Flushing.

For those not from New York, Flushing is in Queens, and any self-respecting gourmet would tell you that the cornucopia of Chinese food (of all stripes and varieties) is some of the best to be found. (Chinatown is touristy; Flushing is "authentic".)

The fish balls were excellent. The chicken feet are too fatty for the CC. The tripe was excellent!

Mac 'n Cheese (with Veggies)

As always, it's always useful to revisit the classics.

The CC trusts y'all are smart enough to figure out how to add veggies to the béchamel.

(Recipe: link.)

The Omnivorous Vegetarian

No food blog would be complete without talking about eating morals. Mostly it's just a lot of self-righteous hooey and chest thumping but at the core there is a key moral question.

Is it right to kill animals for your pleasure?

If you believe not then the logic is pretty darned clear.

If you believe it is then you must accept the premise that you may not waste any of it. Eat the nasty bits, so to speak. Hence, tripe, hearts, lungs, livers and the whole head-to-tail thing.

This is the injection of the vegetarian moral position into the omnivorous debate. Kill but waste not. A perfectly logical position that traditionally hss homes in as disparate places as Italy and China.

The CC is an omnivore. However, he is intelligent enough to recognize the "other" position.

What baffles him is the in-between position - "I'll eat this but not that."

This isn't preference which is natural. "I hate everything Egyptian", Goethe once said. That is taste. This is fear. And being scared of food is a horrible horrible thing.

So pick a side, any side. It just doesn't matter (except to you.)

But be consistent.