Tracking Down Exotic Ingredients
Locating all my specialty ingredients for my Monsoon Wedding Dinner & a Movie has been exceptionally easy this month. I already have a big jar of mango chutney that I bought online a couple of months ago at an Indian foods website called IShopIndian.com. It was only $5.95 per one kilogram jar, with a little shipping. What a bargain. I ordered 3 jars of it on pure faith, and it's so good we've already polished off one of them, plus half of the second one. But there's still plenty left for my curry dinner. IShopIndian.com carries an amazing selection of Indian ingredients, and free shipping on orders over $50.

When it came to the exotic spices (garam masala, curry powder, cardamom, turmeric, nutmeg, cinnamon, corriander seed, and cumin) I got really lucky. A new Cost Plus World Market just opened up in Napa, and they carry a full selection of ethnic spices at bargain basement prices. Most of them cost less than two dollars each.

The only thing I'm missing is tamarind paste and fresh curry leaves. I've never used curry leaves, or even seen them anywhere except the Food Network channel. The recipes all say that they are optional, but I'd still like to see what they're like. Maybe our gourmet grocery carries them. If not, I guess I'll just have to skip them. The tamarind I'm sure I can find at a local Mexican market.

So, with the exception of my fresh ingredients, which I will shop for the evening before the dinner, I've got everything I need to make an Indian curry feast.
12:34 AM PDT Permalink |

Finding Chutney Recipes
Today I did a Google search for chutney recipes and found a website called SweetBabyMedia.com. It features an extensive list of relishes, salsas and chutneys. Among them, the most interesting were Green Tomato Chutney, Cranberry Jalapeno Chutney, Cherry Chutney, Apple Peach Apricot Chutney, and Watermelon Rind Chutney. And to go with my Monsoon Wedding Curry Dinner, I'm going to try them all! Since they can be safely stored in the refrigerator for days or even weeks, I can make them up several days ahead of time so I won't be stressing out on the day of the dinner. And besides, chutneys and relishes are always better after they've had a little time to marinate.
06:58 PM PDT Permalink |

A List of Ingredients
Specialty Ingredients:

Coconut Milk, Mustard Seeds, Cumin, Cardamom, Cinnamon, Corriander Seeds, Cloves, Garam Masala, Mango Chutney, Curry Leaves, Curry Powder, Turmeric

Fresh Ingredients:

Shrimp, Chicken Breasts, Lamb, Onions, Garlic, Ginger, Green Peppers, Red Peppers, Carrots, Mushrooms, Potatoes, Spinach, Lemons, Limes, Tomatoes, Green Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Leafy Lettuce, Apples, Peaches, Apricots, Cherries, White Raisins, Jalapenos, Lentils, Whole Cranberry Sauce, Yeast

Basics:

Oil, Vinegar, Sugar, Milk, Eggs, Flour, Butter, Salt & Pepper

12:20 AM PDT Permalink |

Deciding on the Dishes for an Indian Dinner

Appetizer: Curry Infused Prawns with Mango Chutney
Soup: Mulligatawny
Salad: Cucumber Tomato Raita
Main Course: Lamb & Vegetable Curry, Chicken Vindaloo, Jasmine Rice, Spiced Lentils, Naan Bread and Assorted Chutneys
Dessert: Mango Sorbet with Fresh Tropical Fruits

12:03 AM PDT Permalink |

Designing the Menu
For my Monsoon Wedding Dinner & a Movie, I have a general idea of the types of dishes I want to serve. A couple of years ago, I came up with my own appetizer: steamed shrimp with a little curry powder added to the cooking water. Once they were done, they were subtly infused with the essence of curry, and I served them with a tiny dollop of mango chutney placed right in the center of the curl. It's so quick and easy that I definitely want to make up a batch of those.

For soup, it has to be Mulligatawny. Ever since I had that delicious bowl of it at Gaylord's in San Francisco's Ghiradelli Square, I've been wanting to try my hand at it. For the salad, something cool and refreshing made with yogurt. And for the main course, at least two entrees, one with lamb, and the other, Chicken Vindaloo, mostly because the I like the name of it and have always wondered what it was.

I also want to bake my own naan bread, and where I really want to get adventurous is with the chutneys. Jamie Oliver, aka The Naked Chef, made a really tasty looking Lemon Pickle on his show one evening to go with a curry dish. I've already looked that one up on the Internet. And there's a tamarind chutney in the Joy of Cooking that looks really good too. We have a large Mexican population in Napa, so the Mexican groceries here in town are sure to have plenty of tamarind pods or paste. I'm going to find one or two more chutney recipes at a website called SweetBabyMedia.com, and I have a huge jar of classic mango chutney that I found at an online grocer called IShopIndian.com. And if we manage to get through dinner without popping at the seams, I will serve a store-bought mango sorbet along with some simple slices of fresh fruit.
02:15 AM PDT Permalink |

Getting Acquainted with the Cuisine
When I think of Indian cuisine, I picture a big pot of curried stew, served over fragrant rice, with naan bread and a generous dollop of Major Grey's Mango Chutney. But in perusing my cookbooks for Indian recipes, I discovered a whole new world of dishes I'd never heard of, especially when it came to the vegetables and chutneys. The recurring ingredients appear to be yogurt, mint, corriander, chili peppers, turmeric, cumin, cardamom, mustard seeds, ginger, onion, coconut milk, a clarified butter called 'ghee', and a spice blend called 'garam masala'. My reasearch has really made me keen to experiment, so I'm looking forward to preparing such an exotic meal.
01:28 PM PDT Permalink |

Looking for Recipes
As always, I got out all my cookbooks in search of recipes for this month's Dinner & a Movie project. This time, the ones that looked most promising for Indian food were The Cooking of India from the Time Life Foods of the World series, The Joy of Cooking, and Madhur Jaffrey's Quick and Easy Indian Cooking. Rene gave me that one for Christmas a couple of years ago, but I have yet to try a recipe from it. The Cooking of India has lots of unusual stuff, and believe it or not, The Joy of Cooking has at least a dozen Indian recipes that look quite tasty and interesting. The Joy of Cooking is usually the place I turn to for classic dishes, but this new edition has lots more creative ethnic recipes than the old one. In my search, I found so many choices in the cookbooks I already have that I felt no need whatsoever to go on the Internet for anything except a chutney recipe or two.
12:04 AM PDT Permalink |

My Experience with Indian Cuisine
I still remember the first time I ever tasted curry. It was at the antebellum home of a flamboyantly gay elderly gentleman in Mobile, Alabama, my hometown. And believe it or not, the choice of meat for his curry dish was goat. I've always been fairly adventuresome when it comes to food, although there are things that I patently refuse to eat, namely the brains, heart, tongue, liver, kidneys, tripe or sexual organs of any animal, anything in the insect family, any endangered species, and anything too slimy or stinky. That still leaves lots of room for some interesting choices, like cactus, snails, raw oysters, squid, venison, squirrel, alligator, and yes, even goat. On the buffet table that day, the goat was cooked to perfection, and the sauce was a lovely shade of cellophane yellow, not too mild, but not too spicy either. I was hooked. However, it would still be several years before I attempted a batch of curry in my own kitchen, and you can bet it wasn't goat.

Since then I've made dozens of pots of curry and eaten in lots of Indian restaurants. My favorite so far is Gaylord's at Ghiradelli Square in San Francisco. They make the most heavenly Mulligatawny Soup I've ever tasted, not to mention the rustic naan bread and every kind of tandoori, vindaloo and curry dish imaginable.

When I lived in Tokyo, we used to experiment with lots of homemade curry recipes using a mortar and pestle to grind the spices. We also ate our fair share of Japanese curry mixes, a popular quick-fix meal. I must admit however, that now, when I make curry at home, I use a store bought curry powder and just add lots of it to a big pot of meat and vegetables. I found one that suits my tastes nicely, the only problem is that I no longer remember where I bought it and I'm about to use up the last of it. So it may be time for me to learn how to blend my own.
12:06 AM PDT Permalink |

Welcome to Dinner & a Movie for the Month of August
After all the soy sauce and ginger I've been using for the past three months, I'm good and ready for a change of cuisine. So, for the month of August, I'm heading for India, figuratively speaking, of course. Somehow the summer heat feels just right for a big pot of curry, and all the cool side dishes that go with it. With that in mind, last night I browsed through all my cookbooks for recipes. While I was at it, I decided on this month's film, and came up with Monsoon Wedding. I've seen previews for it on other videos, and have been curious to see it ever since. It's gotten nothing but good reviews and looks like a it's going to be a rich and colorful cinematic experience. I've already ordered a copy of it from Amazon.com, which should arrive in plenty of time for the day I have chosen for Dinner & a Movie. Can't wait!
12:04 AM PDT Permalink |

Next Month's Dinner & a Movie
After cooking Vietnamese, Japanese and Korean foods for my first three Dinner & a Movie projects, I'm ready for a change of flavors. Not that each of those three cuisines doesn't have its own deliciously unique qualities, but I'm in the mood for something that isn't based on soy sauce or nuoc mam as the main flavoring ingredient. So, I'm going to point my palate in a southwesterly direction, to India this time. Curry is a cuisine with which I am well acquainted, and I'm looking forward to experimenting with several new types. And with the proliferation of Bollywood films out there, I'm sure to find something worth watching.
12:13 AM PDT Permalink |

301/302 Dinner & a Movie Recipes and Photos

My Korean 301/302 Dinner & a Movie was a success from start to finish. Here is a link to all the Recipes and Photos.

08:07 PM PDT Permalink |

Film Review: 301/302

Both the dinner and the movie were delicious! Here is a link to my review of Cheol-su Park's 1995 film 301/302.

11:06 AM PDT Permalink |

A Tally of the Cost of Dinner (in U.S.$)
The cost of the ingredients for my 301/302 Korean dinner are listed below. Keep in mind that the prices are based on buying everything new rather than using ingredients that I already had in my pantry. Of course there were lots of things left over for future meals, so the actual cost of the dinner based on the quantities of the ingredients used to make the dishes will be much lower than the grand total of stocking a pantry from scratch for preparing Korean cuisine.

Specialty Ingredients:

Chili Paste - 1.69
Panko bread crumbs - 2.99
Fish sauce - 3.49
Sesame oil - 1.99
Rice wine vinegar - 2.29
Mirin - 3.79
Sake - 6.99
Beer - 7.99
Soy sauce - 2.99
Turmeric - 3.99

Fresh Ingredients:

Large Prawns - 3.49
Beef sirloin - 4.72
Pork loin chops - 4.29
Chicken breasts - 1.99
Cucumbers - 1.98
Scallions - .69
Carrots - .52
Bell pepper -.62
Zucchini - .39
Mushrooms - 1.39
Ginger root - 1.23
Daikon radish - .55
Garlic - .64
Sesame Seeds - .99
Pear - .59
Lettuce & Baby Greens - 4.28
Napa cabbage - 1.01
Mint - 1.39
Bok choy - 1.14

Basics:

Flour - 1.89
Eggs - 1.79
Oil -.2.49
Sugar - 1.19
Brown sugar - 1.99

Total: $79.45
01:01 AM PDT Permalink |

My 301/302 Dinner & a Movie: How Everything Turned Out
Our 301/302 Korean Dinner & a Movie was just terrific. Serving everything all at once was both a challenge and a pleasure. It's tricky getting all the hot dishes to come off the stove simultaneously, but getting to sit down and enjoy the meal without having to make multiple trips to the kitchen for consecutive courses is so much more relaxed.

The kimchi and pickles were a very interesting flavor complement, the deep fried shrimp with chili mayonnaise stole the show (by far, the tastiest item on the menu), the vegetable pancake was a really nice alternative to the simple stir fry common to so many Asian meals, and grilling the beef, chicken, shrimp and pork at the table was definitely a wise decision. My little electric grill was just the right size for a serving of each of the meat items. I made a plain and a spicy version of each one, and alternated them throughout the meal while we enjoyed the accompanying dishes. For dessert, I sliced up three fresh peaches that one of my local clients gave me and marinated them in rice wine with a tablespoon of sugar. The result was delightful. The peaches absorbed the flavor of the spirits, and the rice wine was infused with the essence of the fruit. Yum! I couldn't find any Korean beer or wine, so we had to settle for Chinese Tsingtao beer, which was the perfect beverage to go with the meal. Everything was simply delicious.

And as a bonus, PBS aired the original version of The Manchurian Candidate. What a timely coincidence for our Korean themed meal. I'd been curious to finally see it, especially since a remake is coming out soon. I also find it too distracting to watch a subtitled film while eating an elaborate meal, so I didn't want to start our evening's feature film until after we had finished dinner. When The Manchurian Candidate was over, as planned, we watched 301/302, a Korean film about two young women who live next door to each other. The 1995 film, directed by Cheol-su Park, stars Eun-jin Bang as a lusty and sensual cook who lives in apartment 301, and Sin-Hye Hwang as a sexually repressed anorexic writer who lives in apartment 302. When the cook tries to entice the writer to enjoy a gourmet meal, her refusal sparks a feud that sends both women spiraling into memories of their tormented pasts. Never having seen the film, it was somewhat of a gamble, but one that paid off in spades. It's not going to be easy writing a review of it without divulging it's many surprises.

The one thing I did not do during the cooking process was to keep up with washing the dishes throughout the meal preparation. So...unfortunately when the meal was over, my kitchen looked like a typhoon had swept through it. Even though I was exhausted from a long day on my feet, I tidied up a little and put away the leftovers before heading off to bed, leaving the dishes for the next morning. But now that it's done, even though it required such great effort, my 301/302 Korean Dinner & a Movie was a relaxed evening of food, film and fun from beginning to end.
12:02 AM PDT Permalink |

Preparing the Kitchen, Assembling Cooking Utensils, and Prepping Dishes Ahead
It's the eve of my 301/302 Korean Dinner & a Movie, and I spent most of the evening cleaning and organizing my kitchen, setting the table and preparing certain elements of the dinner ahead of time. I made sweet & sour daikon pickles, spicy kimchi, and two grill marinades, one with chili garlic paste, and the other with soy, ginger, and sake. I also trimmed and sliced all the meats for the mixed grill and put them in separate containers to marinate overnight. So, with the exception of the fresh vegetables for the salad and side dishes, I feel very well prepared for tomorrow's Korean extravaganza. And since I've done so much prep work ahead, I think the cooking process will go much more smoothly and efficiently than before, and hopefully we can sit down to dinner at a more timely hour than last time.
02:21 AM PDT Permalink |