Saturday October 29, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian
As the month of October winds to a close, I have, at long last, gotten to watch 'Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India'. And what a delight it was, although nothing like I expected, so I guess that's what I get for expecting. None of the reviews or promo text prepared me for the actual plot of the story. Not that it's any big secret or anything, I just didn't expect a British India historical epic to center around a high-stakes wager on a cricket match.
At 225 minutes, the film was almost as long as an actual cricket match, but Rene and I watched it in spells throughout the evening, with little snack-and-chat breaks in between. By the end, we were both riveted to our seats, rooting for the rag-tag team of villagers giving it their all in a do-or-die challenge against the British 'Feringhees' in their tidy-whitey's. For a 'battle without bloodshed', those Boys of Indian Summer sure know how to put the 'bat' in battle.
A link to my 'Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India' film review will be posted along with the recipes and photos.
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
12:24 AM PDT
Permalink
|
Friday October 28, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian
On Wednesday evening, I asked Rene to spoil me a little in celebration of finishing two straight weeks of publication layout on a tight deadline. He arrived around 8:00, bearing take-out sushi and bad news...he was coming down with a cold. His symptoms worsened throughout the evening, and by bedtime he was miserable...coughing, sneezing, achy, feverish. So instead of him spoiling me, it soon became obvious that he was the one most in need of a little TLC.
So all day yesterday, between putting the finishing touches on my publication layout and getting my son Will ready for an out-of-town chorale invitational this morning, I made a big pot of miso soup and made sure that Rene was comfortable on the sofa. He spent the day channel surfing and napping, but when we woke this morning, he wasn't feeling much better, so it looks like I'm going to have to resort to my secret weapon: Chicken Soup.
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
02:46 PM PDT
Permalink
|
Thursday October 27, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian
Now that all the Indian recipes have been researched, all the shopping done, all the fantastic food prepared, photographed and devoured, and the dishes done, there's only one thing left to do...Watch Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India. Well...two more things. I will also be writing a film review.
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
10:21 PM PDT
Permalink
|
Wednesday October 26, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian
After three straight weeks of hyperfocusing on Indian cuisine, I decided it was time for a change of palate. And because there was a plump, purple eggplant in my crisper, just begging to be invited to the party, I decided to make up a big batch of ratatouille, that marvelous vegetable stew that's oh-so-tasty over vermicelli with freshly grated Parmesan cheese and a side of Italian sausages. Bellissimo!
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
12:04 AM PDT
Permalink
|
Tuesday October 25, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian
At the last minute, I decided to go ahead with my dessert recipe along with the main course and side dishes. The bananas were on the verge of over-ripe and I had everything else I needed. But I decided to switch recipes in mid-stream. Instead of the labor-intensive Eight-Layer Coconut Banana Cake, I chose to make a Warm Coconut Banana Custard. And I must say that, for a shortcut dessert, this little quickie really delivers. It is composed of nothing more than coconut milk, mashed banana, egg, sugar, cornstarch and vanilla. What could be simpler?
The recipes for my 'Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India' menu will be posted at the end of the month along with my film review.
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
12:14 AM PDT
Permalink
|
Monday October 24, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian:
One day last week, my son Will marched in from school and announced that the Cafe du Monde, my favorite restaurant in all the world, had reopened in the French Quarter, replete with a newly remodeled kitchen. He'd heard about it on NPR on his way to school that morning and couldn't wait to deliver the good news. So thrilled was I at the tidings that I decided a celebratory tribute would be fitting, especially since I just happened to have a box of the Cafe du Monde's very own proprietary beignet mix in my kitchen cupboard.
In honor of the occasion, I bought a luscious bunch of seedless black grapes and a pound of bacon for a Sunday brunch to enjoy with Will on this fine October morning. Wish I could say that it was the best batch of beignets I've ever made, but only about half of them puffed up as they're s'posed to. The ones that did were delightful, and the ones that didn't were tasty nonetheless. The grapes were sweet and juicy, if a little tannic, and I have to confess that Will and I consumed the entire pound of bacon in one sitting. But since I can count on two fingers the number of times we've had bacon in the past year, I figured what the hell, and allowed us both to indulge in a little guilty pleasure. What fun!
Vive le Cafe du Monde!
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
12:47 AM PDT
Permalink
|
Sunday October 23, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian
In my search for Indian vegetable recipes for this month's 'Lagaan' menu, this dish instantly appealed to me. Asian eggplants, tender, slender and sweet, scooped and stuffed with a medley of fresh minced vegetables and mint, crusted with a chickpea batter. Talk about a fresh departure from your garden variety peas n' carrots.
Sound complicated? Amazingly, it's anything but. The stuffing is nothing more than a little slice and dice, followed by a simple saute. And although chickpea flour, also known as besan, may be hard to come by, it has a marvelously silky texture that lends itself perfectly to pan-fried batters. My guess is that if you don't have an Asian market nearby, you can probably find chickpea flour at your local health food store. Well worth going the extra mile to find it.
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
12:02 AM PDT
Permalink
|
Saturday October 22, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian
For the rice to accompany my Chicken Korma, I wanted a mild but unusual complement. The recipe I chose called for saffron, coconut, cashew nuts, green chiles, garlic, ginger, and lime juice. I also took liberties with the preparation technique. Instead of cooking the rice in a kettle and then in the oven, I steamed it in my electric rice cooker, adding the saffron and the coconut halfway through.
Once the rice was done, I sauteed the cashews, chiles, garlic, and ginger and added them to the rice, along with the lime juice. The result was a mildly tart and savory pilaf with a piquant flavor that complements the fragrant Chicken Korma but could also stand on its own.
The recipes for my 'Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India' menu will be posted at the end of the month along with my film review.
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
04:55 AM PDT
Permalink
|
Friday October 21, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian
This Chicken Korma recipe is one of the mildest yet tastiest Indian dishes I've ever made. But I must confess that I took some liberties with the ingredients. In addition to all the other components I included, the recipe called for tomatoes, cayenne pepper, and whipping cream, which I left out. I substituted coconut milk for the heavy cream, and reduced the amount of cumin, corriander, cloves, cardamom, and cinnamon. The result was a fragrant, ethereal chicken stew that exceeded all my expectations. The spices were perfectly balanced, although they could easily be adjusted according to taste. I will have to make a note to myself on the recipe that it's okay to punch up the spices next time.
The recipes for my 'Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India' menu will be posted at the end of the month along with my film review.
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
06:31 PM PDT
Permalink
|
Thursday October 20, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian
One of the many benefits of my new address is the convenience of two supermarkets, each within a half mile of my front door, each with its redeeming qualities. Safeway is great for budget shopping, and Albertson's has a fantastic variety of specialty fruits and vegetables.
Today there were Thai eggplants, fresh chestnuts, horseradish root, turmeric root, a couple dozen different types of peppers, just to name a few. But I was on a mission for Asian eggplants. With all the other requisite ingredients for chicken korma, saffron rice and stuffed eggplants already in my fridge or pantry, that's all I needed. But I can't wait to try all those other goodies.
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
01:01 PM PDT
Permalink
|
Wednesday October 19, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian
Next up on my 'Lagaan' Indian menu is the main course: Chicken Korma, Stuffed Eggplant and Saffron Rice. It will take me a few days to get the remainder of the ingredients together and devote a block of time to three such exotic new dishes.
I'm also hoping to make a simple mint chutney to serve as a condiment, along with a little mango chutney that I ordered last week from ishopindian.com. The dinner will probably happen over the weekend when Will and Rene are both here to share it with me. After being so closely tethered to my laptop with publication layout for the past two weeks, I'm definitely looking forward to getting back in the kitchen.
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
12:40 AM PDT
Permalink
|
Tuesday October 18, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian
I have a confession to make: I almost never get tagged for a meme, but if it looks like fun, I sometimes go ahead and participate anyway. I guess that makes me a 'meme crasher'. But who cares? It's my blog and I can meme if I want to...
One of the most recent memes of intrigue is a little game called the '23rd-post-5th-sentence meme', in which foodbloggers are challenged to go back into their inchoate archives and locate the 5th sentence of their 23rd post to ponder and riff on its meaning and subtext. So here's mine...
Dateline: Napa, CA...May 23, 2004...Post #23...Sentence #5: "And despite my skepticism regarding my first experience cooking with nuoc mam, the nuoc cham dipping sauce was the star of the show." (Click here to read the post in its entirety.)
When I first went back and read my 23rd/5th post, I thought to myself, "There's no subtext here. It's just a random sentence." But as days went by, the notion began to ferment in my head and I realized that indeed there was a great deal of subtext...Asian food is all about the nuoc mam.
A little browsing ahead to a later post revealed the source of my love affair with nuoc mam. Here's what I had to say on the subject back in those days...
"Okay, so I'm looking at all these Vietnamese recipes in my two cookbooks, plus a little extracurricular research on epicurious.com, and one thing is obvious. I'm definitely gonna need something called nuoc mam. Now although I may have originally given the impression that I'm a total neophyte when it comes to Vietnamese cuisine, that's not entirely true. I know what nuoc mam is.
Back in my hometown of Mobile, Alabama, I helped an ex-boyfriend open a gourmet restaurant called The Casbah, and although the menu was strictly 'continental', his #1 employee was a darling Vietnamese woman named Mai Nguyen. My ex was a Vietnam War veteran, and because he was so familiar with her culture, the two of them got along famously. Mai's story was heartbreaking (her family, one with a long and aristocratic heritage, had to flee the country in a homemade skiff with what few possessions they could carry on their backs), nevertheless, she had an amazingly buoyant spirit and an indomitable work ethic. Not only did Mai and her aged father Dan help restore the historic Mediterranean building for The Casbah restaurant, once it opened, Mai did most if not all of the daily prep and cooking for both the lunch and dinner shifts.
But when she prepared meals for herself and her family in the restaurant kitchen, she made Vietnamese food, and for that, she always kept a bottle of nuoc mam on the pantry shelf. Mai's nuoc mam was the subject of much curiosity and even a little good-natured kidding from the other staff members, who wanted no part of that strange brew.
Thanks to Mai's culinery expertise, the Casbah enjoyed a few good years in the Mobile restaurant scene, but when it finally closed, Mai had saved up enough money to open her own restaurant, The Ivory Chopstick, located in a turn-of-the-century home in the city's scenic garden district. Shortly after it opened, just a few months before I moved to California, I had the pleasure of enjoying one of the finest meals I have ever eaten: a delicate spring roll appetizer, followed by a heavenly lemongrass broth with seafood dumplings, and for the main course, pan-sauteed sole with a soy-ginger beurre blanc accompanied by a medley of perfectly steamed vegetables...Each dish lovingly and expertly prepared by the hands of Mai Nguyen."
Since May 23, 2004, not only have I made countless dishes with nuoc mam, I have also learned that it goes by the name of patis, nam pla and the generic 'Asian fish sauce', and is an essential element of almost every Asian cuisine. Despite my initial skepticism, nuoc mam has become my new favorite Asian ingredient and is now an indispensible staple on my pantry shelf.
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
23rd post
12:07 AM PDT
Permalink
|
Monday October 17, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian
I just said goodbye to my friend Alice, who came for lunch today to share the soup and salad course of my 'Lagaan' Indian menu. I made a big pot of Mulligatawny soup, which Alice ooh'ed and ahhh'ed over, followed by a grilled lamb salad served over a bed of baby spinach with cucumber-tomato-mint raita and a dollop of mango chutney. All the flavors were just right, and my balcony overlooking the the creek was the perfect setting on this idyllic October day.
After lunch, Alice thumbed through my Japanese interior design books and offered her suggestions on how I should proceed with my furnishing and decorating projects. In addition to her delightful company over lunch, Alice has left me inspired by some wonderful ideas. Can't wait to get started.
The recipes for my 'Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India' menu will be posted at the end of the month along with my film review.
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
05:04 PM PDT
Permalink
|
Sunday October 16, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian
I have invited my friend Alice Jackson for lunch on Monday afternoon, so I am going to treat her to the soup and salad courses of my 'Lagaan' Indian menu. Alice has graciously agreed to mentor me in the decoration of my new home. She is a fellow Japanophile, and has a rare gift for the art of arrangement [which I sadly lack], not to mention an impressive collection of treasures from her travels in Japan. So I have enlisted her help in the selection of a few items to compliment the ones that I already have, and some guidance on where to put them.
A favor so dear deserves a commensurate reward, so for my lunch with Alice, I am going to make up a big kettle of Mulligatawny soup, and a salad of grilled lamb over a bed of spinach with a side of tomato-cucumber-mint raita. Mmmmm...Just the thought of it makes me hungry already.
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
01:48 PM PDT
Permalink
|
Saturday October 15, 2005
This Month's Film: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India
Cuisine: Indian
Why has no one ever told me about samosas? And how could I have lived this long and been to so many Indian restaurants without ever tasting them? And why doesn't all the food in the world taste this delicious?
Not knowing what they were supposed to look like, or even what they were, I chose them partly because they were the first recipe in the cookbook, and also because they sounded so tasty. And insolent girl that I am, I even dared to modify the recipe, albeit just the lamb filling, which is pretty basic: minced lamb, finely diced onions, ginger, garlic, corriander, cumin and saffron. The modification of the recipe was in the leaving out of the garam masala, which has alot of cinnamon and cloves which I wasn't in the mood for, and the cayenne pepper, since I didn't want them too spicy.
The making of the dough was the fun part, and the recipe perfectly described the shaping and filling of the little meat pies. After about the third or fourth one, I was turning them out like a pro.
I got lucky on the deep-frying step too. I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. For years, my deep-fried dishes frequently turned out soggy and greasy. But over the course of the year and a half that I've been cooking Asian food for my Chopstick Cinema blog, I have learned that it really is a control issue in both temperature and quantity. You gotta heat the oil up just right and keep it there, and don't crowd the pan. It's as simple as that.
My samosas were crisp and flaky without a hint of grease, and the filling inside was tender and savory with the seasonings right on the mark. And now that I know about this well-kept little samosa secret, I'll be looking for them on the menu in every Indian restaurant.
The recipes for my 'Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India' menu will be posted at the end of the month along with my film review.
Send me a pair of chopsticks. Click here for details.
To subscribe to Chopstick Cinema's monthly menu and film review, send e-mail to cheiter at thingsasian dot com
12:35 AM PDT
Permalink
|
|
