rantlust

Posted by anupcs on March 14th 2008 in Food & Wine
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Curry leaves are essential ingredients for me when cooking South Indian (especially Kerala) food. Last week, I was distressed to find out from a local Indian grocery store that they are now banned (at least) in California. Apparently they found some pests in the shipments (interestingly these come to California from Hawaii) and are temporarily banned until they figure out what’s going on. See here for more info.

While it’s possible to use curry leaf powder as a substitute, it’s just not the same. Curry leaves are normally added in the beginning when cooking a veggie, chicken, or seafood dish. The splatter when they hit the oil, the crackling sound, and the aroma they release within a few seconds adds so much to the flavor and pleasure of cooking. I am going to miss them dearly.

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Posted by anupcs on February 13th 2008 in Business, Food & Wine
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People either drink tap water or they don’t. There’s no middle ground here. Some of us are brave enough to drink the local tap water in countries as exotic as Burundi and some of us won’t drink tap water certified to be germ free by the local government. Some of us drink only bottled water with fancy names such as Evian or Pellegrino. I have been brave (or foolhardy) in trying out tap water in most places I have traveled to. But when one is depending on the Lonely Planets and the Rough Guides for guidance to countries one doesn’t know much about, eventually one succumbs to the marketing hype and plow down for the bottled variety of the essential liquid.

Today, at a bar here in Colorado, I overheard the bartenders discussing how the French named Evian, the famous bottled water company, as such: spelled backwards it’s N-A-I-V-E. Yikes!

Though this is not entirely true, it does give one pause.

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Posted by anupcs on January 19th 2008 in Food & Wine
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Living close to one of the world’s great wine producing regions, going to wine tasting events is unavoidable. Years ago, a few friends and I started a drinking club called Oinos, the purpose of which was to get together to taste expensive liquor including fine wine. We used to pitch in money to buy and taste spirits and wine that were often beyond the scope of individual purchases. A few of the participants in this developed a good taste for wine and became, for lack of a better phrase, wine snobs. Some actually can distinguish between different varietals and regions of origin but others are merely pretentious fudgers like me. After years of trying very hard to act sophisticated when tasting wine and spouting off adjectives from the aroma wheel, I am giving up and have decided to settle on a simple system of tasting wine. If the wine snobs among my friends don’t like my new system, I don’t care.

My system involves only two ratings: good or bad (1 or 0). I either like the wine or I don’t. If that means an occasional white zinfandel or rose wine will slip through and be rated 1, so be it. Whether or not you like a wine is highly subjective (like all food). The critics might have their favorites among the expensive wines but for mere mortals (especially people like me who have damaged taste buds from years of eating spicy food), a simple system is better than trying to come up with which berry the wine tastes like or whether there is a whiff of tobacco in the air after swirling the liquid about in your latest Riedel purchase. I wish everyone would just shut up and drink.

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Posted by anupcs on January 16th 2008 in Business, Food & Wine, Travel
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Quite a few of my friends have Visa Signature credit cards. So, I thought it’d be good to publicize a good benefit from them for those planning to visit the wineries of Sonoma Valley. Visa is now having a promotion that allows Signature card holders to get complimentary tastings at some prominent wineries in Sonoma. See here for the full list. I was up in Sonoma last Saturday and enjoyed this benefit as well as up to 20% discount on wines purchased. Enjoy.

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Posted by jcaldera on October 16th 2007 in Food & Wine, Humor, Random, Rants, Society
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We discovered not so long ago that our daughter Natalia is lactose intolerant. This has been an inconvenience because she seemed to develop this intolerance recently, and she loved dairy products. Since we figure out that she was lactose intolerant we’ve been buying soy based products for her. Tonite we bought soy ice cream. And I can’t be any more sorry for her that I am tonite. Soy based ice cream is likely the worse product I’ve ever tasted in my life. Maybe it is the brand or the actual flavor, but it was so terrible that it make me thinks it is just the way it is. The worst part is that Natalia ate it all and she seemed to like it. I didn’t have the heart to put it where it belongs: the trash can.

Thinking about it, at least I can understand why lactose intolerant people would eat it. Now, what in the world is going through the people that makes it a choice. I know likes and dislikes are subjective and sure, somebody must like it for there to be a product, but this is beyond any comprehension. This is an actual aberration. If there is any Vegan reader that can explain to me why they would turn down actual ice cream for soy based ice cream, I hope the answer is like: we don’t eat ice cream for that reason, that would make me respect them at least. But trying to justify that they actually eat it because they like it would be beyond any comprehension.

Since we are in the subject, I’ll give you another piece of information on modified ice cream. The writer of this blog has actually been on and off the south beach diet. As you may know this diet precludes eating ice cream both because of the sugar and because of the fat. So, my love for ice cream is so deep that I am forced to buy the sugar free versions of the ice cream. Agreed that at least this ice cream is eatable. The availability of splenda and the like have make it possible to create a version of ice cream that though doesn’t get to the actual full fat/sugar ice cream is ok. But don’t be fooled ice cream was meant to be tasty not healthy, and it should remain as such.

For those of us that have access to San Francisco and those that come to visit I must suggest Mitchell’s ice creams. Incredible ice creams - no sugar free or soy available… … Go and expect to be in line for about 30 minutes even in the middle of the winter.

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Posted by meerkat on August 27th 2007 in Food & Wine, Trivia, USA
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When I read about the deep fried Pepsi, I could not believe my eyes. I have heard of deep fried snickers, oreos, reese’s peanut butter cups, cakes and what not. How does one deep fry pepsi?

Here is a snippet from the NY Times article,

“Jeremy Orme, who runs Fried Creations, the home of the Combo Plate, introduced a new item at this year’s fair: deep-fried Pepsi. He rolls out his Pepsi-based dough, dips it in a batter made with Pepsi and deep-fries it for 90 seconds. His oil, made of soybeans, is trans-fat free as required, and on the front of his booth he has posted a local newspaper’s account about the fair’s trans-fat ban”

Notice that it is deep fried for sure, but it is trans fat free. So, no guilt involved, even if you have to get yourself an all new wardrobe after the fair.

While on the topic of deep fried everything, I read that French fries are not really French. It is supposedly a Belgian marvel and the French stands for the type of the cut, which means to cut in thin, long strips. I guess a lot of time was wasted after 9/11 renaming French fries and French toast(which is also not French) to Freedom fries and Freedom Toast.

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Posted by meerkat on August 23rd 2007 in Agriculture, Food & Wine, Raves
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Wednesdays are my farm box day. I open the mystery box from my farmer(Community Supported Agriculture CSA) and I hope to get what I love. I see Swiss chard, blue potatoes, basil, plums, onions, corn, cucumber, summer squash and so many tomatoes- heirloom, red, orange, green , yellow cherry tomatoes and green striped ones. I am not all that fond of tomatoes. For sure, I do not like them raw. So, eating a salad is out of the question. I have to look for quite a few recipes to cook the tomatoes as it would be a sin to waste them.

These tomatoes are ripened in the plants and harvested 24 hours before it gets delivered to me, they are so juicy and flavorful when I cook them. I got to know tomatoes should not be refrigerated as chilling stops the ripening and kills the flavor of the tomatoes . That leaves a short and finite time before I need to cook them. I did try my favorite ones like the tomato pickle, tomato rice and the egg curry with plenty of tomatoes. I also had to find new ones to use up all the tomatoes and have been figuring out how to can the tomatoes so I can use them during winter. The New York Times had an interesting article with recipes So Many Tomatoes to Stuff in a Week, this will surely come in handy now.

Although the tomatoes have been overwhelming, I am very happy with the farm box without which I would never had the courage to try Swiss chard, fava beans, leeks, arugula or rutabaga(what a name!). I do not like all the vegetables I get, but I do try them and have liked many of them. It has been an interesting experience so far.

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Posted by anupcs on August 13th 2007 in Food & Wine, Photography
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