Blue Ginger

One of the perks of living in the Northwest is the diaspora of authentic Asian eating joints that are never too far away. And by Asian I say that in the American sense which means southeast Asian to the rest of the world. From Chinese restaurants who have their main menu written in Chinese with the English menu available on request to sushi joints that put some Tokyo equivalents to shame (or so I have heard), we have everything. If Vietnamese pho or Thai penang curry was something you only saw and heard on travel shows, you can get some of the best over here. Food writers attribute this abundance to the proximity of southeast Asia to the west coast of US. I for one, don't care. What I do care and cherish is the fact that all it takes is a grumble in my belly and a 5-10 min drive to dive right into sizzling golden tempura or spicy tom yum gai.

Intermingled within these exotic cuisines and hidden under the anonymity of it's more popular counterparts is the cuisine of the Koreans. For not so long ago , I would have put it under the 'a lot like Japanese' category. It all changed when I went to an authentic Korean joint called Kokiri last year and I was jolted with amazement at the uniqueness and personality of the menu and the food that I ate.

Just writing about Korean cuisine would be like experiencing a good glass of wine with your eyes closed, i.e incomplete. Luckily I had my camera with me three days ago when I took M out on a date to Blue Ginger in Bellevue. This place is as Korean as they get, with huge tables centered with a fire grill , the sour aroma of kimchi floating in the air and nerdy Korean waitresses. We had the option of sitting at the sushi bar since by the way even Koreans eat sushi, but we were there for a different experience. Where else would you get to cook your own meat!

One of the traditional settings of a Korean meal is the Korean bbq where meats are cooked at the center of the table atop a grill to the accompaniment of about a dozen side dishes and individual rice bowls. We chose bulgogi as our main protein . Bulgogi literally means 'fire meat' , and is thinly sliced beef marinated in soy sauce , garlic and sesame oil which is to be cooked to your liking on the grill. You heard right! the raw meat comes in a huge platter with a pair of tongs at your disposal. You slap on the meat over the grill and cook it to your perfection. Unfortunately they do not pay you to cook your own food because that is part of the experience. We also decided to order the vegetable platter , which came with sliced zucchini, sliced pumpkin, succulent mushrooms an a big fat slab of onion which also had to be grilled by us!. However the best part of the meal for me was the banchan. Banchan refers to bowl sized side dishes served along with the main protein dish and rice to be consumed as accompaniments. What will blow your socks off is the number of them! The waitress comes with a trolley peckered with these small little bowls, and as she starts transferring those goodies on to the table, your huge table suddenly starts running out of space. Initially you will panic at the sheer number of these insignificant yet intriguing embellishments until you come to terms with the fact that sometimes life can be fair and sometimes you do get more than what your bargained for!

The banchan Blue Ginger decided to bestow upon was the ubiquitous kimchi which is deliberately rotten spicy hot cabbage, kongnamul which is boiled and seasoned soybean sprouts, sweet mu-chae made of sweet white radish in vinegar sauce , stinky tofu not to be consumed by the weak stomached, stir fried fern shoots called gosari-namul,stir fried squid called something I cannot pronounce, garlic mashed potatoes, pickled zucchini, stir fried gelatin noodles and salad....phew.

We finished it off with plum wine ordered by M which was a perfect compliment to the myriad of textures and flavors we encountered in our food adventure, not that warm sake would have been a bad choice , but I had already tried that during a previous visit.

Whether you call it similar to other Asian cuisines or not , Korean cuisine does make you review how food can be prepared, presented and consumed. It makes you realize that sometimes rotten, slimy and stinky can be adjectives used to describe mind blowingly awesome food. It makes you realize how juxtaposing complex preparations of banchan and soups against the simple staples of rice and meat can be sweet music to your unknowing palette. All in all it makes a pretty twisted meal!.

Goa Untwisted

Beyond the rave parties and 'I love Goa' t-shirts , beyond the Anjuna market and Baga beach , beyond the foreign, NRI and Indian tourists lies the real Goa ... the Goa that I know. It is the Goa where my ancestors lived until two generations ago , their houses a living proof of the rustic lifestyle that is lost among the glamorous , hippy image of the new emerging beach neighborhoods.

My mother's ancestral home lies nested in a quiet corner of Pernem , a small town situated just inside the Goa - Maharashtra border. Here in this house which was literally built room after room over a century I have spent most of my childhood holidays. Like every village town house it has a well whose water tastes sweet and which is home to two tiny turtles that eat all the parasites and filter our drinking water. The jack fruit tree in the back garden bears huge fruit every summer so that the house never runs short of it's supply of dried jack fruit candy. A small road from the back of the house leads to a stream beyond which lie extensive paddy farms so lushly green that you feel they have been painted over. A road along the fields takes you to the center of the town which is adorned by the main temple and an adjoining market that sells fresh vegetables probably harvested that very day and fish that seem to have jumped right out of the sea into the fisher woman's basket. People are kind and gullible. When I walk up to them in my American military shorts and a 'hare Krishna' t-shirt they don't look at me strangely . One spoken sentence in Marathi and they treat me like a relative.

Just two months ago I was in Goa with my brother and my folks walking around the market on a sultry November evening . We decided to head over to 'Himalaya' , a small restaurant cum grocery store that embodies the hospitality of the state unlike the tourist shacks on Carambolim beach. We ordered a seven rupees falooda each, and the kid working there having recognized us from previous visits just smiled and started scooping up a mighty mean beverage. What landed on our table was eons beyond the famous 'Royal falooda of Badshah's in Mumbai . The ice cream was creamier , the syrup was not too sweet and the small bubbles floating in the concoction seemed crunchier and I fell in love with Goa all over again.

But if my appetite was not whetted enough, that same night it would explode because on the menu of our home cooked family dinner was the quintessential Goan dish called xacuti . It is a curry dish made of complex spices using local ingredients like freshly grated coconut and dry chillies with either chicken or pork and no one makes it better than my grandfather. That along with fried rava coated pompret and double roti was like bombarding your taste buds with flavor bombs that defied logic and made me wonder if I could ever get over that sense of fulfillment. Being a food junkie , I have eaten all over Goa , from the snazzy beach shacks on Calangute to inconspicuous little vindaloo joints in Mapusa , but never has anything matched the healing power of my grandfather's xacuti.

If xacuti is quintessentially Goan , so it the experience of driving from Pernem to the central district of Ponda. If you look beyond the newly constructed highways and the newly introduced pollution from the newly bought cars you will see acres of fields bordered with palm trees . You will see mud walkways running through the fields and farmers and their kids scampering along the walkways with natural agility and a smile on their faces. Along the road you will see narrow byways almost invisible to the speeding motorist that if followed lead you to congruous yet unique temples and churches nestled in their own ecosystem of vendors and devotees. You won't see topless , tanned and broke tourists zipping past in their rented two wheelers. Instead you will come across unknown villages and their village centres. You will cross their main markets and their panchayats and dainty little mud houses and cheerful playgrounds.

When the Portuguese started annexing Goa in the late 15Th century they began systematically demolishing temples in a bid to convert locals to their own religion. In the process many pandits packed up their Gods and retreated to hills of central Goa where they took refuge in the valleys and eventually established temples for their 'Gods on the run'. Many temples are still isolated, surrounded by as few as a dozen houses which call themselves a village. One such village called Keri is my paternal ancestral village. That village is what gave me my name and somewhere within my soul I still feel like I am home when I enter the village premises. The fact that the closest town of Ponda is 40 minutes away by rickshaw or that there are less than five families that comprise the meager population of Keri gives me the feeling that I am trapped in time, a feeling that enhances itself when I walk down the brick steps beyond the awning of my ancestors house and come across a lake, almost hidden in the hills that surround it. That November afternoon when I stood on the edge of my true Alma mater and spread my arms I still remember the excruciatingly numbing beauty that belonged to me for that instant.

If anyone said that Goa belonged to its beaches they would be wrong , if anyone said that Goa belongs to its churches and temples they would be even wronger. Goa belongs to its people. It belongs to the fishermen, and the farmers, the locals of dozens of cities like Panjim who zip around in their Honda Activa's on their daily trip to the market . It belongs to my grandfather who is spending his retired years in his childhood house after working hard all his life in Maharashtra. Someday in future if I can embrace Goa for what it really is , I hope it will belong to me.

Curry Pasta

So , last week when I sat in the Old Spaghetti Factory and indulged in some tortellini and alfredo I couldn't but wonder how I would rather prefer my own "anything goes" recipe.

Curry Pasta
What you need to serve 2:

Sauce:

500 gms of diced chicken

1 tin of tomato paste

1 tin of coconut milk

4 finely diced garlic pods

1 teaspoon chilli powder /cayenne pepper powder

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg powder

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon powder

3 pods cardamom

Pasta:

about 150 gms of pasta of your choice ( I cooked with penne)

How to cook it:
-Fill a large boiling pot with water and bring it to a boil.

-Turn the heat down to medium and add the pasta so that the water completely immerses it.Add 1tablespoon of salt.

-After 20 minutes or so test the softness of the pasta(it shouldn't be chewy but shouldn't be falling apart either)

-Drain the water and then add a dash of olive oil to the pasta and give it a toss so that the olive oil coats each piece.

-Now for the sauce , saute the garlic in olive oil over medium heat till it browns, then add the nutmeg and cinnamon and the chicken.

-once the chicken whitens and caramalizes a bit , add the chilli powder , salt and black pepper to taste , tomato paste and coconut milk and saute the mixture for about 10 minutes.

-Finally add a pinch of garam masala and some chopped cilantro.

Serving options:

-Create a base from the penne and spoon the sauce on top . Garnish with spring onions and shredded mozarella.

Food and Love

"Do you like Butter Chicken? " Not a question many guys will ask the girl they are dating within the first week. When I asked that question to M she discerned the intensity in my words and while trying her best to curb a flurry of giggles she looked at me with those soft eyes said 'yes'. For me that 'yes' was right up there with the big "yes" that would come four years later. Not so much for the fact that she liked my most ultimately favorite dish, but because I knew then that she understood my passion for food and one hurdle had crossed between us being completely made for each other!

Love grows in funny ways, and when you look under the exterior structure of sights , sounds and smells you discover the foundation built on common passions! The continuing forums on which you can keep on conversing and participating all your life. Not a surprise then that one of those forums for me and M has turned out to be food! From trying out each other recipes to fighting over who is going to cook the next meal , we have done it all. All those amazing places that we have eaten out at wouldn't be that amazing if M wasn't there to share my critique and drink in the ambiance.

Yesterday we celebrated 5 years to the day we went from being just friends to oh-my-god we are dating! And though M wasn't there with me on that day , I finished my day by trying to perfect the recipe for Chicken Marsala which I plan to cook for her next time we are together.

Hey, if food and love were not made for each other I wonder if I would bother cooking!!

Masala Burger and Baked Garlic Fries

Have you ever wondered how cool it would be to eat kebabs in a bun! Well I have , and last week I was all set to cook at my fiancees house when a light bulb lit up in the white cloud hovering above my head. What if I could cook up a hearty burger with all the goodness of spicy kebabs! Of course no dish of meat in a bun can go without a side of fries. But hey , what if the fries were not really fries but only look and taste like fries! read on....

Ingredients:

For Masala Burger:
Minced red meat (Lamb or Beef) 1.5 lbs
Potato 1 (peeled, boiled or microwaved and mashed)
Large egg 1 whole
Chili powder 2 tbl spoons
Cumin 2 tbl spoons
Turmeric 1/2 tbl spoon
Garam Masala 1/4 tbl spoon
Salt 2 tbl spoons
Black pepper 1/2 tbl spoon
Rum (a dash /optional)

For Baked Garlic Fries:
Medium Potatoes 4
Garlic powder 2 tbl spoons (don't be afraid of garlic my friend)
Salt 1 tbl spoons
Pepper 0.5 tbl spoon
Oregano 0.5 tbl spoon

Method - Masala Burger (Serves four):
1) Take the meat in a large bowl and add the red chili powder, cumin, black pepper , salt ,
egg , mashed potato, turmeric and if you are crazy enough, a dash of rum.
2) Mix well the goop in your bowl and let it stand for 20 Min's.
3) In the mean time heat a pan on medium high (no oil is required since the meat will cook in its own juices.)
4) Gouge out a ball of meat from the goop and roll it smooth with your hands then flatten it to resemble a burger. The mixed-in egg and mashed potato is supposed to keep it from breaking apart.
5)Then slap on the burger on your pan and cook on it on one side for about 8 Min's till the side becomes dark brown , then flip the burger and cook the other side for 5 Min's.
6) Once the burger is done, transfer it to a plate covered with a paper napkin which will soak the fat on the surface of the burger.
7) Take a moment to look at your creation and admire it.
8) Server the burger between two slices of your favorite bread ( In my case it was buttermilk bran) and garnish it with mint chutney and a slice of onion and tomato.

Method - Garlic Fries (Serves four):
1) Peel four mid-sized potatoes and cut them
up in the shape of fries. ( you don't have to be exact)
2) Transfer the potatoes to a bowl and sprinkle salt, pepper , garlic powder and oregano liberally on the top.
3) Then give the bowl a few tosses to coat the potatoes uniformly with the seasonings.
4) Cover a baking pan with aluminium foil and spray cooking oil on the foil to make it non-stick. (if you don't have spray you can dab a paper napkin in oil and then rub the foil with the napkin gently to form a light coat.)
5) spread the fries evenly on the pan and toss the pan in a preheated oven at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.

Now there you have it . If you think that is complicated , you are more than welcome to go to McDonald's and feed on some gourmet saturated fat.

P.S: Special mention of thanks to Mana and Sayan for admiring and devouring my dish.
Pic courtesy of S Dasgupta.

Intro

That I did not know how to cook even as less as four years ago would be a gross understatement. Like many other twenty two year olds from India I came to US with two dozen packets of Maggi and a box of laddoos to keep me alive for the first week until the cafeteria of my university opened for the semester. Making chai was as big a mystery to me as the inner workings of Bollywood. It wasn't until I left the dorms a semester later and started living with other students in off-campus apartments that my real tryst with cooking began. It has been a long, fruitful, satisfying and discovery laden 4 years of learning the hard way. Countless of smelly , crummy creations of mine went down the drain but at the same time opened a Pandora's box of limitless possibilities.

I may sound a bit overly dramatic in my ability to cook because, hey , more than half the population of this earth can do it! But it is the way I feel about cooking! . Even when I created my first cup of chai , it was to get my mind of homework and it worked so miraculously that cooking has been my stress buster ever since. And then it is more than that. See when a child is really small, good parents tend to notice the child's hidden talents and try their best to hone it. Similarly I tried to be a good parent to my inner child and no matter how busy or where ever I was I never missed an opportunity to whip up a meal or a snack and maybe find a hidden secret to add to my kitty of every growing discoveries.

I can safely say that over the years I have developed my own little style of sorts. Two things contributed to the fact. The first was that since I got into the whole cooking thing so late in life and in a different country than my own , I never had the prejudice toward a certain kind of cuisine. To me all are same and equally mysterious , and my favorite cuisine changes ever so often that I unravel those mysteries one by one. The second thing is that being an engineer that I am by profession it was natural for me to not follow recipes but learn the make or break way, so I can safely say that more than half of my creations have been not so endearing and that percentage keeps getting smaller everyday. But in the process I have found and keep finding many gems and invaluable insights. And therein those two beliefs lies my style which i like to call "Anything goes" , a more agreeable term would be 'fusion' but that sounds cliche. My motto was "Good ingredients make good food" until i found a way to make stale rice taste good. So now I do not have any mottoes because I do not have any preconceived notions.

The fact that most of our (and you may not be one of them) palates are so confined to the boundaries set by our childhood and influenced by our culture disturbs me a lot, and I have sort of taken it upon myself to fight the eponymous battle against the conservative eater. I don't intend to do it by antagonizing that kind , but hope to provide a bridge which they can easily cross over into the vast continent of foodies like me and many of you who are reading this blog.

Which brings me to this blog. My main goal in starting this blog is that it provide my readers with ideas to cross that bridge I was talking about earlier.In here you may find my recipes , food articles or just my muses on anything and everything edible. My secondary goal in the case that my blog readership doesn't reach the high standards i expect (about 5 readers) is that it will still remain as a journal of my foodie adventures.

Bon appetit.

Pic courtesy S Dasgupta.