h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Good night PC.
Hi JEllen

Morning all

Happy anniversary to Meg!
Good job luck to K!

Great to hear your buiding work is nearly done Abbi!

Its is good that the Khoi San have managed to get a deal on this, a lot of drugs where isolated from indian herbs and they never got a look in. Such as neem oil, the new ownership was going to mean they weren't even going to be able to pick the leaves they had always picked, only get the oil from the US company. Luckily that was stopped, I remember reading about it in New Scientist a year or two ago. I was very annoyed reading that though.

Hi PC I got an Indian pancake the other day filled with potato and onion but its very dry, I am going to cut it up into a bhuna sauce I bought and add random vegetables. With your sauce, you could follow a proper recipe, or just what you fancy with rice. I can recommend wholewheat basmati rice, some people don't like wholewheat rice, but the basmati is lighter and it takes a lot of energy to digest, I always find that if I eat that rice I have never put on weight the next day!

Would the pancake have been a dosa? The proper way to serve them is with small portions of sambal (basically, spicy water strained off from dhal) and a coconut chutney (whizz together some yoghurt, dessicated coconut and maybe a little mint and/or coriander).

As for what to do with aubergines/eggplant's....well! 'The world's your lobster'. My favourite thing would be to char the skin and peel it(as if making baba ghanouj. If you have gas, bung it straight on the flame. Else lightly smear it with oil and put it under a grill (broiler?) or - at a pinch - in a v. hot oven). Then taking your peeled aubergine pulp, make yer basic curry, starting with oil or ghee, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, salt and asafoetida (optional - but good for the digestion) - then add some finely chopped onions, garlic, ginger and green chilli, then the roughly chopped aubergine flesh. Next, a can of chickpeas (garbanzos?) and a diced tomato. Cook until it looks done. Garnish with chopped coriander (cilantro). Serve with chappatis/roti and a good yoghurt. (I'm assuming these are big aubergines, btw. Other things can be done with the small kind.)

Here's something interesting, btw. Mustard oil is a great curry ingredient. In the UK, it's only available in large cans which are labeled 'For external use only' (it's also used as a massage and hair oil). Apparently some years ago, there was a scandal in which some toxic mustard oil was sold - similar to the Spanish olive oil scandal that killed several people in the early 80's. Yet while we can get food-quality Spanish olive oil, we're not meant to eat Indo/Pak mustard oil! Everyone does, of course. You don't need cans *that* big of massage oil

Aubergine pakora are nice, too. And any kind of leftover pakora can be used in a curry.

Yep it was a dosa, I obviously didn't get it the proper way though.

(Overheard in an Indian restaurant):

'This dosa's a doosie!'

Allright, allright, I admit it!....it was *me that said it!

I've made some awesome eggplant curries, baba ghanoush, and lightly breaded eggplant served with pasta. Eggplant parmesan rocks, too.

I haven't cooked with mustard oil, only mustard seeds. I'll have to try it with oil sometime!

Now I have a craving for Indian food.

Oh, and I only *ever* cook with Basmati or jasmine rice and never any of the awful white stuff we have in abundance here.

Yup. It's Basmati or nothing. I believe that 'Texmati' is also grown in the US.

With the small aubergines - curry them with some tomatoes and use fennel (soonf) seeds and star anise.

Then, of course, there's ratatouille. Now, this can get a bad name because it's often served in a bastardised version (eg as the pub's vegetarian choice as topping for a baked potato) - left-over veg in tomato sauce - often incorporating boiled aubergine. Yeach! Never boil an aubergine! More properly, ratatouille should be seen as a vehicle for serving tomatoey garlic-flavoured olive oil with a few vegetables:

Take some courgettes (zucchini) and aubergines. Slice. Onions - cut into big chunks. Tomatoes - preferably plum - cut into halves or quarters. Maybe - maybe - some sliced red peppers (but never green). Now - the trick is to fry everything separately in good quality olive oil before transfering to a big pot to stew and amalgamate. Do so - and at the big pot stage add lots and lots of crushed garlic cloves and - my secret ingredient - lots and lots of fresh tarragon (and salt and pepper to taste). Serve topped with chopped flat-leave parsley, may some parmesan and a hunk of good, crusty bread for mopping up the oil. It's even better warmed up the next day!

It's thought of as the classic Provencal dish. In fact, it wasn't recorded until the 1920's!

I make sinfully good Ratatouille, but I don't boil any of the ingredients. I never would've thought to do that!

Yeah, that Texmati rice is awful, and ridiculously overpriced to boot. I get the Basmati stuff up along the strip where all of the Indian restaurants are and it's a few dollars for a 10-lb. bag.

I would love to try adding some fresh tarragon to my Ratatouille next time I make it. I use only fresh plum or Roma tomatoes, and probably the better part of seven or eight cloves of garlic. I finish up with a good pound of grated Havarti cheese, and slice up the biggest black olives I can find- the bigger ones have much better flavor- to top it off as well.

Forgot to mention: A glass of red wine on the side is 'a good idea' - to counterbalance the oil

Aubergines, still: Burritos filled with a potato/ smoked aubergine mixture.

Tonight for me it's a rare venture into tofu - stir fried with chinese cabbage (napa?) and shitake mushrooms. For a stock to go with Chinese dishes, I've discovered Telma brand 'Chicken Flavour' soup. Not very healthy, I suppose. On the kosher shelf of the supermarket it's next to the actual chicken soup, which is presumably for the 'fleishig' days.

Oh, yes, and when I add the peppers, it's red, yellow, and orange ones... not green. There's a little health food shop near my house that sells them in tri-color three packs- one of each per pack- for only a few dollars.

For stock for Chinese dishes, I also like to use just a bit of veg stock base (also not terribly healthy- lots of sodium) with some rice cooking wine and/or a bit of fish or oyster sauce. Yummy!

The stir-fry you're planning sounds lovely. I'd like to make a curry tomorrow, but it's too cold to go to the grocery store, even on the way home. We've barely made it into the single digits today, and the building I work in hasn't got any heating.

I'ms till a pepper sceptic, on the whole. Less is more for ratatouille.

I'm thinking of some thinly-sliced, mild-ish red chillis for my Chinese dish too. Plus I might add the small can of braised tofu that's been lurking in my cupboard, in addition to the fresh stuff. And white pepper to flavour, which goes well in Chinese.

Must dash. I'm salivating!

Yeah, I cook with tofu a lot. And as for red chillies- I use them so often, I buy them dried in five-pound bags as well as fresh. I like my stir-fries as spicy as my curries: I like them to be mildly painful as well as tasty.

You've had me salivating, too, I had to grab some fruit to eat for "lunch" at my desk here. I'm making rigatoni for dinner with a lovely sauce of Roma tomatoes, garlic, onion, fresh basil and rosemary, and green and black olives. (I think it's called Basilico?) With garlic bread. No , though, my sweetie doesn't drink much and doesn't like wine at all. I, however, might have a nip of Roditys from a bottle I got over the weekend.

I still need to come up with something for tomorrow's dinner. I've no idea what. Any suggestions? Bear in mind, while I'll do dairy, eggs, seafood and fish, I don't eat or cook with meat or poultry.

Okay, I've got to quit thinking about food: I've got two-and-a-half hours to go till the workday's through and the hungrier I get, the crankier.

*stops to eat after reading about all of this food*

Exactly!

Incidentally, the sauce I'm making is called Puttanesca. Basilico must be something else, garlic and basil perhaps?

I'm off to start preparing dinner in a minute or two here.

I'm gonna get fat on this thread ...

Just been catching up....and, being as I keep a notebook open because of my atrocious random recall:

Ohhh Terri, just read post 20 with great interest Yays!!!

Viking trudgin out in, post 34

Pc you still have lurkers being nasty... how disheartening, tossas all of 'em.

I have nothing to add really except I LOVE Indian grub too..

And for retail therapy I indulged yesterday and bought Simpson's Monopoly.

Retail therapy is the best! I try to do it in small doses, maybe $10 to $20 in a two-week period, as opposed to one big binge. That way I can spread out the therapy as I need it instead of waiting till I'm ready to burst.

The next thing I'd really like to get myself is an aloe vera plant. I got some herb seeds for Xmas, but I'm not doing so well at cultivating them, I don't think.

And the Simpsons Monopoly is FUN!!