How Does It Know?

Yesterday, having purchased a half gallon of whole milk for the express purpose of making paneer, I figured that I should actually do so, and so I did.

I had been a little intimidated by it at first, seeing as how you’re basically making a really simple cheese, and making cheese is supposed to be difficult, right? But in fact, it turned out being incredibly easy, and actually tasted like it was supposed to.

Basically, you bring the whole milk to a boil in a big pot, then take it off the heat and start adding vinegar (you can also use lemon juice or lime juice, or EVEN, I read somewhere, the whey (liquid) part of the milk from making your LAST batch of paneer, which seems kind of weird to me, but ok) a tablespoon at a time and stir the milk until it separates into solid and liquid. Then you line a colander with several layers of cheesecloth and pour your solid and liquid milk through it. The solids left behind in the cloth, squeeze it and get as much liquid out of it as you can. Then set something heavy like a bowl of water on top of it for a couple hours. Congratulations, the paneer is ready.

At this point, I refrigerated mine, as I didn’t feel like doing anything with it that night. But tonight, after a bike ride (which gave me a boost of energy, as well as made me hungry), I cut the whole paneer into “blocks” (the shapes are actually more odd, because the whole paneer isn’t exactly square in any way, but that gives it some of its charm, I think) and pan fried them. The horrible photo below illustrates:

Having tasted the paneer pan-fried, I deemed my paneer making a success. I almost don’t know how you could do it wrong though, because I was SURE I hadn’t gotten enough water out of it (i.e. it was still too damp), but it fried up very well and crispy. I ate it with spinach, rice and a bit of Patak’s rogan josh sauce I had. Totally worth the effort, and I still have two meals’ worth left that I’ve frozen.

I ran into this while taking a walk around the building I work in, in Detroit.

A couple weeks ago, I went out for Chinese with some people, and the conversation turned to how un-Chinese American Chinese food is. There were a couple of Chinese people in the group, and they confirmed what we all knew about American Chinese — it’s obviously been altered to suit American palates, and many of the dishes are completely invented “Chinese food”. I found this interview with New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee, where she answers questions about American vs. Chinese Chinese food that was pretty interesting.

Another thing that I’ve found happens a lot, and apparently Manish at Sepia Mutiny agrees, is that people not totally familiar with Indian food will refer to anything Indian as “curry”. Not everything is a curry, and there are different words for different styles of dishes, but I can understand why people wouldn’t necessarily know. Heck, I don’t always know what stuff is called “officially”… But I found that an interesting post as well, along with the comments people posted.

Got a strange fortune cookie this weekend at a place in Ann Arbor.

Sorry ladies, I’m yi jin jeh huan! Why is this a useful Chinese phrase? If I go to China, am I going to be bombarded with marriage proposals so numerous that knowing this phrase will be vital?

This one is strangely relevant to my week. Our fridge died and we lost all our food, but I did identify the issue (when the first serviceman was lousy and didn’t do anything), and brought the attention of a second serviceman (who was awesome) to it.

This was the part that got fried. It’s a starter relay.

After both suffering several days of bad illness (and still recovering), my wife and I decided to get some Vietnamese food at a place in Madison Heights she had been to a long time ago. We had tried Vietnamese at Annam, in Dearborn during the summer, and that was very good (I think my wife’s duck was better than whatever it was I had, because I can’t remember what I had). Anyway, Annam is sort of a high-end Vietnamese place with nice decor (but really spotty service). Today’s excursion was quite the opposite.

After seeing that the place we were actually headed to no longer existed, we saw a place called Que Huong right across the street (it seems that Madison Heights is somewhat of a “Vietnamtown” in the sense that it seems to have a lot of Vietnamese restaurants). A sign in the window advertised Vietnamese Sandwiches. The decor was more minimal than minimal. Bare white tile floor, a few tables, fluorescent lighting, a cheesy lighted display on the wall showcasing some of specialties, Vietnamese music videos on a small TV in the back (the music was mostly sappy sounding ballads sung by passionate young men). But the food was the focus, and the food was very good.

Wife ordered bun cha, a dish of grilled pork, rice noodles and fresh veggies, a dish we learned about from the Vietnam episode of No Reservations.

I opted for a more soupy dish; it too had bun in the name, but I can’t remember the whole thing (it was like 6 words, man). Anyway, it was a big bowl of a very delicious broth (see above pic, though the pic doesn’t make it look as appetizing as it actually was), the same rice noodles, thin slices of beef, green onions, and a side plate of fresh mint, bean sprouts, red cabbage and lime to add at your leisure. The broth was perfect, both savory and sour. The bowl did include something we found out to be “pork roll”* as well, but I didn’t like the consistency of those, so I took those out. But no big deal. The rest was excellent.

I also ordered a BBQ pork sandwich to go, which I just ate. It had BBQ pork, shredded carrot, a couple chilies, a slice of cucumber, on a French roll.** Very good.

* I really dislike things like pate or this so-called “pork roll”. It was sort of a reconstitued patty of meat that was ground finely. I want my meat to taste (and feel) like meat, not have the consistency of bologna.

** It is interesting what kind of influence the French had on Vietnam, culinarily (?) speaking, in that they have sandwiches, and they’re made on really good French bread.

Some guy’s interesting encounter with a menu offering Wikipedia as a food item.

As long as I’m talking food, I might as well say that we tried the Trader Joe’s Thai Red Curry simmer sauce, and it is really good. Has more of a spicy savory flavor to it than the Yellow Curry. I’m not sure which I like better, but I guess (due to having it twice) am leaning towards the yellow. So, if you haven’t been paying attention, it goes something like this:

Yellow >= Red > Green

I still have the Marsala, Korma and Punjab Spinach sauces to try. I tried the General Tso’s sauce (a very small amount drizzled on a chicken sandwich), which was very nice too, but I dunno if I’d want it slathered all over something. I think I’ll continue using it as a condiment in small amounts. But for now, we’re going to and buy up a bunch of the Red and Yellow sauces while we can, because Trader Joe’s tends to stop selling items based on whatever factors and has a constantly rotating inventory.

I don’t necessarily approve heartily of this one. It was a bit too subtle on the spiciness (and overall flavor) and over salty (which was the main flavor note I detected). It smelled really good while cooking, though it smelled like almost nothing when I sniffed the just-opened jar. I am really disappointed in foods that smell better than they taste (unless it’s bread, maybe….). I’m also not a big eater of Thai green curry (in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever ordered it), so maybe I’m not in tune with what green curry should be, but I do not believe I’ll be buying this one again.

Up next… Trader Joe’s Thai RED Curry Sauce!

Yes. I approve heartily.

It’s been a little over 3 months since we got back from India and my wife and I recently got a hankering for some of the dry snack foods we ate while we were there. I have known of these foods forever, but they were new to my wife, and her enthusiasm for and interest in them got me more into them as well. I sort of took them for granted, and often refused them when offered. But we recently took a trip to the nearest Patel Brothers Indian grocery store to see what we could find.

Pictured above was ghatiya, which is by far our favorite thing. I believe it’s made of chickpea (aka chana) flour (aka besan or gram flour). It’s got this really sort of bland flavor at first but then the genius of it hits you and it’s really addictive. Whatever mix of spices they put in it kind of takes a bit to be noticed and it’s kind of earthy, salty and spicy. Good stuff.

We also got some stuff called Bombay Mix, which is a combination of sev, lentils and some other types of dried things. I was pretty disappointed with the brand we got. I didn’t think anything in the Indian snack food genre could be so bland and tasteless. There was nothing about it I liked. I’ll probably end up throwing the rest of it away. I’m pretty sure Bombay Mix (or chevda) isn’t supposed to be like that.

Khakra was another thing we got. These are thin flat crispy versions of rotis or parathas basically. We got the methi (aka fenugreek) version, and they’re very good. These too are very addictive. The methi is a great flavor, kind of bitter, but the saltiness of khakra offsets it.

We also got Haldiram’s dried moong dal, which is dry, salted, spiced lentils. I really like these, D doesn’t really. Or she’s not sure yet. This is eaten in a bowl with a spoon and I’ve had a few small cups so far and enjoyed it. Can’t find a link to this one.

We also got a can of gulab jamun, which I am not a huge fan of, but D is. She says it’s OK, but not as good as having it fresh at a restaurant. I think I agree, though I’ve only had a bit of this. Since I’m not a huge fan. Overall, I’m not really a big fan of any Indian sweets, but end up eating them a lot of time due to the nature of the sweets in Hindu culture (often used in temple activites).

In other Indian food shout-outs, we also tried Swad’s frozen malai kofta, which was really really good! It was creamy and had the right consistency and flavor. I went into it expecting nothing special, but I was surprised. This was accompanied by some frozen paratha (the maker of which I have forgotten, maybe it was Swad) that was really easy to make (heat in hot skillet, flipping every so often, for 5-6 minutes) and came out almost restaurant quality. That entire meal was great and will cause us to explore the frozen foods section of the store some more next time we go.

So yesterday, I was lighting up the grill to grill up some chicken and sundried tomato sausages from Trader Joe’s*. We have a gas grill, so I turned on the gas valve at the tank as usual, and turned on the gas on the grill control knob. The electric starter doesn’t work anymore, so we light it with long wooden matches. So I did that as usual, and the flame LEAPT up in a giant ball and singed me! It was freaky. It was just a split second and I didn’t think anything had happened. But then I eventually looked down at my hand and the hair near my wrist was half white… I brushed it and the bits fell off. I realized I had been singed by the flame and ran inside to check my face. It actually got a bit of my beard on the chin and got my eyelash tips (despite my glasses). But luckily, there was no permanent disfigurement or anything, and you can’t really tell anything happened. I’m not sure why the grill did that this time when normally it just lights. Now I’m going to be kind of scared to use it again…

There are some photos of the last show at Jacoby’s at the Low Hello website.

Well, it’s time for bed. Tomorrow’s work. I would like a week where I just hang out at home. I’ve never really done that as a vacation. If I’m taking prolonged periods of time off, it’s always for a trip. I wonder if I’d have fun at home for a week. Or if I’d get bored. It certainly would be conducive to working on the solo EP. Anyway.

* As far as the sausages are concerned, I wasn’t thrilled with them. I was really hoping for a much more seasoned, flavorful sausage, with a stronger sundried tomato taste. But really they were mainly plain chickeny tasting, which was disappointing. I put ketchup on them and they still weren’t as satisfying as a good Hebrew National hot dog.