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| 5 Spices, 50 Dishes Wrap-Up |
| m-c: |
| February's coming to an end, so let's look back at 5 Spices, 50 Dishes. I feel bad because I was away from my kitchen for 10 days, and you were away for a week, so we didn't get as much chance as we would have liked to cook lots of recipes from the book. |
| On the other hand, almost all the ones I did cook were hands-down As, so I feel confident in recommending the book to anyone who's interested in solid, tasty dishes regardless of whether they're Indian or not. |
| 5 Spices, 50 Dishes feels to me like American cooking at its best -- intelligent about its ethnic past but forging ahead into a post-ethnic, rainbow-hued future. |
| mb: |
| Yeah, I'm afraid that this lovely and wonderful book didn't truly get the chance it deserved, what with us being away for so long. But I definitely agree with you that everything I cooked from it was fabulously delicious. I can't wait to cook more! |
| And what an awesome description of the book! "Rainbow-hued future" ... I like that! |
| m-c: |
| All the dishes I tried were so carefully thought out that I had trouble figuring out ways to change them. |
| I don't know if you noticed, but the only improvement I could figure out for several of them was to change from oil to butter. Brown butter would make moldy earthworms taste better, so of course it worked, but I worried that it made the recipes less healthy. I don't know what to think about a Tablespoon of brown butter versus a Tablespoon of plant oil -- OK? Terrible? Just don't do it every day, I decided. |
| mb: |
| I had a problem with the fact that she always calls for canola oil, which is just fat with no flavor. I used ghee in all the recipes because I wanted the flavor that came with it, not just the fat itself. |
| m-c: |
| Did you try other recipes than the ones you reported on? |
| mb: |
| I did, but only a couple. The spicy seared shrimp were so amazingly delicious that J instantly informed me they had to become part of my repertoire of oft-repeated recipes. And I made chapathi using her recipe -- so easy! |
| Just to prove how much I like the book, for dinner tomorrow we're having the creamed farmer's greens (on your recommendation) and the masala omelet. I can't wait! |
| m-c: |
| I was sorry there were no alteRations (except for scaling) that I could point to for the two dessert recipes I tried, the dessert yogurt and the pumpkin pudding. They were both outstanding and not so teeth‑crushingly sweet as many Indian desserts. |
| The desserts are bonus recipes, above and beyond the basic fifty, and as bonuses they use three more spices than the basic five -- cardamom, nutmeg, and saffron. They also use nuts, pistachios for the yogurt and cashews for the pumpkin. Both go well with fruit, so I now consider them full members in my Fruit Plus a Bribe repertoire. |
| I'm also planning to make the almond-rosewater tea cake some time soon, but I need to wait till I have company for supper. The recipe serves 8, and I don't believe in more than halving or doubling recipes for baked goods. |
| mb: |
| Indian desserts are always too sweet for me (which is saying something), so I'm intrigued by the idea of ones that aren't. I'll have to try them. |
| m-c: |
| I also made the railway potatoes, the cabbage stir-fry, the shredded cabbage salad -- oh! and yes, those creamed farmer greens, which are to die for. The Punjabi beans were great, and we really enjoyed the turkey rice pilaf. (Ruta mentioned that the original was made with goat, so I reverted to the goat in my version, but I'm sure it's good made with turkey too.) |
| Another recipe that will have a big influence on me for years to come is the Marathi yellow fried rice. I make a traditional Sino-American fried rice fairly often, but I had never thought of adapting it to other cuisines. Ruta's Indian-American fried rice has inspired me. Why not Czech-American fried rice? Why not Brazilian-American? Rices of the world, take heed, there's a new paradigm in town. |
| The only recipe that didn't pan out for me was the intriguingly named thalipeeth, a sort of cucumber pancake. I should get Mark to try making it -- he's the czar of flat things in our family. |
| mb: |
| I'm not sure how I feel about Czech fried rice, but the cucumber pancake sounds awesome, especially if made by the pancake master! |
| m-c: |
The index is surprisingly good. After a whole month of working the
cookbook over, I have only five additional index entries:
|
| What did you think of Susie Cushner's photography? It's a lot different from some of our favorites -- how would you describe it? |
| mb: |
| I thought the photography was good, though you're correct in saying that it's different from our favorites. Cushner's pictures seem to me to be more utilitarian somehow. It's like she wants to really present you with the food, without caring so much about the art of food-photography. It's hard for me to get too excited about the pictures of the food if they aren't also jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Who knows, maybe that was her intention? Put the focus on the food, not the photo? I mean, I sure as hell want to cook every dish that had its photo in the book! |
| m-c: |
| Book Nerd Alert, Book Nerd Alert: Do not read further in this turn of m-c's if you loathe and fear book nerdities. |
| I did want to mention a strange feature of Benjamin Shaykin's book design. Every chapter begins with a beautiful two-page spread of abstract circle design. Then the next page, i.e. the left-hand page of the next two, has the introduction for the chapter, and the page after that, the right-hand page, usually has the first recipe in the chapter. As a result, the very earliest recipe in any given chapter that can have a photograph is recipe #2. |
| In chapter 8, the one on sweets, Shaykin puts a photograph on the right-hand page opposite the chapter introduction. I'm surprised that he used that tactic on only one chapter. |
| Meanwhile, in chapter 1, recipe #1 takes up more than a page, so the earliest we could get a photograph would be recipe #3 -- but instead we get recipes #3 and #4 also without photographs. If I were in charge of producing the book, I wouldn't have let the first 6 pages of the first chapter pass without even one photograph. |
| mb: |
| I, of course, didn't even notice that. But now that you mention it, it does seem strange that he wouldn't have done the same thing in every chapter. |
| mb: |
| How about other books along the same lines? Any recommendations? |
| m-c: |
| I know this will surprise you, but I'm enthusiastic about Raghavan Iyer's Betty Crocker's Indian Home Cooking (Wiley, 2001). The Betty Crocker folks have started doing some cookbooks for serious cooks, and this one is a winner. |
| For a take on a different ethnic-American cuisine, try Nancy Verde Barr's We Called It Macaroni: An American Heritage of Southern Italian Cooking (Knopf, 1991). |
Questions? Comments? Corrections?
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