A Full Belly

Climbing the Mango Trees

I received a copy of Madhur Jaffrey's newly published memoir of her childhood in India, Climbing the Mango Trees, just before I left for a long weekend visit to New York City. Perfect timing! Getting lost in a good book is my favorite way to pass the time on a cross-country flight. I started the book on my flight to New York, and finished it before we landed in San Francisco on my return flight.

Jaffrey is the author of several cookbooks, including An Invitation to Indian Cooking and World Vegetarian, as well as an award-winning actress. Her memoir is an enchanting story of growing up in India living amongst her extended family of 40, and embracing the multiculturalism of her family -- Hindu, Muslim, and British and at a time and place when this was most uncommon.

Of course, my favorite parts of the book revolve around Jaffrey's memories and descriptions of the food of her childhood. Her story about the Lady in White and daulat ki chaat is probably my favorite food memory of hers:

Yes, balanced there, on a round brass tray, were dozens of mutkainas, terra-cotta cups, filled with daulat ki chaat, which could be translated as “a snack of wealth.” Some cynic who assumed that all wealth was ephemeral must have named it. It was, indeed, the most ephemeral of fairy dishes, a frothy evanescence that disappeared as soon it touched the tongue, a winter specialty requiring dew as an ingredient. Whenever I asked the Lady in White how it was made, she would sigh a mysterious sigh and say, “Oh, child, I am one of the few women left in the whole city of Delhi who can make this. I am so old, and it is such hard work. What shall I tell you? I only go to all this trouble because I have served your grandmother from the time she lived in the Old City. First I take rich milk and add dried seafoam to it. Then I pour the mixture into nicely washed terra-cotta cups that I get directly from the potter. I have to climb up the stairs to the roof and leave the cups in the chill night air. Now, the most important element is the dew. If there is no dew, the froth will not form. If there is too much dew, that is also bad. The dew you have to leave to the gods. In the early morning, if the froth is good, I sprinkle the cups with a little sugar, a little khurchan [milk boiled down into thin, sweet, flaky sheets], and fine shavings of pistachios. That, I suppose, is it.” [read the rest of the excerpt]

I have to admit that I'd never heard of daulat ki chaat before this, and Jaffrey's magical description left me wondering if it actually exists and is prepared as described. A little googling confirms that this is indeeed a magical, legendary and rare treat: "Legend has it that the dish is perfect only when the moon is out and beaming its silver light on the world." Aside from this story, I was not able to find any more detailed instructions or recipes that'd allow me to attempt to create this sweet treat at home. Searching through my cookbook collection didn't turn up anything either. Anyone have any suggestions for tracking down a recipe, or better yet, know if it's served anywhere in the Bay area or NYC?

Madhur Jaffrey will be appearing this Saturday, October 14th at 2pm at Book Passage (Ferry Terminal Building, San Francisco). View a complete list of her upcoming appearances and events.

Summer Reading

Summer Books for food lovers [via Rebecca]

On my nightstand: The Omnivore's Dilemma (last chapter!), Pig Perfect, The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, and What to Eat.

What are you reading?

Batali, Bourdain and Buford, live at the NYPL

I had a great time seeing Mario Batali, Anthony Bourdain and Bill Buford chat at the NYPL last week—if you didn't get tickets before it sold out, don't blame me, 'cause it's not like I didn't tell you about it in advance. I wanted to write a long piece except that I was mostly too busy laughing to take lots of notes. $15 well spent! Here are four of the things I managed to scribble down that I think you'll appreciate:

• Batali, on Charlie Trotter's anti-foie gras stance: "At some point you have to realize you're on the top of the food chain, and that's all there is to it."
• Bourdain, on Rachel Ray: "40 dollars a day? Tip, bitch!"
• Audience: "Is [getting] fat an occupational hazard?" Bourdain: "They just don't smoke enough." (He should know, as he's supposed to smoke like a chimney and is a beanpole compared to the rotund Batali and Buford.)
• Audience: "What's your favorite fat to cook with?" Batali: "Lard, olive oil." Bourdain: "Pork."

My favorite discussion, i.e. the one that made me wish I was taping the entire thing, was Bourdain discussing the culinary tipping point he calls the "sushi barrier". He posted about it on eGullet early last year:

My theory, for some time, has been that the most significant point in modern North American culinary history was that moment when Westerners decided it was alright--even desirable--to eat sushi. That barrier-crossing raised all boats for all chefs of every stripe. Suddenly it was permissable to serve mackerel, octopus, fish roes, sardines and other traditional European seafood that were once largely shunned. What chefs found to be acceptable quality in seafood lept--as there was always a Japanese restaurant willing to pay for the good stuff (hence creating reliable demand for more variety and better quality). And once the bone-deep aversion to eating raw fish disappeared, other barriers fell as well. The dining public became more daring and willing to experiment.

Did you see the three Bs talk? Did you enjoy Bill Buford's new book Heat or Anthony Bourdain's latest The Nasty Bits? Let  us know in the comments!

kitchen secrets: bill buford with mario batali and anthony bourdain

New York City food nerds, alert! Mark June 21st off on your calendar and take out your credit card, you are about to buy a ticket to see former New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford talk at the NYPL with two of our most favorite chefs ever, Mario Batali and Anthony Bourdain, in the latest installment of the Kitchen Secrets series.

I haven't gotten around to reading Buford's new memoir Heat yet but now I'm definitely going to have to before the 21st, because parts of it detail how he came to quit his job at the New Yorker and start apprenticing at Babbo under Batali himself. As for Bourdain, not only is he Amazon's featured guest reviewer for Heat (subtitle: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany), but his latest book The Nasty Bits just came out two weeks ago, so I guess I'll be picking that up too—just as soon as I finish my current read which is, coincidentally enough, his infamous Kitchen Confidential.

P.S. Heat's been getting reviewed left and right, but here are two I particularly enjoyed reading: Will Work For Food (Julia Reed, NYT) and Eating Out (Jason Epstein, New York Review of Books). If you read only one, then for your own good choose the latter as Epstein does a marvelous job with Heat in the first part of the article and an even more spectacular one with Julia Child's My Life In France in the second!

Worth reading: The Omnivore's Dilemma

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michal Pollan. The title refers to "the quandary faced by animals like humans (and rats and cockroaches) that, in order to stay alive, must choose from the bewildering array of edible and non-edible substances. We can eat a lot, but what should we eat?" I've only just started reading the book, but my impression is that it's focused primarily on the American omnivore's dilemma.

• A couple of recent interviews: read Truthdig.com's excellent interview, listen to his interview on NPR.
• Pollan's speaking schedule
• Inspired to make a change? Take part in the upcoming Locavore's challenge to eat locally for a month.

chowhound guide to sf, put to the test

SF Dr. Strangebook, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Chowhound's Guide. SF Weekly's Meredith Brody takes a Chowhound's Guide to the SF Bay Area-inspired crawl around her city and is pleasantly surprised by how much she enjoys the food she discovers.

As she said, "If you love to eat (or, as the site is headed, For Those Who Live to Eat!), and reside in one of the geographic areas covered by chowhound.com's message boards, you'd be a fool not to check in to learn about what's going on in your local world of eating." Now that you know: don't be a fool!

SPAM-ku!

SPAM-ku is an archive of thousands upon thousands of haiku inspired by that that humble lunch meat we all know and love. It's been online for ten years, which probably means that cans of SPAM produced when it first went up are still sitting on people's shelves, ready and waiting to be opened and eaten. I particularly like this spam-ku by Froggie:

I envision a
world where all mankind shares SPAM
and none go without.

Beautiful! If that moved you, you might want to considering getting the companion book put together by Spam Haiku Archive Master John Nagamichi Cho, Spam-Ku: Tranquil Reflections on Luncheon Loaf.

The Wikipedia SPAM entry is short but makes for great reading: A Hormel official once stated that the original meaning of the name SPAM was "Shoulder of Pork And haM" —the SPAM Lite variety contains both pork and chicken. Other explanations of the origin of the term include the acronym "Specially Processed Assorted Meat","Spiced Pork And haM", "Specially Processed Army Meat", and "SPAre hAM"; there are also some less-than-serious explanations, such as "Synthetically Produced Artificial Meat" or "Stuff Posing As Meat". The current official expansion is the SP and AM were taken from "SPiced hAM" to win a $100 prize.

jim leff, chowhound

NYC We Pledge Allegiance. Jim Leff of Chowhound showed up at Coliseum Books to promote the new book, Chowhound's Guide to the Tri-State Area, in a dog mask to protect his identity. And how much do I love the pledge he asked the audience to take?

SF: Digital Dish Book Launch

This weekend while you're out and about at the farmer's market, don't miss the book launch of Digital Dish: The Freshest Recipes and Writing from Food Blogs Around the World, a compilation of food writing by food bloggers. Check it out this Saturday, May 21st at 11:30 a.m. at the Berkeley Farmer's Market at Center Ave and M. L. King Way in downtown Berkeley, two blocks from Berkeley BART station. Four of the authors who live in the Bay Area will talk about the book and do signings. The authors include:

Owen Linderholm at Tomatilla! - www.tomatilla.com, Stephanie Lucianovic at The Grub Report - www.grubreport.com, Ellen Ferlazzo at Chronicles of a Curious Cook - www.cheapcooking.com/blog and Guy Prince aka Dr. Biggles at Meathenge - www.meathenge.com.

Come stop by your local Farmer's Market, take a tour around the world of cooking from Singapore, Australia, France, Austria, England, Canada, the US and more. Find out about how to fry wine or create a traditional Singapore New Year's feast, throw a South African Braai or even what to do with Marmite! Get a copy of the book, buy some farm-fresh organic produce and give your cooking a jolt!

Sunday you can catch them at 4:00 p.m. at Lafayette Bookstore, 3579 Mt. Diablo Boulevard in downtown Lafayette.

Chowhound books

Chowhound announces the Chowhound Guidebooks for the NY Tristate area and San Francisco, out later this month.