No simulacrum, but instead the thing itself. I mean, not anything that Bittman’s diet would tolerate, with their composition consisting almost completely of butter and cheese. But it’s a pretty wonderful use of butter and cheese.
The cheese straws, on the other hand?
I don’t think we can blame Bittman for the MSG headache this soup inflicts, after all, the ham bone was “optional.” And I can certainly tip my hat to tossing a few fresh peas and a handful mint into the mush. Brilliant.
Still, we’ve dubbed this Baudrillard’s Pea Soup. That is, this, like other recipes in the Bittman book, it was written for people for whom a simulacrum is good enough. While the ham was painful, the soup would have been dreadfully soulless if made with only frizzled ham on top.
Thanksgiving ham bone.
And birthday dessert. A rice pudding the non-birthday chef didn’t hate. Caramelized apples make anything yummy.
And dinner.
That said, it’s still a little hit-or-miss. The green bell curry that promised to be crisp and golden, wasn’t. Still, delicious.
While the lamb simmers, curried turnips await the plate.
Pant’s adorable Phaidon-published book (its cover mimics a burlap bag of rice) — with its dull newsprint paper, color-coded chapters, warmly lit photos, and comprehensive representations of India’s food regions — is the Indian cookbook I’ve been searching for for the past ten years. Three far inferior books have been demoted to make room on the permanent shelves.
Which makes this Phaidon book a bit of an anomaly, at least in our experience. Last year’s Coco was lush but unusable and this year’s What to Cook & How to Cook It is a study in great design, but its recipes can’t compete.
Even if the cook does have to make the executive decision to slice the turnips, rather than tossing three turnips, whole, into curry,
Despite reservations, 1 c. yogurt provided plenty of liquid (once all the lovely fat slowly melted from the lamb chops).
Indian recipes tend to use a generous dose of oil. To be fair, Pant gives cooks permission to lighten things up, and this 1/2 c. of oil can easily become 2 tbs (assuming you’ve left the lovely lamb fat untouched).
As with any multi-course Indian meal, careful prep is key. And it’s pretty.
These cauliflower fritters (romanesco, actually) were damn near perfect — once we bumped the frying temp by 25 degrees and doubled the spice.
While the raita chills, the Poongobi Pakora roils.
Birthday season is upon us and nothing says birthday like a birthday Mooli ka Raita. Although the recipe calls for a mooli (daikon radish) we had a nice supply of local radishes and went with those.
Happy birthday (two weeks later), m’dear.
Maybe the best example of this comes in the cooking instructions for the potatoes: one is told to boil them until they show crystals when broken apart.
That’s right. Potato crystals.
Likewise, the gnocchi: a relatively basic recipe, maybe just a little softer than I’m used to when they’re ready to shape, but a recipe clearly so well-tested that all of its quirks (kneading the dough!) are justified, explained, and they all work.
