Mmmm… my friend Cindy and I went out to dinner tonight, to an Indian place I’d heard was “the best in Austin.” I’d heard it, as I mentioned in this post, from a stranger who was sitting behind me on a plane – some random guy I never even bothered to turn around and glance at. For all I knew, he was wearing a big plastic button that said, “I have horrible taste in Indian food.” But I decided to go with his suggestion anyway. And fortunately for us, he must not have been wearing that button – because dinner was gooooood. I think I can still smell curry in my hair… mmmm… curry hair…
After perusing the extensive menu full of barely-pronounceable items (did I want to try the tandoori subjiyon ki numaish or the khuroos-e-tursh? Well, maybe, but could I get a side of phonetic pronunciation with those? I’m such a stupid monolingual American…) we decided on something with a decidedly exotic-sounding moniker: “dinner for two.” This was a great way to try several different dishes at one time – a good thing, if, like me, you look at the menu at an Indian restaurant and see about twenty different things you want to try (I really WOULD like to try the tandoori subjiyon ki numaish and the khuroos-e-tursh… if I go back to the restaurant some day, I’ll just have to point to the entrée of my choice and offer up a horribly mangled version of its proper name…).
With our dinner for two, we were able to try vegetable samosas (gosh, I love samosas… I could eat samosas all day…), a plate of tandoori chicken, salmon tikka and tandoori prawn (I, of course, only tried the chicken and left the seafood for Cindy… I don’t care how spicy it is, it’s still seafood… :)), plus lamb korma, saag paneer, and chicken tikka masala. And it all came with rice and onion kulcha (which was a reeeeeaaaaallly yummy bread… much too yummy… it must’ve been really bad for us…). I think the saag paneer was my favorite… who knew something so goopy, green and lumpy could taste so darn good? Green, lumpy, cheese-filled goop of the gods…
Dessert was included with this whole thing (Cindy took about half of our dinner home – there was just no way we could eat all of that…). We were given a choice between two equally interesting-sounding desserts, so we got one of each and split them. The first was some sort of cottage cheese-type curdy thing with nuts (that sounds rather unappetizing, and I honestly don’t know what I was eating – but it was actually surprisingly good…). And the second was a mango “ice cream” which was also good – but Cindy and I spent several seconds attempting to discern what sort of ingredients had been blended into the dessert. It was frozen, yes – but it was also much less sweet and much more starchy than any ice cream you’d find at the grocery store. (And what’s funny is that now I’m watching “Bizarre Foods” on the travel channel, where the host’s motto is “if it looks good, eat it”… everything looked really good tonight. Everything except the fish…)
So all in all, we really enjoyed our dinner, and I have to send a shout out to that strange guy on the plane who unknowingly recommended it to me. (Thanks, strange guy on the plane who’ll never read my blog!) After our dinner, Cindy and I were wondering why “American” food is so bland compared to foods from other parts of the world. We decided it must be because America is a relatively young country, and by the time it got around to creating its “own” culinary identity, all the cool spices had been used by other countries. So American food is just food from other countries with all the spices removed. And then probably deep fried. If you took away all the interesting ingredients from my dinner tonight, you’d be left with plain old chicken, with some cheese and bread on the side. Fry it up and you have chicken fingers, cheese sticks and pancakes. American food at its best.
I mentioned to Cindy that I LOVE the smell of curry, and will occasionally open the jars I have in my spice cupboard just to take a whiff of their spicy aromas. She thought that was rather amusing, and insisted I mention it in my blog. :) And now I’m off to bed, to see if I have “curry dreams” as Eric swears he has every time he eats Indian food. But I think maybe Eric is just weird…
2 comments:
I've actually been thinking about why Scandinavian food is so bland. A friend was telling me that they have a Norwegian friend who had only had shrimp boiled in seawater all her life and came to the U.S. and was in ectasy over all the ways to eat shrimp! So it occurred to me that I learned in one of my archaeology classes at U.T. that spices are used alot in cultures where meat is often "less than fresh" to cover up the less than fresh taste. Think about it, how often does meat spoil in Norway? And in case you're worried it will spoil, they pickle it in lye and salt... yum!
Eeeewwww... I can't believe I'm actually part Swedish, what with my fish hatred. I was watching Samantha Brown on the travel channel, and she was in Stockholm, and she bought herring from a street stand. Apparently herring is "street food" in Sweden. But even if I LIKED fish, I'm not sure I'd eat it from a stand on the street... and I definitely wouldn't eat it if it was pickled in lye and salt... :)
Post a Comment