I recently discovered a great Indian restaurant in Santiago. Really good.
soulofindia.cl/
I just watched the news. The b***** thing is on fire.
There is no justice.
www.soychile.cl/Santiago/Policial/2014/12/22/295000/Incendio-afecta-a-un-restaurante-en-Vitacura.aspx
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Perhaps the food was a little too hot!?
I'll get my coat!
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I've already got it. I'll pass it to you as you leave.
That black smokey thing is the door.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Mon 22 Dec 14 at 23:44
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>> Hard luck FMR. Good ones are hard to find, even in Sussex. Even in London actually as feverish waves of crazed Indian and Pakistani aspirational but self-confident capitalism ripple across the metropolis. Good one week, twice the price and crap the next... You have to be in luck.
The best curry I ever smelt was the servants' food in 1940s Ceylon. They were kind and would have given me some, but I was forbidden to taste it on some specious grounds... 'They're poor, they can't afford it', some crap like that.
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Condolences Mark, access to a good indian restaurant is an essential for me !
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>>The best curry I ever smelt was the servants' food in 1940s Ceylon.
Probably because the spices had been hand ground. Most of our workers and servants were Tamils and a curry tiffin began with the disbursement of about 2p to the gardener's wife, who would procure the spices and spend two or three hours patiently grinding them on a dished granite slab, with a tapered granite roller and latterly with a little oil. The result would be four or five balls of differently coloured putty, later broken up and stirred in the different dishes planned by the cook.
An outcome is that we cannot abide the bland stuff sold in UK Indian restaurants.
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>> Probably because the spices had been hand ground.
I don't think so. If they were, the spices in our food were hand-ground too (although actually 'Patak's mixture' could be obtained even there and even then), but the proportions and quantities were different and smaller. The shopping for the whole household was done mainly by the cook, although there was a shop down town, Elephant House, where the British mothers used to go for coffee and to buy boring English biscuits and European foodstuffs. The place also sold school clothing, but the best thing about it was that one could get real US-style ice cream sodas there, with a long spoon and two straws.
But the chaps out back undoubtedly had the best food in our house. Ours was toned down.
Something similar happened to me in adult life in Calabar in Nigeria, where I was staying in a friend's bodyguard's grandmother's house for a day or two. They eat snails in Eastern Nigeria, and the old lady had kindly made me a special snail soup with hardly any pepper in it, believing the English couldn't cope with proper hot food. You can imagine what that was like, having to pretend to be pleased and eat as much of it as I could. I don't mind snails in moderation, but they need pepper (or if in France, a lot of garlic).
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Thu 25 Dec 14 at 12:33
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>> Ugh !
It's OK Ted, don't fret. The snails they eat in West Africa aren't those hopeless ornate insubstantial tasteless little escargot things. They're proper big, meaty, chewy snails, better suited to very hot pepper and a bit of chopped raw onion than that effete continental garlic stuff. You'd love them.
:o}
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Fri 26 Dec 14 at 02:00
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I sold Giant African Land Snails as pets. Should have sold them as food.
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The edible ones are more like big European snails, not those 1lb. giant ones (I've never seen one of those that I can remember).
Once fried, snails keep very well. Flew back from Africa one time next to a Ghanaian couple carrying a big thick polythene bag containing several kilos of them. When I foolishly blabbed that I'd eaten the odd snail in my time, they insisted of course on making me sample them. Very tough and chewy... not very tasty without pepper and so on, but you can tell they're nutritious.
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Reminds me of a good friend of mine, a true French eccentric; during a phone conversation he mentioned that it was his birthday the following day and that his English wife was cooking him his favourite escargots in garlic.
Never having tried them, I was naturally curious and asked him what they tasted of.
Silence for a moment (you could almost imagine the Gallic shrug) and then he simply said, "..... Garlic".
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That's really bad luck, NoFM. Looked it up and it seems like a nice place.
I was surprised by the general lack of heat in Chileno food; thought there'd be more chillis in Chile. Lots of maize, though, including kernels done two ways - poached and toasted - in the same bowl of ceviche. Liked that a lot.
I don't generally spend long enough abroad on one trip to miss Indian food, but I can see how you must. It's always interesting, though, to go along with the locals who want to show me their favourite Indian restaurant and get my opinion on how it compares with the real thing (!) back home. Nice one in Atlanta recently; several iffy ones elsewhere.
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Chilean food is full of spices - but they're aimed at flavour, not heat.
However, *all* restaurants keep supplies of really good fresh chilli peppers and chilli sauce (aji). Its always there for the asking.
And I'm eating homemade ceviche right now. Yum yum.
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On more serious subjects.... - zippy
