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[Suresh Hinduja]

Madhur Jaffrey Made Honorary Commander of the British Empire

05 Nov 2004,
Madhur Jaffrey, the award-winning actress and leading international authority on Indian cooking, was today awarded an honorary CBE in a ceremony at the British Embassy in Washington.

The award is in recognition of her services to cultural relations between the United Kingdom, India and the United States, through her achievements in film, television and cookery.

With a remarkably varied stage and screen career spanning four decades, Miss Jaffrey has been described as "one of the great actresses of her generation."

As author of more than a dozen books and the presenter of three BBC cookery series, her writing and television work on Indian cooking over the past three decades changed the culinary landscape in Britain. Her books have also become best sellers in the United States where she has been honored for introducing the delights of Indian food to the American palate.

Conferring her honor at a ceremony today, British Ambassador Sir David Manning described Miss Jaffrey as "a celebrated international figure whose influence has spread across the globe." She is both a remarkable actress and a cookery writer who has changed the way many in the UK, and more widely, think about cuisine.

"Her combination of warmth, imagination and talent are very rare, and have earned her enormous admiration and popularity."

The New York Times once described Miss Jaffrey's classic, An Invitation to Indian Cooking, published in 1973, as "one of the finest, most lucid and comprehensive books on Indian cooking ever published." It remains in print today. In 1994, A Taste of the Far East won the James Beard Foundation's "Best International Cook Book," as did her latest title, From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes From the Indian Spice Trail. Published in the UK under the name The Ultimate Curry Bible, this latest title also won this year's Guild of Food Writers "Cookery Book of the Year" award in England.

Other books include the best-selling Madhur Jaffrey's World of the Far East Vegetarian Cooking, and Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking and Far Eastern Cookery, both companions to popular BBC cooking series that have also aired in the United States.

Miss Jaffrey, a New Yorker, is food consultant at the city's Dawat Restaurant, and has written extensively on food for publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Saveur and Gourmet.

In 1991, she was honored by New York magazine as among ten people -- "chefs, teachers and food writers who tune our palates" -- responsible for changing the way New York eats. In 1998, she won the Silver Spoon award given by Food Arts magazine for her contribution to popularizing Indian food in America.

[Suresh Hinduja]

Marriages and social events in Jammu and Kashmir may have to do without the mouth-watering Wazwan cuisine

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“No chef shall cook for any marriage, engagement ceremony and official or non-official get-together till the government rescinds the controversial guest control order,” said Haji Gulam Nabi, president of the chefs’ union.

[Suresh Hinduja]

Fasting & feasting in Old Delhi

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But the best of iftaar feasting is at Jama Masjid and its bylanes. Karim’s at Jama Masjid offers the most exciting pre-dawn dishes like nahari—boneless mutton cooked night long, Ishtoo (stew) or Murgh Jahangiri. Grilled delicacies like chicken changezi, shami kabab, naan and nargisi koftey are very popular too.

[Suresh Hinduja]

Fashion and food come together

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Rodricks, now a byword in the land of fashion, is not entirely a novice in the kitchen. “I am a graduate from Catering College, Dadar, Mumbai and have worked in the kitchen in hotels in India and the Middle East before becoming a fashion designer.”

[Suresh Hinduja]

World's costliest giant truffle destroyed in fridge!:
                           or
The truffles I have seen!
London, Dec 9 : Fame undoubtedly has its own pitfalls. This was proved when the world's most expensive truffle, weighing 21b, was declared inedible after being on display for too long.

According to The Telegraph, the giant white truffle was excavated from the hills of Tuscany and sold for 28,000 pounds to the Zafferano restaurant.

"This was the Pope of all truffles. We did not intend to keep it on display as long as we did but people insisted on seeing it," lamented Enzo Cassini, the manager of the Knightsbridge restaurant Zafferano, which organised the sale of the truffle for charity.

The truffle was then put on display for a week, after which it was placed in a safe in the restaurant's fridge.

"We use the safe for truffles because they are such an expensive ingredient. The chef went away and took the key. When we got it back it was too late," revealed Cassini.

Cassini said that the chef, Andy Needham, had now buried the truffle in his back garden with full honours.

"If I was a truffle, I would be happy to have been dug out of the ground, made famous then returned to the ground," the report quoted Cassini as saying.

[Suresh Hinduja]

Sushi please!

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Apart from being the flavour of the season with the movers and shakers of the city, sushi is also becoming popular among the masses. "There is a constant increase in the demand of this delicacy. Not only in restaurants, but also at parties," reveals caterer Farrokh Khambata. "In fact, sushi bars at marriage functions and private parties are now regular. Pastas are passe, sushi is in," he says adding that sales have more than doubled since the last year.

[Tomato]

[url="http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050201/asp/calcutta/story_4282817.asp"]wedding food[/url][quote]Several weddings, and a city agog. Calcutta over the weekend resembled one big shaadi bari, with the large Marwari community leading from the front. As star hotels and big bungalows host some high-voltage weddings[/quote][QUOTE]

[Suresh Hinduja]

Another mention of the Hindusthan Coffee House as the first Indian restaurant in UK. British "curry" to get a Bollywood makeover

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Britain has come a long way since its first Indian restaurant, the Hindustani Coffee House, opened in 1809 and now a former chief executive of a famous fish and chip shop chain and a famed Bollywood songstress believe it is time to take the next step in the Indian food evolution

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Britain's Food Standards Agency said in its 2003 "Curry Factfile" that 2.5 million consumers tuck into "an Indian" every week and that the industy as a whole is worth some 3.2 billion pounds ($5.96 billion).

Some 23 million portions of chicken tikka masala are eaten each year and it is estimated there are more Indian restaurants in London than in Delhi and Bombay.

[Suresh Hinduja]

Best US Chocolate For The Buck ?

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Three Forbes-employed testers spent an hour tasting their contents, both milk and dark pieces ranging from truffles to filled chocolates. We rated each piece for flavor, texture and presentation, using a scale of one to five

[Tomato]

Kung Hai Fat Choi in Bombay

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* The first Chinese, groups of Cantonese workers, came to Bombay in the early 1800s on East India Company ships. Their silk made its way to mills in Parel and Byculla
* Bombay’s 1826 census shows 37 Chinese families—almost all living in Girgaum. By the 1880s, when the administration was relocating city cemeteries to distant, muddy Antop Hill, the Chinese community was allotted a burial ground

[Tomato]

The tiffinwallis of Mumbai

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Much has been documented by the media about Mumbai's 5,000-strong dabbawallas — the men who deliver home-cooked lunch to about 2 lakh office goers on each working day. But precious little has been written about the many women who cook the "homemade lunch" consumed by thousands of working women and men in the metropolis.

and back to the dabbawallas of Mumbai:

Dabbawallas to send gift for Prince Charles’ wedding
Feb 14: The ‘dabbawallas’ from the metropolis have decided to send gifts to Prince Charles on his wedding scheduled for April 8.

Tiffin Box Suppliers’ Association president, Mr Raghunath Medge said:
"We have decided to send the bride Camilla Parker Bowles a Kolhapuri navari (nine yards) saree and a blouse and a Maharashtrian pheta turban for Prince Charles"  

"It is a mark of our respect for Prince Charles, whom we love and have great regards for. Though so many big people have come to Mumbai, only Prince Charles took the time to meet and inquire about us during his visit last year to the city"

"We plan to buy all the things today evening from a shop at Andheri and then we would be sending it across to the Prince through a courier," he said adding they were also planning to send green glass bangles as they were auspicious but said a final decision has not been taken.

Around 5,000 dabbawallas have pooled in contributions ranging from Rs 10 to 25 for the gifts. "It is not possible to collect the money from all the dabbawallas but we will get contributions from as many people as possible,"

When Prince of Wales Charles visited Mumbai last year he had taken time to meet and struck a friendly chord with the the dabbawallas.

Mr Medge said it would not be possible for anyone of us to attend the marriage but we would be showing our affection to the Prince by sending our present.

Well, as usual I'm volunteering to go and deliver it in person.

[Suresh Hinduja]

Press release :

               India Stars in Sweden!
The “ 10th Gourmand World Cookbook Awards” took place on
February 11 in Sweden, with 402 attendees from 30 countries. At the Awards Ceremony followed by a Gala Banquet :

“Rude Food, The Collective Food Writings of Vir Sanghvi” received the award for “Best Food Literature Book in the
World”. The Jury selected the book for his deep knowledge, research, style and sense of humour.

"Vir Sanghvi can be compared to the best food writers in the
world, such as Jeffrey Steingarten from the USA."

It is interesting to notice that there is a general shift of the winds of food culture from the West, Europe and America, to the East and Asia. There have been important winners in the past from India such as Nita Mehta for “Flavours of Indian Cooking” published by Snab, winner in 1999 at our Versailles event in France, and Asha Khatau, for “Vegetarian Cuisines of the World”, published by Zaika, winner in 2001 at Sorges, Dordogne, in France.

About the “Gourmand World Cookbook Awards”

The awards are the “Oscars” of the food and wine world. They
were created at the Frankfurt Book Fair 10 years ago to reward those who “cook and drink with words”, and promote the international food book business. There are now 24.000 cookbooks published every year, which is the double of 1994. Growth has been steady ever the past 10 years, pulled by the numerous new television food shows around the world. In contrast, the general book market has been stagnant with
very small growth.

The founder and president of the awards Edouard Cointreau
was born in the families of Cointreau liqueur, and Remy Martin and Frapin cognacs. His family has had vineyards since 1270, and the famous french writer of the 16th century, Rabelais, son of a Frapin, is an ancestor.

The “Gourmand World Cookbook Awards” now receive approximately 5000 books from 67 countries for the competition each year. There are 34 categories for “Best in the World” cookbooks, and 14 for “Best in the World” wine books.

In a good book, the personality of the author is reflected throughout the book. Finally, it is style that makes all the difference, and the winner.

[Tomato]

Hillary on an India-visit...Sant Chatwal, New York hotelier and the Clintons' family buddy profiles his 'ardent Indophile' friend for Delhi Times

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But Hillary has a bigger fetish. She loves Indian food. I know she'll only have Indian meals while she's here. Her favourite dishes are chicken keema, saag paneer, reshmi kebabs and rasmalai ...

[Suresh Hinduja]

Chinese is the preferred food in Kolkata

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But Bengali cuisine is also stepping out of the kitchen; it is third on the list of favourites (after Chinese and South Indian cuisines) as more and more people are now preferring daab chingri and ilish bhapa at fancy restaurants as well.

[Suresh Hinduja]

Steamed fish custards

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Which brings us to the third comparable dish — dab chingri. It’s one of the few dishes in Indian cookery that is baked inside the shell of a tender coconut. It’s one of the even fewer dishes that is yellow coloured without the use of haldi.

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“Isn’t pootu of Kerala steamed in a bamboo?” they’ve challenged. However, I’m not budging from my view. If chingri malai curry was originally chingri Malay curry, according to Pallavi Thakur Bose of Delhi’s Chowringhee restaurant, can’t dab chingri have come to Bengal from much further east? At least, that’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it.

It's a logical extension to use the coconut as a serving dish, so why split hairs(or husk) over who did it first.

[Tomato]

Mark Knopfler and Sachin Tendulkar

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"I'll not waste my time or yours trying to describe how it looked, tasted and smelled but some of what we had was tandoori salmon, tandoori chicken, sag, dal, lamb shank curry, prawn curry, a variety of Indian breads including a naan with green onions and cheese in it, rice pudding with a leaf of silver paper, apricot pudding and still more, all washed down with cold Kingfisher beers, one of the local brews," Bennett wrote.

[Suresh Hinduja]

A sumptuous feast called life

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Our lives straddled two cultures — both eastern and western — and it was easy to move from one to the other without any effort at all. This was specially marked in the matter of cuisine. There was always a Brahmin Oriya cook to prepare our lunch and for dinner it was invariably a Christian chef, familiar with roasts, savouries and delicate puddings.

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One had a prodigious capacity for consuming food and our Bengali lunches ran to more than four or five courses, beginning with shukto and ending with alubakhrar chutney. My grandmother was fussy about what she ate and if there was a slight variation in the quality of cooking, there would be #### to pay. A meal was meant to be savoured in a dignified way without any threatening deadlines hovering in the background.

[Suresh Hinduja]

A CRAVING FOR SHUKTO LEADS TO THE FIRST STUDY OF MEALS IN BENGALI-AMERICAN HOUSEHOLDS

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Moving to America, I thought I had escaped the accusing stare of the beady-eyed rui. And then I find myself in an Asian fishmarket in San Francisco staring nostalgically at piles of silvery fish. “We grew up in communities of taste,” says Prof. Krishnendu Ray. “It is subconsciously embedded.” In the act of migration, that community of taste is suddenly lost.

[Suresh Hinduja]

Unraveling the Mystery of Modern Potatoes' Origins


When it comes to veggies, almost everyone can agree on potatoes. But despite its popularity, the common brown potato has a colorful history that some researchers are still disputing.

While potatoes are believed to have arrived in Europe in the 1500s from the South American Andes, Agricultural Research Service botanist David M. Spooner has uncovered DNA evidence showing that early potatoes also came from South America's southwestern coast, in lowland Chile.

From outward appearances, modern potatoes would seem to have Chilean ancestors. European potato plants have wide leaflets like Chilean ones, and both are "long-day adapted," which means they require the longer days of summer to form tubers.

But in the 1930s, researchers started challenging the notion of the Chilean connection, arguing that the first potatoes to reach Europe came only from the Andes. They claimed Chilean potatoes couldn't have survived the long journey from their native country, down through the Straits of Magellan and across the Atlantic.  

According to Spooner, who works in the ARS Vegetable Crops Research Unit at Madison, Wis., potato seeds can last several years and so could have easily survived the trip. But even more compelling are data he recently assessed with colleagues at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru, and the Central Potato Research Institute in Shimla, India.  

The researchers surveyed an assortment of potatoes from India considered to be remnants of some of the first potatoes to Europe. They found that these descendants share specific molecular traits with potatoes from Chile--not the Andes.

According to Indian food historian - K T Achaya, early accounts of potatoes may actually have been the sweet potato which is called Batata in south American languages. The English were the first to accept the Potato followed by the Muslims.

Still, some argue that Chilean potatoes weren't introduced to Europe until after the famous 1840s Irish potato famine, to rescue the crop from the rot-causing late blight fungus. But, as Spooner points out, Chilean potatoes aren't known for having resistance to late blight.

With an increased understanding of modern potatoes' true ancestors, scientists can better preserve the world's potato plants to breed future varieties and realize the crop's natural disease- and insect-resistance potential.

ARS is the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.

[Tomato]

Versace Kababs !

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Then Donatella laughs: "Yeah, people just drink and drink till late at night, I was dying of hunger. But I decided to skip the pasta and stick to Indian food like tandoori chicken and kheema curry, which was divine!"