jaeleslie

In the category of small wonderful things, today I found the Indian grocery, on University Avenue just around the corner from Marcia, who told me where it was. I was looking for tamarind paste, and dessicated coconut (unsweetened), which I haven't found elsewhere, because I've been test cooking for a Sri Lankan cookbook that Mary Anne Mohanraj is working on.
http://www.mamohanraj.com/

It was terrifically cheap to shop there -- as cooking from scratch usually is -- and I think I cleaned out the poor man's change drawer when I gave him a twenty. He had boxes and boxes of spicy crunchy things, a big sale "for diwali" I think he said, so I got some plaintain chips too.

Mary Anne's "Taste of Serendib" is supposed to be very hot food, but in my version for the Norwegian palates that I cook for the chilli content is considerably stepped down. Still, it's very tasty stuff. We had an Indian restaurant open up recently across Park Street from our house (where China House of fond memory used to be) and while their lunch buffet is okay it is kind of scary to find that once again I can cook much better food myself.

But this evening we had chili, which will be even better tomorrow. It started last week as a beef roast, that had Indian beef curry stock poured over it while it roasted, and then a couple days later was sliced and turned into sort of an Italian marinara (with angel hair pasta and sauteed red and yellow pepperonata). But I can make everything eventually into Tex-Mex, my native cuisine: in this case with only a couple tablespoons of chili powder, cumin, and some beans.