I’ve only had this cookbook for a little over a year, and just haven’t really had the chance to get into it. So up to this moment I have had no strong feelings about it one way or the other: this is its first road test. I picked it up with a desire on my part to cook more South Asian-inspired food. I haven’t liked the other cookbooks I’ve tried working with in acquiring that skill set. (They’re probably going to be future contestants on Cookbook Survivor as a result…)
My main thought as I looked through yesterday it was “Why haven’t I been using this all the damn time?” That bodes well for how the day might go, certainly. In contrast to the other books I’ve put to the test so far, I spotted a good fifteen to twenty things I might be inclined to cook. There’s a clear sensibility to the recipes—they’re often American dishes with a South Asian flavor element or technique, or sometimes it’s more vice-versa, a South Asian staple travelling towards some fusion.
I think it’s important to talk about food that has rootings in two different pantries, two different food dishes, without using baleful words (in this context) like ‘familiar’ or ‘exotic’, because it always raises the question familiar to whom? A lot of the flavors and ingredients here are familiar to some American households—the ones where they’re not aren’t entitled to a sweeping label of “familiar”.
Still, some of the dishes do show up a bit of an area of weakness in my pantry (yet again the damn black nigella seeds! The universe is telling me to order them, obviously), but I was able to work towards what I do have, with a few minor substitutions.
This is going to span the whole day, or at least that’s the plan—I may drop one of these dishes if it’s just too much.
I’ll be starting with a brunch serving of “apple-pistachio waffled french toast” (e.g., you dip the bread in a french toast prep and then cook it in a waffle iron.)
For dinner, we’ll have corn-onion-cashew fritters, bruschetta with spiced eggplant spread, and chicken meatballs. Nobody likes eggplants here except me (and even I don’t when they’re just quivering soft large-ish chunks of indeterminate vegetable) but there’s eggplants in the garden that are ready for action, so action they will have. I think as a spread on bread they’re probably more palatable to my folks.
If I have the energy, I’ll make a small serving of the rice pudding with roasted blueberries, because we have too many blueberries now and we need to eat them.