Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis

Aditya Chakrabortty in The Guardian:

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

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Feast from the past

The old-world Mughlai flavours, found in Lashkari, Moplah, Awadhi and Salar Jung cuisine, rest in the hands of a chosen few. Meher Fatma in The Indian Express:

In a charmingly dilapidated bungalow at Parel, Mumbai, the kitchen is suffused with the aroma of exotic spices. It is noon and Kunwar Rani Begum Kulsum, 52, is busy slicing meat into tiny pieces while slivers of onion and chillies sweat in a deep-bottomed pan. She is cooking Tala Ghosht, a 100-year-old recipe of the Salar Jungs, the noble family which served the Nizams of Hyderabad. Begum Kulsum is a descendant of this family and this dish was a favourite of her grandmother, who used to cook it in the 1950s. “Tala Ghosht is safri khana (travel food) and we add no water to the dish so it can be preserved,” explains Kulsum, who now recreates these dishes at the ITC Grand Central in Mumbai. It was a custom with the Salar Jungs to be secretive about these recipes. So the daughters of the family weren’t allowed access to the kitchen and the secrets of the kitchen were shared only with daughters-in-law. “My grandmother was born in an aristocratic Iranian family and came to Raza-Yar Jung haveli at Darushafa, Hyderabad, after her wedding,” says Kulsum. “Nawab Yusuf Ali Khan Salar Jung III even had a separate bawarchi khana for experimenting with ingredients,” she says.

[Photo: Begum Kulsum and chef Gulam Rasool]

Click here for more, and also for Begum Kulsum’s Chutney Mutton recipe that can be preserved for days like a pickle:

Saffron Mother

Elatia Harris’s three-part series on saffron, that essential spice used throughout South Asia, is, in a word, stupendous. Harris’s article goes whole hog: from how to make a saffron infusion to recipies for saffron rice with whole spices to the provenance of the crocus flower. Yummy… [via 3QuarksDaily]. If you have a favourite saffron recipie or story, send it to us.

Today, I’ll be the Saffron Mother. I’ll tell you perilously close to everything you ever wanted to know about sourcing saffron — there’s lots to be wary of — and cooking with it to fantastic effect. If you find you need to know more about saffron than I’ve written here, more even than you can learn from the research materials cited at the end of the post, then you are indeed special.

The image under the title, Still Life, painted by Adriaen van Utrecht in 1644 and now in the Rijksmuseum, depicts not a single thread of saffron unless, as is distinctly possible, saffron is an ingredient in the luxurious game pie spilling its contents onto a tray just below and to the right of the parrot. The brighter tones of the painting, however — from the pale yellow of the tulips to the intense yellow of the lemons to the gold-red of the peaches to the striking orange-red of the outsize boiled lobster — sumptuously evoke the saffron palette. Evoke but do not approach it. If you think a boiled lobster is a vivid orange-red, then you have not made a saffron infusion in a glass pot, and sat spellbound as light passed through it before taking it unto yourself.

Making a Saffron Infusion

An infusion is exactly the place to start a personal investigation of saffron. After all, you might not like the stuff, and if that’s how you are, well…better to know it before you add it to food. A word to the wise — never, never introduce saffron threads into your mouth as you might do a cardamom pod. Oh, no. You won’t know it from crushed Ibuprofen if you take it in that way.

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For folk fest, red-hot chilies, hold the yak

The Washington Post’s Emily Wax goes to a market in Thimpu, Bhutan’s capital, to sample yak cheese and other local cuisine.

Ah . . . steaming plates of chilies swimming in yak cheese. Tea churned with butter and salt. Gooey boiled ferns.

These are some highlights of the traditional diet of Bhutan — a tiny Himalayan nation nestled between the two culinary and geographic giants of China and India. It’s a gastronomy that is little known but often disparaged: Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl has been quoted as calling Bhutan’s “the world’s worst cuisine.”

And you can try it for yourself next week, when Bhutan will be the featured nation at the 42nd annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival, beginning Wednesday on the Mall. Dorjee Tshering, director of Bhutan’s department of culture, can hardly wait for you to have the experience.

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What does it take to understand a culture’s cuisine?

Gourmet contributor Shoba Narayan recently dined with her mother at Masala Klub, a new high-end eatery at the Taj West End hotel in Bangalore. From World Hum:

The meal began well enough, with white wine and a good lemongrass rasam (”the holy grail of our community, the Tamil Brahmin people”). But the main course-a collection of too-chewy paneer, undercooked spiced haricots verts and other “forgettable” dishes-left the women underwhelmed. Why couldn’t the savvy chef at Masala Klub impress these compatriot foodies? Narayan says it’s because Indians are so famously possessive of their cuisine that even the most talented haute and fusion chefs rarely stand a chance in the kitchen.

The Narayan family knows the difference between a truly authentic dal makhni and the one I’ve eaten with ignorant satisfaction at a North Raleigh strip mall. Write them off as inflexible food snobs at your own risk. They know exactly what cultural detail each taste evokes, and for that alone, they should be heard.

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Red, white, sultry: the wines of India

As wine publications, wine clubs, competitions and tasting dinners have taken hold, gradually, Indian wines with notable finesse are becoming available and appreciated. From The new York Times:

Nasik, India: When Ranjit Dhuru, the owner of the Chateau d’Ori winery, walked through his gently sloping vineyards here in February, the harvest was in full swing. “Already sweet,” he said, nibbling from tight, healthy bunches of cabernet sauvignon grapes. “These will be ready to pick soon, in another week.”

Eight years ago, Mr. Dhuru, who made his fortune in the software business, bought land outside Nasik, a city about 100 miles northeast of Mumbai that has become the center of India’s rapidly expanding wine industry.

This year, with the help of a consulting oenologist from Bordeaux, Mr. Dhuru expects to produce about 300,000 bottles of white and red wines. By next year, he estimates that a million bottles will bear the Chateau d’Ori label.

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The samosa is taking over the world

Priya Ramani blogs from Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica

It´s official, the samosa is the new Genghis Khan.

Today, when we reluctantly wandered into town for dinner because the chef at Banana Azul, where we are staying, had her weekly off, we saw an all-you-can-eat meal lead starring The Samosa.

Samosas have shadowed us everywhere. In New Zealand´s food courts, where unsuspecting locals pair the giant beasts with unrecognizable red or brown curries; in Vancouver´s Granville Island, nestled amongst heart shaped cookies and apple tarts–I´m happy to report we haven´t succumbed even once, though the husband came close when he saw a kheema samosa in Los Angeles.

Anyhow, so there we were at Chilli Rojo, one of the hottest restaurants in Puerto Viejo because yours truly had finally got fed up of authentic Costa Rican food.

I was gassy that´s why.

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Pulp fiction

Juicy, fragrant, sweet and sensual… There are few foods as sexy as a honey-ripe mango. Nigel Slater in The Observer: Also check out his recipe for mango frozen yogurt recipe:

Some wait open-mouthed for the asparagus season, others count the days until the first new potato, and while both of those appeal to me, there is no sight I long for more than that of a pile of slim cardboard boxes bearing the legend Alphonse Mangoes. The tubby golden ones arrive here from India in late May, at much the same time as the equally luscious and elegant variety (usually the Nam Doc Mai) from Thailand, whose stone is as thin as a blade. Hot on their heels are the heavenly honey mangoes from Pakistan. Sublime as the hundreds of other varieties of mango can be, these three are my desert island fruits, the food I want on my lips as I pass from this world, my final feast before I go to the gallows.

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Banana pancakes: the answer to a hippy’s prayers

In The Guardian, David Jenkins writes about his food experience — dal, dal, dal was dull, dull, dull — on the hippy trail back in the seventies, and how much things have changed since then with the arrival of apple pie in Varanasi and ‘German bakeries’ and bottled drinking water everywhere

The first one I remember having out East was on Unawatuna Beach, near Galle, in 1981, with Simon Le Bon. Unawatuna was ravishing then: a perfect crescent of golden sand, a few bamboo shacks, a house some rich junkies lived in, two members of Duran Duran seeking inspiration for their next video, and a palm-fringed restaurant, its deck facing the sunset. I was, of course, stoned; I had, of course, the munchies. And Simon… well, Simon was pouring maple syrup over a banana pancake. There it was: glistening, glutinous and the answer to any hippy’s prayers. So I ordered, and I ate, and I was hooked. Ever since - from Sihanoukville to Sikkim, from Vagator to Varanasi - I’ve fallen ravenously on those banana pancakes and wept with joy.

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In true Nizam style

In Mint Lounge, celebrity chef Karen Anand on Hyderabadi tradition and cuisine — and a recipe for the famous Shikampur Kebabs [Minced Mutton Kebabs]:

 Several years ago, I had the fortune of being invited to the ancestral home of ad film-maker Zafar Hai in Hyderabad. I hadn’t been in India long and I remember being impressed by everything. The detailing was perfect, from the silver slippers in the bathroom to the intricacy of the table and the rich, painstakingly prepared food. Zafar’s mother never went into the kitchen herself but clearly knew how to cook and lay a superb meal. All the dishes came out together, the biryani or the safed pulao, coming out last. You were advised what to have with what-the lukhmi first, then kebabs and sheermal or kulcha, the vegetables and “kut” meats and lastly the biryani. There was a raita and two desserts at the end. This elaborate menu and laying out everything together is also done at a traditional dastarkhan dinner and a wedding. The crockery was bone china and the serving dishes were silver. It made me realize that Hyderabadi food was both complex and difficult to replicate without a serious amount of help.

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What’s cooking?

In Mint Lounge, Melissa A Bell goes undercover to discover a world of secret chefs around the country who have set up home kitchens with speciality dishes on order for epicures on the move

When Heidi Shrager moved from New York to New Delhi last year, she was invariably homesick for the Big Apple. But in December, at a party in Sunder Nagar, she felt magically transported to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “It was a Hanukkah party and they had the most amazing bagel, lox and cream cheese spread.”

Shrager loves bagels—the ubiquitous breakfast food that can be found in every corner of New York. Initially, Shrager was very sceptical anyone could make the bagel taste like they do in New York and wasn’t sure the bagels at the party, made by Uni Vaid in her backyard bakery in Delhi, lived up to New York standards. But a month later, when she sampled Vaid’s bagels again, she realized how wrong she had been. “I felt like I could eat six in a row,” Shrager says. “They rank right up there with the best in New York.”

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In praise of Bengali cuisine

In Mint Lounge, celebrity chef Karen Anand on Bengali cuisine — and a recipe for Bekti Gonduraj (steamed fish with lemon):

Bengali cuisine is considered elaborate and refined, and the state is the only place in India where food is served in separate courses, the chronology based on ancient beliefs, to aid the digestive process. Bitter leaves and gourd are always served first, followed by rice, dal, chutney and fish.

Bengali food is one of the few Indian cuisines I can eat at any time of the day, even in restaurants. This simply isn’t so of other Indian cuisines, where the restaurant versions tend to be too spiced, laced with unnecessary amounts of oil, and generally overcooked.

There are also ingredients particular to this region, which are very special. The Hilsa fish, a type of shad which is a member of the herring family, has numerous small bones. But deboned and smoked, it is superior to even the best smoked salmon.

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The world’s hottest chilli

The Wall Street Journal’s Stan Sesser went to Guwahati, India, to track down the world’s hottest chili pepper, the bhut jolokia. “It’s 200 times hotter than the jalapeno and workers handle it with face masks.”

The bhut jolokia chili pepper fires up the imagination, as well as the taste buds. The thumb-sized chilies are so potent they could be used in pepper spray, says the director of India’s Defense Research Lab, R.B. Srivastava. “I’ve been told the U.S. and Israel have considered it for antiriot material,” he says.

Most admirers prefer eating them. The Indian pepper is the latest discovery by a fraternity of eaters who relish the sweaty, addictive pleasures of hot chilies.

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Made in China: samosa and paratha

So, where in the world will you find the best samosas? Owais Mughal is on a mission in All Things Pakistan

ATP is always searching for tips on good Pakistani food (see here), and as I have a long history with food experiments myself (see here). So here is my new discovery.

On our last trip to buy oriental grocery we were surprised beyond words to find ‘Tsingtao Curry Samosa‘ and ‘Paratha - which taste like authentic Indian’ in a refrigerator.

Both of these items were made in China. We immediately bought both items and I must confess they both tasted very good. Samosa filling was made of Chinese curry and Parathas were puff Parathas. You gotta taste them to believe me.

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