Tag: Indian

A mighty need

Thursday after work, since I had the car, I headed to Performance Bicycle to pick up some tubes and because I’d never been there before. It’s kind of huge, lots of stuff. After that I popped over to REI to use up my dividend that I’d apparently already used up. For some reason I was feeling super bloated and crappy. This got translated into “go buy a big pile of food for dinner from Chat Patti.”

Chat Patti used to be my go to way back when I was just vegetarian. Then a couple of years ago I found out that vegan friends found plenty of tastiness there as well. So I pop by every once in a while when I’m up that way. Especially since we’ve lost track of our favorite South Indian chef.

This is a very casual place. Cafeteria-style, order at the counter, get to go or eat there. Usually rather than trying to make some kind of decision, I just get a veggie thali, hold the dairy and let them put whatever on it. And for $8.99, the amount of food is ridiculous.

The thali usually comes with a dessert, but they all have dairy, so she put something else in there to replace it, not sure what though. The down side of me not picking things out is that I can’t really tell you what they are. And, of course, it’s going to make it hard for me to order some of these things again. Like this. I’m going to call it Indian nachos. A pile of fried with a variety of sweet chutneys on top. So freakin’ good.

 

 

 

 

The next box contained 3 chapatti breads, a potato pea samosa and sambar (I think.) The leftover chapatti survived nicely overnight in the fridge and refreshed in 15 seconds in the microwave to go with my lunch the next day.

And, the next box had rice, chana masala and some bean thing. See what I mean?

And here’s what I ended up eating for dinner:

A normal person might’ve gotten three meals out of this but I devoured the leftovers for lunch. It’s probably a good thing this place isn’t convenient. Nothing here was crazy spicy, but I have had food that’ll make you sweat here before. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Black-eyed Pea Masala

I love Indian food. Asafetida seems to be the magical ingredient that pushes a dish from close to spot on. If you like to cook Indian, do yourself a favor and secure some. One jar will last you forever.

This recipe is one I saved in my RSS reader to try some time. I have tons and tons of stuff waiting to be tried. This one worked nicely because I was also trying to clean out my freezer a bit and had a bag of frozen black-eyed peas to use. If you use those instead of the dried called for, you can skip the soaking step. You could also used canned and it might cook a little faster. Just for fun and added nutritional value, I tossed in some chopped fresh collards. I mean, they go with black-eyed peas, right? Right! It was perfect. We ate this over brown basmati.

For Indian food lovers

If you want to cook something that is about as close to the tastiest Indian food you can get in a restaurant, you’ll want to try these lentils from Dino’s Alternative Vegan cookbook. This is one of those recipes I keep going back to. It’s another one you can whip together with mostly pantry items.

I had a couple of options for something green to eat on the side. Instead of keeping the green beans plain, I used the treatment Dino gives to broccoli and roasted them up in the oven. There might have been just a bit more seasoning than I needed for the amount of green beans I had, but it was amazingly good.

Madras Sri Ganesh Ram Palace

Hey, guess what? I ate out again. That’s fucking shocking, isn’t it? I’m just going to come out and say that I don’t think I could live anywhere that didn’t have a South Indian restaurant. But I want it to be a little bit inconvenient. Otherwise I’d be waddling around with an additional hundred pounds on my frame. No joke.

While we have a number of good Indian restaurants in Atlanta, Madras Sri Ganesh Ram Palace is by far my favorite. Thankfully, it’s not all that convenient for me being out by Stone Mountain and all. It is a vegetarian restaurant but there are plenty of things vegans can eat. The server will be glad to help you with any questions.

Need some convincing? That’s okay, I came prepared with food porn. I bet there are a dozen pics of Medhu Vadai floating around in my archives. What’s not to like about savory lentil flour doughnuts?

Kevin’s favorite is Gobi Manchurian: battered, deep fried cauliflower in a very spicy sweet sauce:

Dosas are a favorite of mine. So is the Chole Batura. But I like to work my way around the menu because everything is so good. This is the first time I got the Uppatham with vegetable curry. The Uppatham come with another dish on the menu that isn’t vegan, but they happily changed it out for me. And it was lovely with carrots, potatoes and other veg in a spicy sauce that was warm but didn’t blow my head off. The Uppathams did a great job of soaking up the sauce.

Uppatham extreme close up:

You’re hungry now, aren’t you?

South Indian Food Love

You know, it actually took moving to Atlanta before I had really good South Indian food. The few places I tried in San Francisco in the 90s were definitely of a Northern sort, and gringoed to boot. I will say that I’ve been back to SF since and discovered perfectly lovely South Indian food between Union Square and the Tenderloin.

Atlanta, though, has a ton of South Indian options. Even so, sometimes I like to cook it. I’m too lazy to bust out enough dishes to fill a thali, but recently I did manage two dishes and dosas. I think a full out scratch recipe for dosas isn’t hard, but making them from a box, a box less than $1, is way easier. It’s pretty tasty for a mix and will do when you’re feeling lazy from making two other dishes.

Both of these dishes come from Healthy South Indian Cooking. This is not even a vegetarian cookbook, but it has many, many vegan recipes. I’ve gotten so I don’t mind some meat recipes. Usually they can easily be veganized.

This is a blurry Potato Okra Mandi. I accidentally made two things that were pretty soupy. D’oh. This one is full of sour tamarind goodness. I’m not usually a fan of okra, but they don’t slime up in this dish.

I thought Beans Kootu was more dry last time I cooked it. Heck, it probably was. At least it wasn’t a full on soup. Sugar snap peas in a coconutty bean sauce.

And here it is all together with the dosas.

Speaking of Indian stuff in Atlanta, one of my favorite places to stock up on supplies is Taj Mahal Market. Spices, beans, mixes, chutneys, thali, etc. This week I made a quick trip up there during lunch for black mustard seeds and came back with that plus red lentils, tamarind paste, saffron, black salt, coconut milk, two dosa mixes, young jackfruit in brine, roasty tasty (peanuts covered in a bean flour coating, not fried) and rose spread:

Even if you don’t need anything, it’s worth stopping in for a browse.