Pudina means mint leaves in Indian.
This traditional chutney side dish is #nutritious & aids in #digestion. This is the #SouthIndian version. North India has different version.
Many of us grew up in countries where we were specifically warned against eating raw or undercooked eggs. So you might be surprised when you arrive in Japan and find that they’re something of a delicacy. But are they safe to eat?
On Wednesday I made Callaloo, a dish from Trinidad & Tobago where one of my friends originates from. It is meant to be a soup but often eaten like a side dish with rice. It is named after a green leafy vegetable that is similar to spinach and can by replaced by spinach if you can’t get a hold of actual fresh callaloo.
My friend gave me some pointers but alas I could not get all of the vegetables I should have used in time. It still tasted great and we ate this over two days with the second day making the flavours stronger, as it happens so often. 👌🏻
I started with making Caribbean green seasoning (consisting of many fresh herbs and garlic and some other optional items like a deseeded Habanero pepper) as close to the original as I could. After that I cooked the callaloo (using crab meat, spinach, coconut milk and more). When that was almost done I made basmati rice and added some frozen king prawns to my callaloo on low to medium heat to get them to a perfect consistency.
We also added some of my friend‘s truly homemade hot sauce and everything worked so well together that I‘m sure this wasn’t my last callaloo. 😋
On Tuesday we had this dish that consisted of miso butter wafu (Japanese style) pasta with cabbage and Chinese style three cup tofu.
The pasta dish recipe can easily made to be vegan by using tofu, so I thought I try this promising looking Chinese tofu dish with it and yes, it worked. 😋 My tofu had been frozen twice und defrosted before cooking to make it soak up even more sauce.
And just to keep things healthy, she posted a Garlic Dal (Lasooni dal tadka). Healthy, delicious, garlicky, and, best of all, can be made in a pressure cooker.
"In Bengali cuisine, a chutney is a course in itself, served right after the main savoury elements and before desserts. Chutneys are made with seasonal sour fruits such as tomatoes, raw papaya and raw mangoes along with spices that vary drastically between different households and traditions.
"Their consistency ranges from that of a sticky jam to a thin sugar syrup and their flavour profiles tend to be sweet, sour, and spicy.
"The chutney is made sweet and aromatic with the addition of jaggery, mustard seeds, and fennel seeds, while the aamra adds a signature tartness common to all chutneys."
Can Music Make Your Food Taste Better? Spice up your meals with some sonic seasoning. by Andrew Coletti May 20, 2024
"...Sweet and sour were matched with high pitches, bitter and umami with low pitches. Brass instruments sounded bitter, while piano sounded sweet. In a follow-up study, subjects who sampled toffee while listening to custom tracks designed to enhance specific tastes reported an increase in the targeted flavors.
Sonic seasoning is still not well-understood, but some researchers connect it with synesthesia, a perceptual phenomenon where one sense activates another..."
Its difficult to assess what % of food (or food based energy) consumed is ultra processed, but here is a chart that aggregates a number of studies to suggest the range of % for a selection of countries.... & then when you know Big Food in the USA spends more on lobbying than the Tobacco industry (which is likely to be similar in UK)... it starts to make sense.
Link that to public health & we have some more context for the UK's health crisis.