Cookaholics Bulletin Board

One of my favorite things to make with the pandanus is a black sticky rice porridge recipe, from that book mentioned in a previous thread, Southeast Asian Flavors, which has some coconut milk and sugar in it as well, and it can become addictive. I have gotten some others hooked on it, but none of them have the ingredients in their pantry, when I tell them how to make it. What's so unusual about these ingredients?

I haven't tried it, but salt layering may be a way of preserving curry leaves. I have used them frozen before, too, with no problems. No mushiness, at all.

Speaking of curry leaves, my plant just got a baby, which is the first time I have had it do this in the winter!

Dave

Fuzzy -- My bottle says it comes from the flowers. That's what it smells like - flowers. Tastes a little like bay. Not a lot, but that's the only thing I can think of that's close.

I'm not good at describing tastes or it's a case of crickets tasting like crickets.
http://www.indavideo.hu/video/Salma_Hayek_tucskoket_eszik

JB,

Yes, it's from the pandan flower, according to A Group Of Total Strangers On The Internets:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandanus

Well I went to the Indian store (which now seems to be an Indian, Thai, Turkish store) and bought some kewra essence and have also solved the mystery of what is in it: Kewra flowers and water. It doesn't have much taste but is does have a nice smell, something that is is body lotions that are supposed to have fruity scents. I also bought a can of mango pulp so lassis are in my future.

I also bought a bag of black lentils... any good recipes?

Mary

Mary,

Black beluga lentils or urid dal? The beluga lentils are almost tetragonal in shape (little pyramids) and are very very dark green instead of really being black. Urid dal is oval in shape and is jet black.

The two are cooked very differently; beluga lentils cook relatively rapidly ... like French green lentils ... whereas urid dal takes forever, amazingly for something that small.

Finally got all the way down to my pantry in the basement to check out the state of my lentils. The are urid dal and I looked through my cookbooks but can't find a recipe for them. I have had them in Indian restaurants where they were a bit creamy and OH SO FINE. I had some white urid dal (which my sources tell me is just the black ones with all the black removed) that cooked perfectly in the pressure cooker in 4 minutes yesterday. I added them to my regular just add curry paste to whatever I can find curry and they were very good, quite earthy in a well fed peasant way rather than a compost way.

So do you have a recipe for me?

Mary

Mary,

Yeah, let me dig it up. Warning, though ... having the skins on for some reason makes the urid dal take a lot longer to cook. Go figure.

I'd like the recipe for the black sticky rice porridge, please. I find nothing unusual about the list of ingredients!

Check your PM

Mary,

I'm having some trouble finding the recipe I want in my cookbooks (Indian cookbooks tend to lack indexes). And since I'm on Jury Duty this week, I'm working nights. So, what you get instead, is some links.

This recipe looks very similar to how it's made in Nepal: http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/punjabi-s ... etail.aspx

This recipe has very explicit instructions:
http://vegeyum.wordpress.com/2008/05/25/uraddal/

Not that Urad Dal (or Urid dal, same thing) is also the dal chiefly used for making the batter for uttapams, baara, and other rice-and-lentil-flour flatbreads.