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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2AY5DJr:
Yes! Ha ha, thank you. This must be pretty funny from your perspective.
Chicken malai. I think that one’s my favorite-favorite, it’s like, dessert chicken. (Googling does not immediately tell me what’s different. Oh… more targeted Googling informs me that malai is a specific thing apparently made out of hopes and dreams painstakingly-processed milk. Ohh that explains why that stuff is so pale and so good. Ohhh. Holy heck I gotta find out how to make that. Where can I get buffalo milk.)
Googling for Indian-language things is fascinating because so much of the Indian internet is in English. Looking for Thai or Japanese things, for example, you can usually tell instantly whether a website is intended for Thai or Japanese people, or for English readers, but not so with India, because so much of the business of India is conducted online in English. Which on the one hand is great, because I can read English much better than Google-translated Japanese (I studied Japanese for years and it does me almost no good), but on the other hand, gosh, it’s nice to find the For Foreigners 101 pages once in a while. There’s so much to know, and if you’re coming in without context, it’s hard to catch up. And it’s not like there aren’t about the same amount of wildly-incorrect Let Me Explain To Other Foreigners The Stuff I Actually Didn’t Learn as there are for non-English-speaking Foreign Exotic places/cultures/etc.
Anyhow, for anyone wondering about how the experiment worked.
The Final Result: I got home and tried to pull the chicken carcass out, and it fell apart, which is, well, what happens when you crock pot a whole chicken, really. I tasted it and oh ok it turns out the red pepper stuff is really spicy, I used like a quarter teaspoon and this has Got The Flavor ™, so I spooned the sauce into a saucepan on the stove and added a can of coconut milk to maybe cool it down a little spice-wise, and while that reduced, I picked the chicken carcass apart to get rid of the bones and cartilage and weird skin bits and so on.
So if I were doing this again maybe I’d not be quite so lazy, and I’d use leg quarters or thighs instead of a whole chicken. And I’d go back and buy a garam masala instead of the tandoori spice blend. (I’ll just have to find something else to put tandoori spice mix into.)
(And apparently I have to use butter for the sauteeing of the sauce thing, not oil like I did, or else it’s not properly Butter Chicken!)
But, this was a fun experiment and I am delighted to have expanded my horizons. If I’d tried to research this I never would have managed to un-confuse myself enough to do it.
And now that I know what they’ve got in the market, I can pre-plan before I go and not be so ill-informed.
There’s another, smaller Asian food market a ways down the street that I know is run by Indians, so I could try there too if when I do research I find I want something specific.
The big Asia Food Mart was being shopped at by, I’d say, 75% East-ish Asians and 25% white people. There’s something to be said for being a food tourist in your own city.
(Your picture was not posted)
Yes! Ha ha, thank you. This must be pretty funny from your perspective.
Chicken malai. I think that one’s my favorite-favorite, it’s like, dessert chicken. (Googling does not immediately tell me what’s different. Oh… more targeted Googling informs me that malai is a specific thing apparently made out of hopes and dreams painstakingly-processed milk. Ohh that explains why that stuff is so pale and so good. Ohhh. Holy heck I gotta find out how to make that. Where can I get buffalo milk.)
Googling for Indian-language things is fascinating because so much of the Indian internet is in English. Looking for Thai or Japanese things, for example, you can usually tell instantly whether a website is intended for Thai or Japanese people, or for English readers, but not so with India, because so much of the business of India is conducted online in English. Which on the one hand is great, because I can read English much better than Google-translated Japanese (I studied Japanese for years and it does me almost no good), but on the other hand, gosh, it’s nice to find the For Foreigners 101 pages once in a while. There’s so much to know, and if you’re coming in without context, it’s hard to catch up. And it’s not like there aren’t about the same amount of wildly-incorrect Let Me Explain To Other Foreigners The Stuff I Actually Didn’t Learn as there are for non-English-speaking Foreign Exotic places/cultures/etc.
Anyhow, for anyone wondering about how the experiment worked.
The Final Result: I got home and tried to pull the chicken carcass out, and it fell apart, which is, well, what happens when you crock pot a whole chicken, really. I tasted it and oh ok it turns out the red pepper stuff is really spicy, I used like a quarter teaspoon and this has Got The Flavor ™, so I spooned the sauce into a saucepan on the stove and added a can of coconut milk to maybe cool it down a little spice-wise, and while that reduced, I picked the chicken carcass apart to get rid of the bones and cartilage and weird skin bits and so on.
So if I were doing this again maybe I’d not be quite so lazy, and I’d use leg quarters or thighs instead of a whole chicken. And I’d go back and buy a garam masala instead of the tandoori spice blend. (I’ll just have to find something else to put tandoori spice mix into.)
(And apparently I have to use butter for the sauteeing of the sauce thing, not oil like I did, or else it’s not properly Butter Chicken!)
But, this was a fun experiment and I am delighted to have expanded my horizons. If I’d tried to research this I never would have managed to un-confuse myself enough to do it.
And now that I know what they’ve got in the market, I can pre-plan before I go and not be so ill-informed.
There’s another, smaller Asian food market a ways down the street that I know is run by Indians, so I could try there too if when I do research I find I want something specific.
The big Asia Food Mart was being shopped at by, I’d say, 75% East-ish Asians and 25% white people. There’s something to be said for being a food tourist in your own city.
(Your picture was not posted)
