When V and I had gone to Ogden, Utah, for a week, we ate at this restaurant called Jasoh. I don’t remember now what V ordered, but I had ordered this alfredo fettuccine served with mushrooms and duck, topped with a chocolate gastrique. It was sooooooo good!
A gastrique is a reduction of vinegar and sugar brought to light caramelization, to which a little stock is added. It is a base to which many other ingredients, or just a few, can be added to form a sauce. It is generally used to create a sweet and sour sauce.
This was the first time I had eaten something savory that had chocolate in it and was really happy to have been adventurous enough to try it! I really wanted to try cooking the chocolate gastrique on fettuccine alfredo, but never got around to doing it.
In From Apples to Zucchini, Pam focuses on recipes that feed her family responsibly, with as much nutrition as possible. She takes great pride in remaking recipes to be healthier, lower in fat and calories than the original, just to prove that healthy doesn’t mean boring and tasteless. The discovery of this site couldn’t come at a better time- I have resolved that this time I am going to take my weight loss program seriously and I have a feeling Pam will be of great help!
Her version of the alfredo sauce is considerably less in fat than the actual version and still tastes great. Its an easy recipe and V and I enjoyed eating it. I also made the chocolate gastrique to go with it but was not as successful- of course, with some tweaks I made it good enough but not like how I had it at Jasoh. And since there were so many afterthought additions, there is no recipe that I can write here today.
Although the gastrique recipe is still a work in progress, Pam’s alfredo sauce recipe is a keeper! Its an easy recipe and as Pam points out its really light in calories as well!
Last week I did not post on GMT. Not that I had no recipe. In fact I had cooked three different Indian dishes that could have potentially been blogged about. But, I was not able to take any pictures. And, then I sprained my ankle and could not cook for a while, thus, taking a break from cooking and blogging. But, I am back this week with Garam Masala Tuesdays(I know I am posting this a day late on a Wednesday but I could not post yesterday as I do not practice BUI- Blogging Under Influence- yes! it’s a term..well, actually I just made that up but I do think there should be such a term and I do think it is not safe to BUI- you never know what secrets come out!)
Anyway, yesterday, we installed Indian channels. Its been a year we have been here and we hadn’t subscribed to them earlier because I was never a fan of Hindi serials- they all start off well and then drag on, and I could never follow or understand them. So, we thought it might be pointless paying so much for these channels. But, for the last one month we had been contemplating giving these channels a chance. So yesterday when the guy installed the dish and I switched on the TV to a bollywood number on our TV, I was nostalgic like crazy. And there I was. On my sofa. A tear in my eye. Nope these weren’t tears of happiness. But me, missing my home, my country, my people, missing the senseless lyrics of Bollywood songs, the colorful dresses, the bargaining for a Rs.10 (20 ¢) hairband, the food, the crowded streets, the blaring music, the non stop horns for no reason- I started missing it all.
There are a lot of things wrong with my country. I am aware. But, like every mother who knows his kid isn’t the perfect one and still loves him/her nonetheless, I love India. The country is imperfectly perfect for me. And like every mother who is away from her child, I too ache to be back in my own country. No matter how comfortable life is here in the US and the independence I have in running my house the way I like, I miss the crazy life of India. I really do. I have never been a person happy away from India. I experienced the same feeling when I stayed in Moscow for two years. I did enjoy myself there too but there was a part of me that craved India, and that craving in me is alive, now and always.
Another thing I miss about India, a feeling that I have bandied about on the blog before, is the food. And thanks to the small town we stay in I miss eating Indian food in restaurants or from roadside vendors even more! So, recently, when our friends from phoenix were over, we went to Tucson and had dinner at this Indian restaurant- Sher-e-Punjab and it was pretty good. Some of the dishes had seasoning issues but the flavors were bang on target for most dishes. (All ten of us, though, are pretty convinced that there was some mistake with our bill because we ordered a ton of things and the total came to be very affordable, bordering around the lines of really cheap food, especially since its Indian)
The one thing that all of us loved at Sher-e-Punjab were the missi rotis (an indian flatbread), served with butter. Even though some people had stuck to their usual order of rotis and naans, the 2-3 of us (like me) who did order missi roti, convinced the others to try them. And, they were glad that they did!
Missi roti, pronounced “Miss-ee Row-tee” is a staple in Punjabi homes and is basically roti prepared from besan or gram flour/chickpea flour. Served with a dollop of butter and accompanied with any Indian vegetable or lentil dish, missi rotis are an excellent way of sprucing up the proteins in your diet. Missi Roti can be served for breakfast with curd or pickle. Missi Roti is good for diabetics too because of gram flour added to it as an ingredient. Gram flour is said to keep insulin levels in check! Missi roti makes you very thirsty, so be prepared to drink a lot of water after eating it!
Traditionally Missi Roti made in the tandoor but at home I make it on the tawa (cast iron skillet). My mom adds pomegranatae seeds and is supposed to be key to the missi roti flavor. I did not have it, but if you do, for sure add pomegranate seeds (anar dana). You can also change the ratio of besan (gram flour) to whole wheat flour but accordingly change the amount of water you will require for kneading.
No, no I am not gone. I am still here just took a one week break from blogging & cooking. What’s with the song then, you ask (well, even if you didn’t I will still continue to explain. You have no choice but to listen or actually you do- you could leave this page. But, don’t! please!)
This was the song I used to listen to when the first guy I was seeing broke up with me (It was a short lived relationship- you know, the celebrity love kinds- lasted a week in actuality- but at that time it meant the world to me!).
I am sure you have never heard of the song, nor would have I, had I not been in the phase where every love song sounded like it was just made for me- every single word resounding of my story, my pain, my love, my heart break and well you get the drift.
Get the DJ to play our favorite song
‘Cause it’s what keeps me holding on
Baby, do you miss me
Now that I’m gone
Ok, it’s cheesy, but to a girl with a broken heart it was music! (FYI my taste in music is not that bad, it was just a phase!)
Now that I look back on those days, and knowing how things turned out thereafter, I laugh at the things I did after the break up. I used to listen to this song hoping that the guy misses me (yes, I was a love struck newbie and a break up was something entirely new to me) Of course he never thought of me, his updates on hi5, (that was the time hi5 was the thing like how today’s Facebook is) and gtalk/yahoo/msn status proved otherwise.
I do think people had it better before the digital age arrived, especially when it came to break ups. If the person of your interest moved on there was no way to know. You could live in the imaginary world and think that you are the only person he is thinking of, dying to talk u but embarrassed to come up and say he made a mistake, that he was sorry. But, alas, this is the digital age. In today’s world, you are bombarded with pictures of the person in question with a new love in his/her arms. There goes your delusional world where you were the only girl he ever loved.
Thank god, though, that those days of heartbreak are gone. They were torture! I am sure you know the feeling, don’t you?
C’mon you went through it too, right? Crying and listening to mushy songs hoping that would ease the pain. Dreaming of the phone ringing and your ex telling you how being apart from you has made him realize how good he had it with you and how you were the only person who ever understood him. You went through all that too, right. Right? Don’t tell me I was the only loser??
You did nothing of that sorts? When it was over, it was over for you- you moved on graciously?
Really?
Umm…
So did I!
Ha! Got u! I just made all that up. Nope I did not listen to songs while getting over crushes. Or check out my exes photos as if I was a stalker. Nah! not me! In fact, I was the one who broke up with the guy! Really.
(shifting uncomfortably)
Um…
(embarrassed smile)
Really I was messing with you. Honest.
Anywho.
So, yes, I have been absent for the longest time ever. Well, I don’t know if you guys missed me but I missed blogging. I finally went to the doctor who told me that I had a sprain and it would take about 4-6 weeks to heal. It sucks because I just got my exercise thing set and was enjoying it and pretty soon would have seen results, but now have to take it slow. That’s one reason I couldn’t blog. I was resting my ankle. Trying not to do much work. I also got a slight stomach upset in between, and that too on the day we got a new toilet seat installed in our bathroom. (See, this is why I started the blog- to document my life in snippets so that some day I look back and read and I will come across this particular blog post and know- yes! this was the time I hurled! So bear with me because these details are important..these are the things that make my life interesting.)
So while others remember so and so day as the day they did such and such fun activity I’ll remember the past week as the time I inaugurated our newly installed toilet seat by hurling into it!
Yes I am aware that by talking about toilet seats and stalking exes on orkut/hi5/FB I don’t put on a good case for me and sound like a loser.
I still do maintain that I was joking about the snooping around hi5/FB thingy.
When V and I had gone to Ogden, Utah, for a week, we ate at this restaurant called Jasoh. I don’t remember now what V ordered, but I had ordered this alfredo fettuccine served with mushrooms and duck, topped with a chocolate gastrique. It was sooooooo good!
Her version of the alfredo sauce is considerably less in fat than the actual version and still tastes great. Its an easy recipe and V and I enjoyed eating it. I also made the chocolate gastrique to go with it but was not as successful- of course, with some tweaks I made it good enough but not like how I had it at Jasoh. And since there were so many afterthought additions, there is no recipe that I can write here today.
