Carolina BBQ - Old School

My brother visited from Cleveland last weekend, and the July heat and humidity here in NC nearly made him shave his grizzly beard. After spending much of Saturday outside, I couldn't think of a better way to help him relax than showing him the southern tradition standing over a smoking grill for an hour and a half.

Without the time to barbecue a big piece of pork and a traditional meat smoker, we used a charcoal grill and chicken instead. Many steps, several hours and multiple cold beverages later, we reeked of smoke but didn't care because the food was awesome.

Here's how we did it.

Gluten Free Chicken Parm

One thing Indian and Italian families seem to have in common is the tradition of eating your way through family visits. Meals tend to be long, frequent and excessive, and after awhile you forget what it feels like to be "hungry." My brother-in-law, Manek flew down frown New York with his girlfriend this weekend, so we acted accordingly.

Manek's favorite Italian dish is Chicken Parmesan, so we make it at home every time he visits. These days, however, he's following a gluten and dairy free diet, so we had to get creative. I don't remember my family making Chicken Parmesan growing up, so I learned from Mario Batali. This time, we made a few adjustments, the most obvious one being serving it with polenta instead of pasta. We also only coated the chicken in bread crumbs and not flour - something I would change next time.

Regardless, it turned out pretty awesome.

Farmers in the spotlight

An article titled "Want to Earn More than a Banker? Become a Farmer!" in last week's Time caught my attention. Written by Steve Gandel, the article highlights an agricultural revival in the US that hasn't occurred in decades. Gandel also notes that the upswing could create opportunities in developing markets overseas:

"The average American consumes about 250 lb. (113 kg) of meat a year. The average Indian eats less than 10 lb. (4.5 kg) a year. In China, it's more like 100 lb. (45 kg). Which means there's a lot of room for growth. Half of U.S. corn production goes to feed cattle, pigs and poultry, which drives up demand for grain."

While it's obvious the two most populous nations in the world could consume more American meat, India's "room for growth" might be a lot more complicated than it appears. 

Gandel definitely did more homework on this topic than I did, but having just visited India and seen first hand the eating habits in Bombay, I don't believe Indians will be consuming even 50 pounds of meat anytime soon.

Arati's Chicken Curry

Tracking down family recipes isn't easy. The mothers who made the meals famous learned from their mother or mother-in-law over the course of many years of coaching and supervision, so that the technique becomes part of her DNA long before it's ever written down. Perhaps this is part of what makes "home food" so awesome, as it's about about the people and the place as much as the recipe. Try as we may to recreate it on the other side of the world, it's not always easy to replicate.

One morning, before the rest of the family was up and moving, I camped out in my mother-in-law's kitchen while she cooked the day's basic chicken curry - the same chicken curry she's prepared for lunch each day for the past 31 years - and wrote down her every step.

My Indian Summer

Shefali and I traveled to Bombay/Mumbai from London to see her family. It was my fourth trip to India, and each one is better than the last. One of the highlights is always the food, and this one was no exception.

- This was my first trip to India during mango season. India is home to the Alphonso mango. The Alphonso is smaller and richer than any variety we get in or around the US. The flesh isn't as stringy, either, so the texture is somewhat like a melon. We cut them into boats and scooped out the flesh. We skinned them, diced, them and ate them with vanilla ice cream. We blended them with milk and drank shakes in the morning, and blended them with yoghurt and drank mango lassis in the afternoon. I easily ate my weight in mangoes during my 10-day stay.

London Recap Part 4: Miscellaneous

Shefali and I spent four days vacationing in London on our way to Mumbai. Whenever we travel to a new place, we make it a goal to eat our way from one end of town to the other. This four-part series will highlight our experiences.

Some of our adventures didn't involve a market, restaurant, or pub. Here are a few final thoughts:

- Trafalgar Square was my favorite tourist attraction.
- Bloomsbury was a great part of town to stay in. If we ever go back, I'd likely book another hotel (not the Holiday Inn) near Russell Square.
- We visited a great pub called The Lamb, but there were no tables avaiable, so we went next door for dinner. The pub did, however, leave a lasting memory, because of all the British pubs we visited that had funky, outdated carpet, The Lamb's was definitely the ugliest.
- Jamie Oliver was offering cooking classes while we were visiting. I was all for it, but Shefali vetoed it because it would qualify as "cheating on Bobby Flay." 
- While in Borough Market, I asked a woman buying flounder (better known as sole in Europe) how she cooks it. "[The fishmongers] fillet it for me, then I dust it in flour and fry it in a pan with butter," she said. "There's no need to mess around."
- The cable TV at our Holiday Inn was limited, but it did include two music channels that, amazingly, still show music videos. I started each day with  full session of British pop. Looking back, this wasn't a good use of my time, but I thought this video was pretty awesome:



That's our trip--stay tuned for Bombay highlights. 

London Recap Part 3 - The Pubs

Shefali and I spent four days vacationing in London on our way to Mumbai. Whenever we travel to a new place, we make it a goal to eat our way from one end of town to the other. This four-part series will highlight our experiences.

Visiting the pubs with a pregnant wife is hardly the best way to experience London's beer, but she was a good sport, so we hit several during our stay. Here's my pint-by-pint breakdown:

My first taste of a British bitter (Sussex) came at The Market Porter. I drank it outside the pub on a sunny afternoon near Borough Market in Southwark. Drinking in the street, under a surprisingly hot sun while my wife sipped coffee felt wrong on many levels.

Pint number two (Junction) came at The Center Page near St. Paul's Cathedral. The Pub was located between St. Paul's and the Milennium Bridge, with dark rooms, sticky tables and windows through which you could watch the cold and rain. That alone made the beer more satisfying.

Pint number three (Adnams) came at Chequers Tavern. Chequers is stuck in an alley between the Royal Academy of Arts and St. James' Square. It's been there for hundreds of years and has a unique history as a former gathering place for games of checkers. With just six tables, it appeared to be a popular lunch spot for an older crowd. All around us were couples drinking white wine and talking business. Regardless, the beer was good (I was acquiring a taste for the slightly warmer and flatter bitters) and Shef raved about the apple pie.

Pints four (Fuller's), five and six (HSB) arrived when I finally had someone to drink with. Shefali's cousin, Priya, and her husband Sam hosted us in Fulham the night before we left for Bombay and took us out to The White Horse. It was a classic neighborhood pub and packed on a Tuesday night. The food was somewhat gourmet and served the best fish and chips I ate. It featured haddock instead of cod, and both the fish and chips were fried to perfection. It was served with the obligatory side of mashed peas and an interesting but unnecessary jalepeno tartar sauce.

London Recap Part 2: The Restaurants

Shefali and I spent four days vacationing in London on our way to Mumbai. Whenever we travel to a new place, we make it a goal to eat our way from one end of town to the other. This four-part series will highlight our experiences.

We had barely enough time (and money) to scratch the surface of London's restaurant scene, but we did find some great places. After four days of dining, we reached a few conclusions:

1. Ethnic food is always better in the big city. If you can't travel to the source, it's best to find the biggest city around, where there's a concentration of food lovers that know how to recreate dishes from home. In our few days, we ate drunken noodles, prawn toast, dim sum and curries worth the price of admission. While I'm proud of Durham's food scene, it's rare to blindly visit several restaurants featuring food from different parts of the world and walk out knowing you got what you paid for.

2. Dinner and dessert should be two separate adventures. With only a few days do explore, we ate dinner and dessert at different restaurants. This helped us see more of the city, read more menus, and separate dinner cravings from dessert cravings. For example, after we ate dim sum we said good-bye to our friends, headed north of Soho and found terrific creme brulee and red wine at Chez Gerarde on Charlotte Street.

London Recap Part I - The Markets

Shefali and I spent four days vacationing in London on our way to Mumbai. Whenever we travel to a new place, we make it a goal to eat our way from one end of town to the other. This four-part series will highlight our experiences.

After landing at Heathrow Airport and riding the tube into town, we visited Borough Market in Southwark and quickly learned that London has a vibrant local food scene. The city's diversity brings products from all over the globe, and the food vendors fill three city blocks. Many foods, like fish, eggs, dairy and veggies, are produced locally, but there were dozens of other booths offering goods imported from the regions of the world that know them best.

For example, heavily-accented Europeans handed us samples of blood orange and lemon-infused olive oils from Sicily, white and black truffle oil from Bologna, red-chile hummous (made locally by an Israeli family), and chorizo from Spain, quartered and served with arugula, roasted red peppers and tomatoes in a bun.

In addition to the classics, we stumbled upon less iconic treasures like ostrich burger, Croatian olive oils, zebra meat and vats of chicken and seafood, simmering in Vietnamese, Madras and Thai curries. In short, Borough Market was incredible. If you're ever in London, don't miss it.

Towards the end of the week we visited Shefali's cousin, Priya, in Fulham. Located west of London proper, Fulham has its own farmer's market. Open every morning, Priya explained, its booths cater to the ethnicities--Jewish, Indian and Slovak, for example--that have helped make London famous. Though foods like papad and matzo, produced and shared by families from places other than London, may or may not use ingredients from nearby farms, it definitely challenges the way I think about local food. In a city as historic and diverse as London, perhaps the people decide what's "local" just as much as the geography. If I've learned anything from traveling, it's that people will do anything to recreate the foods they ate at home. As a result, community-supported markets rely on the palates of the residents in addition to the land itself.

Over and Out

Shefali and I are traveling to London tonight, then onto Mumbai for ten days. Stay tuned for updates!