As a lover of authentic Indian cuisine, especially South Indian vegetarian dishes, I find Chandri’s hints and tips for the preparation and cooking of her recipes hugely insightful and instructive. I am already bringing to my home table dishes that surpass anything that I can find in Indian restaurants here in Germany. Like Chandri, I do not see food simply as a means to feed the human body. For me it is inextricably interwoven with culture, history, psychology, emotion, social context and so much more. Food in the human context with a balanced perspective is much more than a nutritional process and a pleasurable activity. It can be and is, as Chandri so eloquently demonstrates, a catalyst for human growth and societal development.
I look forward to each culinary episode with great anticipation. I never fail to enjoy Chandri’s thoughts and explanations as well as the gastronomic results.
Let’ s have more lots more please (in all senses!).
Once again a fascinating discussion! The fraught relationship between words and the culinary experiences described by them reminds me of studying Gottlob Frege's discussion of Sense and Reference in a course on analytical philosophy. But really it is rephrasing the statement of Shakespeare's Juliet: a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But do "curries" indeed taste the same, if they have different names?
As a lover of authentic Indian cuisine, especially South Indian vegetarian dishes, I find Chandri’s hints and tips for the preparation and cooking of her recipes hugely insightful and instructive. I am already bringing to my home table dishes that surpass anything that I can find in Indian restaurants here in Germany. Like Chandri, I do not see food simply as a means to feed the human body. For me it is inextricably interwoven with culture, history, psychology, emotion, social context and so much more. Food in the human context with a balanced perspective is much more than a nutritional process and a pleasurable activity. It can be and is, as Chandri so eloquently demonstrates, a catalyst for human growth and societal development.
I look forward to each culinary episode with great anticipation. I never fail to enjoy Chandri’s thoughts and explanations as well as the gastronomic results.
Let’ s have more lots more please (in all senses!).
Peter, Germany, October 2021
Once again a fascinating discussion! The fraught relationship between words and the culinary experiences described by them reminds me of studying Gottlob Frege's discussion of Sense and Reference in a course on analytical philosophy. But really it is rephrasing the statement of Shakespeare's Juliet: a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But do "curries" indeed taste the same, if they have different names?
I remember the bondas! Beth called them "bongos". What that does to our perception of them, who knows?! :-)