Indian Spices

[RoughShod]

Went to pay the receiver of revenue some salary taxes and noticed a meat outlet selling meat at bargain prices. Went in and found the place smelling strongly of what I would call indian spices not to mention the hint of incense in the air no doubt from the many indian patrons there.

I noticed a pack of 12 spice masala that had a deep burnt orange look and a pungency I did not find attractive and decided to take the plunge into something new.

Today pork cubes went into braised onions and mixed with copious amounts of this mixture actually tasted quite nice. So went full on for at least two meals worth. Tasting the wickedly nice tasting gravy I remembered something I had read about called the maillard reaction. It seems to be quite a complex reaction but is responsible for the taste in food (like browned meat tastes better than boiled meat and seems to occur above 150 degrees celcius) and I decided to reduce the mixture and as the bottom dried out and 'pyrolyzed' would scrape it off and mix it back into the mixture.

Seems like a big mistake, seemed to taste bland compared to the runny gravy mixture that had sharp and defined taste.Unfortunately although I experiment a lot and sometimes get great tastes ,I never write down what I do. This is the ideal place to do it...this place never seems to get misplaced

It seems a lot of flavours are made using the maillard reaction without using the genuine products to produce it. I was surprised the masala lost its taste with heat?

I started an organic garden recently(very much infantile stage ) with herbs. My sister gave me quite a few but with no names attached. I planted them and noticed one that as it bloomed really looked like a weed. I managed to place the others after looking on the internet and they grew up respectably. But the weed seem to grow like one and outgrew them all in unruly unlovely branching limbs. My mom identified it the other day as a rocket 'plant'. I found that it is good in raw salads but should never be cooked for too long a time or it loses its flavour. I have heard that vitamin C also looses its efficacy if cooked at boiling point(oxidizes into something else?)

I did not realize food was such a science.

Growing plants is a science. Cooking plants is a science. Living healthily it seems is a science. And with my short term memory it is quite likely a science I won't remember unless practiced everyday. But cooking and growing plants really is not a life long mission for me .Anyone wanna marry me and save me from that.

Anyway, masala spices actually seem quite tasty without being overbearing.Would I eat it everyday?, the only thing I would eat everyday is salt

[moll]

Too much salt isn't good for you, but I couldn't eat anything without it...

You're quite adventurous, Roughshod.....I don't really experiment much, I just keep making the same old things I really like watching cookery programmes and I sit and think, must try that, it sounds nice! but I never seem to have the time to experiment, or if I have the time, I never seem to have the ingredients I need...

I don't know why I can't just end a sentence with a full stop, it always has to be either a smilie or a ......

I planted some potatoes at school with the kids last week, because as I said in the other topic, I'm the Eco person in school and that's one of the things we have to do, and this is going to save the planet the organisation, the Potato Council or whatever it is, sent the seed potatoes and all the instructions (thankfully bcs what I know about planting potatoes, you could write on a stamp)

And with the instructions, there was a Risk Assessment. This shows how &^%$%$£"!" ridiculous this country has become, that there has to be a Risk Assessment for children to make a hole and stick a potato in it.

[Hedgehog]

We are always being told to cut down on salt in UK. I get lectured every time I go to doctors. But I dont use salt in cooking and dont add it once food is served. Yet...my blood pressure is VERY and I mean Very HIGH. Salt is said to be a factor causing high blood pressure

If you dont put enough salt in food in Egypt it can be taken as an insult. I used to have to warn visitors that I did not take a lot of salt because of medical reasons therefore they would have to add more and no insult was intended.....

[RoughShod]

I eat quite a large amount of salt but that being said I also expel huge amounts of it through sweat(clean sweat that does not have the ripened sweat odour). I drink a lot of water (mainly through tea) and quite likely lose a lot of other nutrients by sweating.

This is all sounding quite gross but I check that my pee is reasonably clear . If it is not I drink even more water just as it is. My daughter admitted to me that she had trouble with stinking sweat and I asked her about the colour of her pee. The reason why I asked this is that sweat also dumps bodily waste through sweat if it cannot do so through the urine. The body has to decide between using water resources to dump waste in urine or to cool the body down and if it is going to use water to cool the body down it may as well use that water to get rid of waste. My theory anyway. So if pee is very dark and smelly I would assume that maximum waste is being dumped into the minimum amount of water. Or one is really assimilating huge amounts of bad products that have no use to the body with little water intake.(like hectic ciggerrette smoking)

I smoke about 60 ciggerrettes a day and had my blood pressure, sugar levels and cholesterol checked the other day and it was all normal. Might be because I make sure I am well hydrated. I also do not eat fattening things except on the odd occasion(cut fat off meat, use only seed oils that omega 3 and 6 rich, eat vegetables ...my least favourite is practically any vegetable, except tomato which I have heard is a fruit anyway).

Potatoes Moll, I love them. That RISK thing though really seems to indicate a culture of geeks taking over from the 'fly by the seat of the pants' Jocks. It is well and good to be carefull like knowing not to drive over a thousand meter sheer cliff in a car, but when there is a warning about riding over a molehill in your self driven peddle car at the age of 6 because a mole might stick out his head and bite you..............that is a bit far fetched.

Hedgy, were I to eat your food I most probably would not notice the lack of salt, I would be too busy eye'ing out the salty chef who made it

[raymon]

I smoke about 60 ciggerrettes a day and had my blood pressure, sugar levels and cholesterol checked the other day and it was all normal. Might be because I make sure I am well hydrated. I also do not eat fattening things except on the odd occasion(cut fat off meat, use only seed oils that omega 3 and 6 rich, eat vegetables ...my least favourite is practically any vegetable, except tomato which I have heard is a fruit anyway).

Good gracious! You know you have to cut back the cigarette consumption for many other reasons!

[RoughShod]

It is a good thing I did not tell you what I use to keep so well hydrated Raymon However some liquids definetly behave more as diaretic than hydrating.