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TexasMadness
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Dinner and a Movie

Over the past 6 months or so, my extended family has spent less and less time together. The Monarch (the hubby - thanks Corbin for making that nickname stick! emoticon

) and I have been so busy trying to prepare for the wedding, my parents spend a lot of time at the farm, my brother and SIL had a baby. Everyone is busy!!!

So a few weeks ago I started talking about having regular family dinners again...but with a twist! I collect cookbooks and I've purchased some odd ones over the years. I figured this was a perfect excuse to use them. So we've started a "Foods of the World Dinner and Movie" night. The Foods of the World books are the old Time Life cookbooks from the 1970s that I had never made a recipe from (27 books in total!) and now that has changed!

Each Sunday, we are meeting at someone's house in the afternoon and we will spend the afternoon cooking together and then eating a great meal from a selected country followed by watching a movie about or from that country!

Last night was India Night. It was GREAT! It was a little different than our plan because of people's schedules and hubby and I did all the cooking. We had originally just invited my brother and SIL so there were to be 4 of us. But my parents got back from out of town early, and good friends of ours wanted to come as well. So what started off as a dinner for 4, became a dinner for 10 adults with 2 babies and a toddler! Good thing we had bought plenty! We have an excellent Indian grocer near our house so we were able to find everything we needed and most things come in bulk so we lucked out. If you aren't familiar with Indian food, you've got to give it a try! Here's the menu for the night:

Appetizer: Since most people were arriving in stages and some folks might get there an hour before eating, we made an interesting appetizer which could be assembled quickly and handed to people as they came in. The dish is called Bhel Poori. It is basically the Indian version of a tostada or chalupa. The bottom is a piece of crisp poori bread, very similar to a fried tortilla. On top of this is, bhel - a snack mix with fried noodles, nuts, dried fruit, etc - boiled potato cubes, chickpeas, yogurt, cilantro chutney and tamarind chutney. It was delicious!!!

Main Dishes:

Mattar Paneer - literally, this translates to Peas and Cheese. The dish is a tomato and pea sauce with fried Indian cheese cubes. Very good.

Sag Paneer - Spinach and Cheese. Same fried cheese but this time in a puree of spinach with lots of spices.

Dhal - creamed lentils

Sides:

Basmati Rice

Naan - Indian bread, similar to pita bread

Riata - a yogurt "salad" (yogurt, onions, mint, salt) that is poured on top of spicy foods to cool the palate

Pappadums - crispy cracker things...I don't know how to describe them!

Drinks:

KingFisher beer - Indian style lager...the company also operates an airline (???)

Chai - spiced tea with milk and honey

Dessert:

Kheer - rice pudding

And then we watched the move Slumdog Millionaire. It was really good and I highly recommend it!

I'll be posting some recipes in the Food section when I get a chance.

Next week is Russia! I already have a menu planned but I don't have a movie picked out. Anybody know a good one?

4/6/2009, 4:05 pm

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PerpetuallyCurious
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Re: Dinner and a Movie

How fun!! The Bhel Poori and the Sag Paneer both sound delicious to me! The Mattar Paneer too.

As for Russian movies..... the only one coming to mind right now is that old James Bond movie "From Russia With Love" emoticon

I believe they made Anna Karenina into a movie but I've never seen it.

I was curious so just looked on Netflix. They have several versions of Anna Karenina, a few of War and Peace, and if you type in "Russia" you get many, many offerings. I really like netflix emoticon

Last edited by PerpetuallyCurious, 4/6/2009, 6:14 pm

4/6/2009, 6:05 pm

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MagiCat
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Re: Dinner and a Movie

Doctor Zhivago!!

Melodramatic and wonderful, love the music too.

4/6/2009, 6:45 pm

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TexasMadness
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Re: Dinner and a Movie

Good suggestions!

By the way, I was told that it's Easter next Sunday! I can't really manage to keep track of these things. emoticon

So since the Russians are famous for their Easter celebrations, we figure we will do Russian Easter (even though officially, Orthodox Easter isn't until the week after). So we can join in on egg dyeing along with everyone else! The traditional meal, however is laden with meat (which is restricted for the 40 days prior for Lent) so we'll have to make some compromises there.

However...we are tempted to try caviar as it as a traditional part of the Russian zakuska (a smorgasbord appetizer table). But there is also the "poor man's caviar" made from eggplant (a traditional dish) and a weird sounding mock-caviar in fancier groceries made from algae. I've never had it...but I hate seafood. Does it just taste like fish? And is it really that expensive to give just a few people a taste? What are we talking about here - $50 for the smallest size? Obviously, I have no clue. Probably we won't get any, but it's interesting to think about!

4/7/2009, 4:02 am

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de Corbin
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Re: Dinner and a Movie

That sounds like an extremely fun idea!

The Indian food sounds great - I haven't had Indian food since we moved to the boonies...

As far as caviar goes...

Well, I like it. There is a big difference in taste between types of caviar. The "Lumpfish" caviar sold in the average grocery store for about $5 a jar (the black is better than the red) is passable to give you an idea of what caviar is like, but the better stuff - real Russian caviar (costing from, say $25 on up to, literally, hundreds of dollars) - is distinctly different. Much more subtle flavor which is noticeable even to someone like me who isn't a gourmand.

To describe it, you really have to look at two things - the taste and the texture.

Texture first... imagine little tiny, tiny water balloons filled with salt water. You roll them around on your tongue, then pop them with your teeth. They're a little salty before they're popped, but very salty afterwards. A burst of flavor. Good caviar is going to feel firmer in the mouth, cheap caviar feels a little mushier.

Flavor... mostly salty. That's what everybody notices first. There is a flavor kind of like fish, but not really. Actually, it just reminds you of fish, so that you know you're eating something from the water, but it isn't really a fishy taste. The cheap caviar is more fishy, the good stuff is less. And there are also some under flavors which I won't even try to describe, except to say that in the good stuff, these come forward more, while in the cheap stuff, it's hard to pick them out from the general salt and fishish flavor.

You should try it. Serve it cold (on ice, if possible), with some kind of light, UNSALTED, unflavored cracker or those thin little toast things. you may not like it, and you may never want it again, but you should be able to hold your head up proudly in any company and say "Yes, I've had caviar. It made me gag."

It's one of those flavors, like blue cheese or smoked oysters, that's right on the very edge of being palatable - if you like it, you'll love it. If you don't like it, you'll hate it. There's not much middle ground.

Next week, I'll try to talk you into raw oysters...

---

4/10/2009, 3:35 pm

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Saijen SilverWolf
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Re: Dinner and a Movie

What an awesome idea! I wish we had more people close-by that would enjoy doing something like this. My mother and my sister would both love to do something like this. DH's family wouldn't care much for it. The food...they are real country people...lots of potatoes, fried meat, lard laden beans, cornbread type stuff...and as for movies and what-not...they prefer the old timey westerns (even the females) and such....or some of the really stupid reality shows.

don't get what's so cool about all of that..but, that's just me.

I'm excited to read more about the meals y'all have and all. DH, I can say, likes to try different things, so he'd be OK with something like this.

Naan bread...ooo that stuff is soo good. My best friend makes it every year at Samhain to go with the butternut squash soup we have. It's wonderful to dip into the soup.

---
Blessed Be,
~*~ Saijen ~*~

~~*~~

.~~*~~

4/11/2009, 5:15 am

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TexasMadness
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Re: Dinner and a Movie

Well, Russian dinner got postponed. My mom and SIL weren't feeling well and I was at the farm to milk. We thought about canceling but sorta thought we would go ahead anyway and just have everyone out to the farm. And then we completely forgot that everything would be closed for Easter! So the Russian market, where we planned on getting most of the stuff, wasn't open. Ah well, it was better anyway since not everyone would probably have made it. There's always next week!

Corbin, I cringed the whole time I read your description. I'm just not sure I'm going to like those things...

Last edited by TexasMadness, 4/13/2009, 7:38 pm

4/13/2009, 7:37 pm

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de Corbin
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Re: Dinner and a Movie

TexasMadness wrote:
Corbin, I cringed the whole time I read your description. I'm just not sure I'm going to like those things...

Oh, come on! No guts, no glory.

If I tried to describe what eating a chicken egg was like before you'd had one, it wouldn't sound so good either emoticon