Eating Tacos & Flan with Isa

None other than the glorious Ms. Isa Chandra Moskowitz!

Reigning overlord of the PPK! Cookbook author ExtraOrdinaire!

A couple weeks ago, Isa came to San Francisco to do a cooking demo at the famed Ferry Building Farmer's Market. Isa was cooking up a couple of recipes from her new cookbook, Appetite for Reduction. Not surprisingly, there was a massive convergence of vegans at this event! In fact the gal who introduced Isa said it was the biggest turnout they'd ever had for a cooking demo. Represent! Lots of friends from around the Bay Area came and it was really fun to see everyone... plus I got to stroll around the farmers market before hand and oogle all the beautiful food, buy $25 worth of super special heirloom beans, buy fancy breads, and eat vegan donuts. All in all, a good morning.

After all that cooking demo-ing and cooking demo-watching, we were all hungry... so a few of us pals headed over to Gracias Madre for lunch. I was so happy to finally try out this amazing restaurant that I have been hearing so much about. Luckily, I was not the only dork who needed to photograph everything we were served... turns out that Isa and I are equally dorky in this way (here, she is pictured with caesar salad, and Jopa in the background!). Though her camera is better than mine, which made me a little jealous. I'm sure she won't have to brighten all her pictures in photoshop, the way I did.

Gracias Madre is an awesome restaurant because it's all vegan, all organic, and all yummy! We ordered loads of appetizers to share amongst us... for maximum menu saturation. In addition to the caesar salad and a great order of fresh guacamole with fresh blue corn tortillas, we also got a cauliflower bake with cashew cheeze sauce and bread crumbs, a plate of amazing & perfectly tender roasted baby potatoes with cashew chipotle cream (hiding behind the cauliflower in the top left picture), a plate of steamed kale with pumpkin seeds, and a side of roasted winter squash with delicate seasoning. All totally delicious. In the bottom right is my lunch entree....

For my main entree, I ordered the tacos - and you can select your fillings: I picked kale, roasted poblanos, and squash... and they come served with a side of amazing black refried beans. It was so yummers! I love this goofy picture - thanks Alana!

Oh, you didn't think we ate so much that there was no room for dessert, did you? Oh no no no no NO! Not us. We actually shared 3 desserts, but these two were my favorite - and that was the general consensus amongst all 8 of us. On the right is the Mocha Cheezecake, which would have been the best thing in the world if I hadn't also tasted that FLAN. Soooooooooooooooooo good. I will go back to Gracias Madre and I will make sure to order my kale appetizers, so that I can feel slightly less remorseful when I pack down more flan flan flan after dinner.

We had coffee with dessert, because we are civilized and sophisticated people. Plus, our lunch was going on about 3 1/2 hours by now... and a coffee seemed like the right choice. Naturally, it was delicious - and since it's a vegan establishment, your delicious coffee comes with soy milk without you having to make a big deal about it and pay $1 extra just because someone opened a carton of soy milk.

Isa and I took a truly excellent selection of deadpan pictures together... in which we look like we are going to either burst into tears or rip someone's heart out. I will cherish those photos, but I will not share them with the general public! So, here's a very socially acceptable picture of the two of us, beaming with foodie delight and bellies full of delicious and nutritious vegan mexican food.

It was awesome to finally meet Isa, to spend the day with so many great buddies, and to share my first experience at Gracias Madre with all of them. What fun!

Foodie Fun From India

... I left for India with one half-empty suitcase, and came home with two suitcases stuffed full and rapidly approaching the maximum weight limit... This is me, on our last night, desperately weighing my bags to make sure they weren't too heavy! ha ha. So, just what was in those heavy bags? Well, lots of yoga books and yoga props... and also lots of food, of course!

Naturally, I had to buy spices in the land of spices. Now that I am home, I wish I had bought even more. This is just a sample... cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, coriander seeds, charoli nuts, and black cumin. I also got vanilla beans, fennel, organic tamarind and kokum! So exciting. I busted open that bag of coriander a few days ago, and started to grind it with my mortar and pestle - only to be completely amazed by the pungent smell. Seriously, I had no idea coriander could smell that wonderful! These spices are so fresh, it's absolutely miraculous... and I wish I had stuffed my whole suitcase full!

In addition to fresh spices, I also got a bunch of boxed up spice mixes. A couple of these are straight up chili powder, but most of them are specific mixes of spices for different recipes: sambar, pav bhaji, chat masala. Even for a spice mix like "Chat Masala," each brand's unique recipe can be really really different. I spent a long time at the store comparing all the different brands, and in the end I had to get two Chat Masala boxes... I just couldn't choose one!

And of course I brought home some sweeties too! A few sour punk candies, some delicious amla candies (gooseberries), green mango jam/chutney, and whole heavy can of Alphonso Mango Puree. That can almost didn't make it home, I was so afraid my bags would be too heavy... but I'm glad it did! I'm gonna bust out some mango lassi!

Last but not least... cooooooookboooooooooks! We went to the biggest bookstore in Pune and probably spent about three hours there looking at vegan cookbooks and yoga books and graphic novels... heaven! We looked through SO many cookbooks and I ended up with these three: two books specializing on South Indian food (my favorite!), one little book on dal and roti recipes, one on Chaat recipes, and one soy cookbook that I just couldn't resist.

I can't wait to break these open and start using all my special spices and cooking up some fun! In fact, the whole method I used to pick out which spices to buy was to look through all the recipes and notice the ingredients I didn't recognize from home. So, now... armed with all my purchases, I should be ready to hit these books and get to work!

This concludes my series of posts from my trip to India... Thanks for reading!

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming!

Plane Snacks, Indian-Style!

Anytime you are about to sit on a plane for +/- 20 hours, you KNOW you want plane snacks. Especially when the airline's vegan food leaves so much to be desired (you really let me down, Cathay Pacific!). So, Jane and I picked up some goodies on our last day in Mumbai... to tide us over on the plane:

Starting at Top Left, going clockwise:

Little square nut brittle candies: beautiful, yummy.

Moong crackers: blah. boring. we both ate a couple. I threw out the rest a couple of days ago.

Black Sesame Candy: Okay, we cracked this open before we even got on the plane. Busted! We both took one bite and were filled with regret that we had not bought 200,000 packets of this stuff.

Flax crackers: very nice indeed and a perfect plane snack! Healthy, savory without being too salty, filling, and fun to eat.

Little fig squares: You can't really see them too well here - but these were sort of like super yummy lara bar bits - figs and dates and nuts mixed together into little nuggets of delicious and nutritious yums.

I had to include one more close-up picture of those brittle candies, because they were so gorgeous, and so delicious. In fact, I still have one left of each flavor. Mixed nuts in a saffron brittle... the one with dried rose petals on top. So beautiful and tasty. These reminded me so much of the sohan as ali candies I make each year for the Persian New Year. Lovely & delicious!

Mumbai Makes My Belly SUPER HAPPY

We were in India for just about 6 weeks - most all of which was spent in Pune, doing yoga all day, every day. When we weren't doing yoga, we were either eating to re-fuel for our next yoga class, or taking notes on our previous yoga class. It was awesome. Luckily though, one must fly in and out of Mumbai (aka Bombay), and this gave us a reason to spend the last two days of our trip sightseeing in Mumbai. It was awesome.

Jane and Me at the Gateway to India

There we were, walking all around the great city of Mumbai - grooving on what a totally awesome and interesting place it is... when we found ourselves over in the swanky neighborhood of Malabar Hill. We had already been walking for hours, we had been to Chowpatty Beach, we'd seen a wild cobra eating a wild parrot (for realz!!), we'd been to the Jain Temple and the park,... and frankly, we were getting hungry. It was our last day in India, and we wanted out bellies to go out in style... but there wasn't a restaurant in sight.

Walking along the street, we spotted a friendly-looking woman carrying a bag of groceries and we nabbed her! "Do you know a place around here where we could get some lunch?" YES! By the glorious hand of fate, she led us to a place called "Guru Dakshinayan" - which offered an amazing feast of South Indian food, which is just what we were hoping for.

Seriously friends, the food here was SO GOOD. If ever there were a meal to inspire me to religious levels of rapture and speaking in tongues, this was it. So much so that I didn't even stop to think about taking a picture of our first dish, an "Adai Masala Dosa," a dosa made with "mixed pulses." Of course, just about any time you order a dosa, it comes with a bowl of sambar (that's the bowl of light, brothy, spicy soup you see on the table) and a bowl of fresh coconut chutney. I love me some sambar, but I'm not afraid to say when a restaurant's sambar isn't up to snuff. Happily, Guru Dakshinayan serves up some really really delicious sambar.

On the other hand, not every meal in India comes with two totally stunning little side sauces like this one did. Do you see those little bowls in this picture? They were filled with the most amazing substances - thick, spread-like sauces with such rich and complex flavors... we were completely in love. Not at all overbearing, but really complimentary to our dishes. Apparently one was tomato-based and the other onion-based... but honestly, I don't know if we ever would have guessed that... the flavors were just incredible. How much would I LOVE to have those recipes!??

Also featured in this picture is our lovely homemade ginger ale. Refreshing! Perfectly sweet! Sparkly! Light! Cooling! Warming! Perfect!

Finally... after we finished our dosa (which jumped right into our mouths before I could photograph it), we were served our "Ambassador Idli" dish: mini idlies soaked in sambar and served with onion, coconut, coriander (bottom left of the picture). Based on the sambar, the side dishes, the dosa, and the ginger ale, I was already in love with this restaurant. Jane was still oohing and ahhing over her last few bites of the dosa - "Jane," I said, "It gets better!" One bite of Ambassador Idli had me ready to run away and elope with the chef. SO GOOD. Freaking freaky freak-out good.
Even though we were actually already getting full, we weren't ready to call it quits with so many more things on the menu! So we ordered "Bisibelle Hulianna:" rice & lentil cooked with vegetables, spices, served with papaddum". This was not quite as swoon-worthy as the idli dish, but still totally delicious, and we still ate the whole entire thing (obviously!). Loved the little crunchy bits sprinkled on top and the thick, perfectly-spiced gravy.

A friendly fellow at the next table mentioned that the coffee here was especially good, and was a must-have. So, at the end of our meal, we both ordered coffee. Generally, in India tea & coffee = MILK... so I was really stoked that they were perfectly happy to bring me black coffee. The coffee arrived piping HOT in a little metal cup, which you then decant into the little bowl below... to help it cool. You can even pour it back and forth to just the right temperature for you and your tastebuds. Normally, I am not a black coffee person, but this really was excellent, excellent coffee, and I wish I could have another cup right now.

Here is Jane, enjoying her coffee. It was an excellent end to our meal, and an excellent boost for the rest of the day that we spent walking, walking, walking across Mumbai before getting on a plane at 1:30 in morning, headed for home.

We loved this place so much, we stayed until they closed the place down... we were the last ones to leave! What a great meal to have on the last day of our trip.... we felt very fulfilled! Next time I'm back in Mumbai, I'll be sure to come back here again, and hopefully I'll have my favorite foodie travel pal Jane with me again.

From Airport Food to Indian Street Markets

More pics and tales from my eating adventures in India...

AIRPORT FUN

Airport food San Francisco-style.

Our plane out of SF was delayed by many hours, causing us to miss our connection... but also causing us to get a voucher for lunch from the airline. I just want to give some mad props to the SF international wing for having this awesome mediterranean place with tons of vegan options! Hummus! Tabouli! Dolmas! Way better than I expected. Nice work, SFO!

Airport Food, Delhi Style.

We missed out flight to Mumbai, so we were sent to Delhi first, and then to Mumbai. This gave us enough time to go through customs and then eat samosas and veg puffs in the Delhi airport food court. Right on!

MARKET FUN

Beautiful lentils and legumes!

Here I am sorting through piles and piles of spice packets at a little store in Mumbai.

So many spices!

A typical display of veggies and herbs... nicely laid out on the ground. Limes, red carrots, pigeon peas, herbs up the wazoo, fresh curry leaves (the best!!!)... ahhh

I know you'll all appreciate this... a kitchen wares shop in Tulsi Bhag, Pune. These kitchen supply stores are just amazing and completely irresistible. Lucky me that my travel companion was just as much a foodie and kitchen fiend as I am. I think we went in pretty much every kitchen store we passed... just in case! I love the way the stainless steel and copper sparkle and glisten. Somehow these Indian kitchen wares have a combination of practicality and beauty that I find quite wonderful. Of course I bought stuff to bring home- little containers for my spices, a thali set (plates and mini bowls), plus a few different "tupperware"-style containers. I love them!

Produce! There is no shortage of amazing fruits and veggies in India. Watermelon, okra, beans, corn, onions, cantaloupe... It was so great to have a kitchen in our apartment, because we could buy pretty much whatever caught our eye and cook it up at home!

HOME COOKIN'

Here I am in our little kitchen. We only had two burners, but that did the trick! We had to go out and buy some spices in order to stock our kitchen - which was completely empty upon arrival. Eating out in India is very inexpensive (and delicious!), so we usually ate out for one meal, and had another meal at home - mostly just for the convenience and comfort of eating at home.

Honestly, our creations weren't always so wonderful, but we gradually got our act together and made some good food. We found some great herbed tofu (aka "soy paneer") at the grocery store! Here's an example of a home-cooked meal, I think Jane made this one - veggies and tofu sauteed up with some brown rice. Nice, simple, yummy.

And here's another home-cooked meal... spaghetti with herbed tofu tomato sauce (and spinach - we ate spinach in practically every meal) by me... and a lovely little beet & carrot salad with cilantro sauce by Jane. Yum!

SNACKS!

Jane and I were really snack-crazy in Pune. India is the Land of Snax. Seriously, there are delicious and alluring snacks on every corner. And many more between the two corners. Sweet, salty, sweet & salty, sour, sweet & sour, etc etc. You can find it all. Crunchy! Crispy! Fresh! Above, you see my photo-re-enactment of our daily snack dilemna: Good or Evil? Mini bananas or Chili-Pepper Act II Popcorn (vegan!). Just like a little angel and a little devil - tempting me! I'd bet anything that I ate mini bananas AND popcorn that night!

Here are some of the snacks we tried:

Baked potato wedges - verdict: FAIL! good spices & flavor, okay texture, somehow not too compelling. The bag was not finished, which really says a lot.

Soya Snax - verdict: WIN! We loved these! They were made with okara, and had a wonderful graham crackery flavor. We went back a few times to get more, but could never find them again. Which was sad

Sour Punk gummy stix - verdict: WIN! Especially cola flavor. Loved these naughty little candies so much, and was very sad when I went to stock up for my return home and they were all out of cola flavor. Woe is me.

More Snack Reviews:

Mini Bananas: WIN! Duh! I ate so many of these. I also did many drawings of them. I love mini bananas forever.

Biscuits: FAIL! These little whole grain biscuits caught our eye... but they were pretty gross. I think we each ate one. Then I tried to give them out to the hungry street dogs, who also turned up their noses at these biscuits. Seriously? Dear Mr. Cookie Maker, that is a BAD SIGN.

Kurkure snacks: WIN! Because we wanted to be very thorough about these important matters, we were sure to try every available flavor. Many, many snacks in India are not vegan... but luckily Kurkure snacks are. They are essentially vegan Cheetos... with crazy spicy Indian flavors. GOOD. After much empirical testing, we reached the conclusion that Green Chutney Rajasthani Style was the superior flavor and we ate more of these than I should probably admit. I love them, and I miss them... but it probably just as well for my health that our love story was brought to a sudden end when I returned home.

... more photos and tales from India on the way ...

Classic Components of Eating Out in India

{even though I've been home for a couple of weeks, I still have lots to share with you from my trip to India... so here goes!}

There are a few things that were always on the table when we ate out in India...

First: the pickles! Green Mango pickle, or maybe lemon pickle... but always yummy. And always served with raw onions (which I don't really groove on), and slices of fresh lime (which I totally groove on). Yeah! A little squeeze of lime and a little pickle is a great addition to lunch or dinner!

Then, the lime soda. I know I've mentioned this before, but I really love the lime sodas. Now that I'm back home, I'm happy to see that my lime tree is packed full with limes... so I can make myself as many lime sodas as I want. A glass with about 3/4 inch of fresh lime juice, a little pitcher of sugar syrup, and a cold bottle of club soda - so you can mix the drink to your own personal standards of perfection. Warning: pour in the sugar before the club soda or the whole thing will fizz over like a crazy high school science project! (I learned this the hard way)

Yummy food! (Please excuse the clearly non-vegan element, which I was served but did not eat). This is a thali lunch from the Asha Dining Hall in Pune. All you can eat (and they are seriously back at the table every two minutes offering you more) for less than $2! Amazing! In India, you eat with your right hand, which is fun for me... but was a little more challenging for my left-handed travel partner.

After your meal they always bring you a little bowl of warm water with slice of fresh lime to rinse & clean your hands.

It's very elegant and it's such a nice way to finish the meal!

Also, when they bring your bill, they always bring a little bowl of fennel &/or anise seeds. There are all different kinds of mixes - some are straight up seeds, but usually there's a little sugar or some sugar coated fennel seeds in the mix too. I love this stuff! It's such a nice little topper to end with. I bought a few different mixes to bring home.

This one is my favorite. One of the restaurants we frequented had this mix: Fresh fennel seeds, Dhana Dal, and little cubic sugar crystals. The dal bits are a tiny bit salty, the fennels are licorice-y, and of course the sugars are sweet. It's a wonderful combo! I bought all the separate ingredients and mixed it up once I got home. Yum!