No sweets till the Brits got there??? NONE??? *faints*

Carumba, they sound dangerous.:mg:

Thanks Pie. The vegetarian restaurant we went to used to sell Southern Indian food, so I'm familiar with many of the dishes on your list. And it is a very different style. Mum & Dad were so excited when I took them for a Thali.

You're right in that Northern dishes do seem to be a lot greasier.
Add that to the Brit-Indian need to serve everything in sauce (to replace the gravy that was ubiquitous when the first restaurants opened here) and I can see why it's a bit of a difference.

Here is a link to one of the most popular venues in Leicester for celebrations, The Jungle Club. Turn the music down!) Trust me, this is in the centre of an Asian area and most of the clientele are Asian. But then many of the Indian/ Pakistani people I know are Punjabi, Kashmiri or Gujarti.

I'm still not sure about your statement that it's not Indian though :P

It's a long-standing joke with one of my friends; he calls me 'poor southern trash' and I accuse him of eating north-Indian garbage. But neither of us is 'really' Indian anymore. As I say, I just play one on tv.

Pickle, in the Indian context, does not involve cucumbers. Just a crap-ton of chilies, salt, oil and spices. They are dangerous.:flamer:

I figured that restaurant Indian food was much the same as restaurant Chinese food. Or Mexican. Yummy, with funny names that make you feel all sophisticated and stuff if you can pronounce them, but not terribly authentic. Or healthy. But yummy.

I bought Mum some mango chutney for poppadoms.
I far prefer raita, or even onion salad. Dad likes brinjal pickle, but that is simply too dangerous to have in the house.

Anyway, turns out I bought "medium" chutney.
Which means it has a few limp-wristed spices in it.
Mum thinks it's too spicy :(
I can't even offer to eat it myself, too sweet for me. So I've suggested she has one piece with mango chutney & one piece with yoghurt. Seems to be working so far.

Finishing off another dhaal for tea tonight.
Is it wrong that I miss the layer of ghee floating on top?

Yes.

Yeah, that's what I figured... dangerous.:eek:

We know that, you're as American as pizza pie. :D

Dangerous? Now I'm imagining repeated dull, thudding explosions, bad language about the furnishings igniting filtering out through blast-broken windows, sooty rolling fireballs hovering above the row housing -- or above SundaeDad's recliner, and Simon Pegg rushing in in one of those small police cars from Hot Fuzz to find out what all the fuss is.

Yeah, I caught "Hot Fuzz" on cable last night, and laughed my acidophilus off.

You can just imagine Police Sergeant Nicholas Angel channeling Hoodwinked: 'They're evil!! I'll prove it!"

One of my favourite films!

Have you seen Shaun of the Dead yet Urbane?

Brinjal pickle (and lime pickle too) are not explosive on contact with air - silly. The bacteria in the human gut does prime them, but the explosion occurs at a porcelain level... if you get my drift. That and it feels like a red hot poker has been shoved up your jaxie.

Yay, glad you liked Hot Fuzz too.
It's in my Top Ten.

Pieces of SotD, yeah. Plenty of fun. Next time I'll actually try to see it from the beginning instead of surfing into it halfway through.

Chileheads say things like "If it burns going in and burns coming out, it was good!" Others make the bath echo with shouts of "Come on, ice creammmm!!!"

US patrol cars run to large sedans for their combination of stability at speed and luggage capacity to haul police gear around, including more batteries to run the lights off of when the engine is off. The latest new feature is LED light bars, very compact and low drag. Might pay for themselves in fuel consumption. I don't know if World's Wildest Police Videos plays in the UK, but it shows a lot of US police cruisers when they aren't showing a foreign segment. The famous shot with the road engineer giving an interview about safety improvements on a dual carriageway that hadn't previously been up to snuff -- and right in the middle of his remarks, a light-blue hatchback climbs the bank behind him and gets all crosswise -- that one gets regular play, I think because we like his "stiff upper lip under pressure" glance at the end of the segment.

Wrenching the topic back to food, it is now true US policemen are eating more bagels and fewer doughnuts. Quite in the police tradition -- round food, hole in the middle. Less fat and sugar.

This thread was so much fun, I'm resurrecting it for any further remarks, further adventures in Indian eating, etc.

Frozen Naan from Whole Foods (I think the manufacturer is Tandoori Kitchen, but I'm not sure) is surprisingly good.