Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

My first encounter with Indian food was when I was 19 and in Junior College. I met an Indian girl in one of my classes who was Moslem and from Hyderabad and she invited me to her home to have dinner with her husband and 2 children. She made a chicken curry which she taught me how to prepare and I have been making it ever since. She made it with a variety of spices, browned onions and then either yogurt or buttermilk. You can adjust the level of heat that you want with the amount of Cayenne pepper you add. It makes a rich sauce that goes really well with plain white rice and mango chutney. My whole family and all my friends love it and always ask for it. We became friends over the course of the semester and much later I named my first child after the name she gave to hers. We may have drifted apart over the years, but I remember her well each time I make her chicken curry.

Robyn: PLEASE see if you could get me the recipe for that Brighton Beach carrot cake! Seriously. I have been jonesing for it ever since you first wrote about it!

I love Cream of Wheat -- not the quick-cooking type, but the real thing. I used to make it for my kids when they were small & they called it "baby dinner" because of the picture of a baby that used to be on the side of the box. I would make it sort of thick & pour it onto a dinner plate where it would all smooth out rather flat. Then I'd sprinkle some cinnamon & sugar over it -- maybe a little milk at the edges -- and the kids would start eating it at the edges and work around in a spiral until they got to the center. My mother & grandmother had fed it to me in the same way, so I always felt this was sort of a family tradition. Maybe it was sort of an ethnic tradition as well (my grandmother had come here from Slovakia).

Recently I began using Cream of Wheat to make dumplings for my after-Thanksgiving turkey carcass soup. I make it according to directions using very little milk so it comes out very thick, then let it cool a bit before mixing in an raw egg. Then I drop small spoonfuls into the simmering broth, cover it & let it cook for about 10 minutes. It's fantastic! Probably not maximum nutrition here, as it's made from the wheat kernel after the bran has been removed, but it's still a great food.

This is incredible. It's not enough that this corn-based food has brought the misery of obesity & type II diabetes to this country, we now have to export it to the few indigenous groups that have managed to maintain their traditional foods & lifestyles & absence of these diseases?? Doesn't Burger King make enough money already?? It used to be Coca-cola that did this in the 60s. Shame on us!

It's disgusting. I heard they were toasting themselves with $500 bottles of wine. Are these people so disconnected with reality not to be ashamed as to how this must appear to the poor in the world?? I'm so glad that fool is out of the WH in 2 months!

I'm thinking the Obamas need a Slow-Food chef in the White House to introduce them to REAL food. They probably don't have the time to devote to cooking & thus have never really gotten to know really good food. Of course, I could be entirely wrong, but I'll bet the next years in the White House will be a real culinary education for them, based on what the press reports as their favorite foods.

It makes me proud to be Czech!