Monday, February 09, 2004

What’s That Smell?

Cuilinary updates:

1) The powdered hazlenut flour substitute at Trader Joe’s is great for breading fried fish, but not so great for making pancakes.  Which is disappointing because the idea of hazlenut pancakes was what got me out of bed this morning.  Life is full of these little tragedies.  Which brings me to:

2) It’s time for the pani puri to go.  We got it years and years ago at Haig’s, where a few bucks can bring so many piquant new experiences to your home. I’d done well there with a variety of shot-in-the-dark spice buys in the past.  I liked masala spice mixes anyway and this stuff was cheap, so I bought some - and it sat on the shelf.  I never used it, never touched it.  I couldn’t think of an opportune recipe.  Dust gathered on the cannister.  I suffered from kitchen inertia.  I was lame. 

But a few nights ago I pulled out the pani puri when I was seasoning some flour (regular white and whole wheat, not hazlenut) for chappatis.  Whole mustard seed, turmeric, paprika… pani puri!  I’ll do it!  And devil take the hindmost!

Hindmost indeed, I presciently muttered to myself as I plucked the masala from the rack.  I dumped in about half a teaspoonful - enough to taste, I figured, but not enough to ruin things.  I dribbled in a few tablespoons of water to start kneading the dough and the stink was instantaneous: Bumpass Hell.  Boiling Lake.  Devil’s Kitchen.  Nature’s super stinky sulphur pots.  My stomach turned on a dime.  O the humanity.

Okay, so it stank like a flaming portapotty - but I wasn’t going to let that dictate my behavior.  I may be many things, but I am not a quitter.  Just because the food I’m cooking for dinner makes the gorge rise in my gullet, that’s no reason to lay off.  I kept watering the rancid flour, knowing in my heart that the stench was attributable only to one thing - the fine brown powder I’d added to my otherwise innocuous baking supplies.  As I kneaded the bolus of spiced dough I got used to the odor - or maybe my receptors just burned out.  Either way, when Kel walked in her first question was whether the dog had become gravely incontinent.  No, honey - that’s just supper.

I finished making the chapatis and we ate them anyway - they were there and hot and actually not bad - a little sulphurous, but the other spices contributed a lot and whatever else we were eating as a main course was really tasty and flavorful (in a good way).  And now the pani puri masala is gone from my life, jettisoned at long last after one unsatisfactory usage - but in its wake it has left these now-obsolete ALTERNATIVE NAMES FOR PANI-PURI MASALA:

Raunchy Rancid
Pretty Pukey
Plenty Putrid
Super Stinky
Purely Poopy
Mucho Barfo
Purulenti
Ranko Stanko
- and my personal favorite: Fetid Reeking Stench Powder. 

Variety may be the spice of life, but with spices like this, life seems most like a variety of unmaintained compost dumps.  Seriously, people.  If this is how your kitchen smells, I never want to visit your bathroom.