Howdy everybody! I have been a private caterer for about fifteen years, cooking (amongst others) Chinese, Thai, Sushi, Indian, Middle Eastern, Mexican foods... Here are some cooking lessons and a copy of my cookbook.
UPDATE (as of March 14/1998) I am still in India, and have just spent a month in the Gujarat area. I have found a few new dishes for the cookbook -- including a peanut curry, and a sweet yogurt curry. I expect that my new cookbook will be ready by early September, so please stay tuned... I will be putting about 1/3 of this new book (my second cookbook) on the internet (plus my complete original cookbook -- available below) for free. Then you can decide if it will be worth buying the whole thing!
UPDATE (as of Feb 3/1998). I am in India right now, and I am working on my new cookbook. It should be four to five times as big as my original, and way better! For those who do not have the original, please get it lower down on this page. And here are the probable CONTENTS FOR MY NEW COOKBOOK (in progress)
The lessons are collections of simple recipes I taught last winter at a series of evening workshops: workshops: THAI #1, THAI #2, BASIC WOK, MARK'S FAVOURITES!, EASY MEXICAN, SOUTH INDIAN VEGETARIAN.
The TABLE OF CONTENTS has two parts to it: RECIPES and INFO PAGES. Here is a SAMPLE INFO PAGE -- WOKS AND STIR-FRYING . Here is the INDEX
I have removed all the graphics from the book and left only the text. That means a few pages are missing. I have indicated original page numbers at both top and bottom of each page. It is in regular ascii text, so it can be read and stored by anything. Feel free to download and use this cookbook. If you want to print it out for personal use, please do. Of course, you may not make copies and sell them -- this work is copyright 1994.
I hope you enjoy it, and tell people about it. I am not asking for any money (that's a relief, isn't it?), so you are saving yourself six bucks! AND NO, THERE ARE NO MORE COPIES, so DON'T SEND MONEY! (Well, you can send me money if you want, but you won't get anything back for it!).
BON APPETIT,
MARK
THE GOOD SMELLS INVASION COOKBOOK
An amazing Chinese satay sauce is called Sha Cha Jiang.
If you would like to make your dal-lentils much tastier, read how to do a South Indian Seasoning.
If you have some salmon caviar kicking around, you can make Japanese style Ikura Spaghetti.
Roasted eggplant dip is called Baba Ganooj, and it goes well with Humus on a Mediteranean platter.
Making Sushi Rice is easy!
The pickled ginger served with sushi is called Shoga or Gari, and its yummy!
It runs on a 1/4 horsepower motor, and can grind up to 2 litres (half a gallon) at a time. It grinds anything: whole dry spices; garlic, ginger, and onions; spinach; meat; banana skins (that was their demo/sales-pitch at the shop in Trivandrum); anything. I often use it to make dosa batter from soaked rice and lentils (for masala dosa - yum). I mailed it home (without the motor) -- it weighs about 30 kg (65lb).
The rec.food.recipes newsgroup has an INDEXED ARCHIVE
This is a link to THE TOKYO FOOD PAGE
Here is a CHILLI HOTNESS SCALE and LINKS TO MORE CHILLI STUFF (And I always thought the Habanero was the hottest).
Here is some info on SRI-LANKAN SPICES
I had five hundred hits in the first two weeks of this page. Then my provider discontinued the counter. Aaaak! Anyways, my provider, the Blue Sky Community Networks of Manitoba, Inc. is actually pretty good.