SC - Bhuna Prawn and Puri

[Philip & Susan Troy]

snowfire at mail.snet.net wrote:
> 
> -Poster: Elysant <Snowfire at mail.snet.net>
> 
> Can someone assist me?  I'm trying to find a recipe for an Indian dish
> I first had in Britain a couple of years ago.
> 
> "Bhuna Prawn and Puri"
> 
> I'm thinking that perhaps Bhuna is perhaps a certain type of prawn?
> Puri is the sauce they are served in.  It's a fiery yet sweet sauce with
> a red colour and is quite delicious.
> 
> The dish was served as an appetiser.
> 
> Elysant

I have a recipe for bhuna murgh, which would be a similar dish of
chicken, a sort of dryish red curry. Unless I'm mistaken, the bhuna is
the curry, the basic preparation, and the puri ought to, by rights, be a
puffy fried bread served alongside the bhuna. My recipe calls for
serving with chapattis, paratha (more puffy breads) or rice.

Nana points out that her recipes for bhuna seem to bear little
resemblance to what Elysant describes. One possible explanation might be
that when a cuisine travels to another country, especially via a
restaurant, some peculiar changes can occur, both to accomodate a
perceived difference in the palate, and possibly due to a lack of
available staple ingredients, and also the "they'll never know the
difference factor" may apply.

An example from a cuisine I know a little more about would be Fettucine
Alfredo, a dish invented in the earlier part of this century in
Alfredo's Restaurant in Rome, which consists of medium-broad egg pasta,
a little of the water the pasta was boiled in (the secret ingredient),
salt and pepper, Parmagiano Reggiano cheese, and high-quality butter
brought in from the countryside. That's it. No cream, no eggs, no
blinkin' modified food starch, nothing even remotely suggestive of
"Alfredo Sauce", no broccoli florets, and above all, no expletive
deleted grilled chicken. Obviously the dish has changed as it gets
further from its epicenter, to areas whose cooks might be less skilled,
the butter probably of lower quality, and certainly where people are
likely to have a far less serious view of pasta. 

Now that's not really a problem as long as people like the other stuff,
but it might help explain why bhuna in the UK might differ from bhuna in
India. Not to mention bhuna in the USA, or, for that matter, in Iceland.
     
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================