Category — Whatsitcalled?

photo Dan Huntington

Really? Pomegranate molasses? You’re just hearing about this now? True, that somehow once the NYT discovers something it suddenly exists (see Mark Bittman’s paean to “yogurt cheese“  last week. ‘What,’ you may ask, ‘is yogurt cheese?” Turns out that it’s actually labne, a strained yogurt that people in the Middle East have been eating for breakfast for about 3,200 years (yes, I made that number up). I’ve eaten it all my life, and yet I couldn’t tell what it was until I read the whole piece. “Yogurt cheese,” indeed….)

Anyway, pomegranate molasses. I’m glad the white guys at the NYT have finally discovered it, but they’re way too late. First, pomegranate molasses has been all over the Internet and the Food Network for at least a year now (swear on my kibbe: Bobby Flay made a pomegranate molasses turkey or some such thing). And second, pomegranate molasses is, like, sooooo 2009….

I hereby declare the NEXT hot ethnic ingredient to be date molasses. Basically dates reduced down to a syrup, date molasses imparts a complex, fruity sweetness to yogurt, dressings, baked good and basting sauces. And just to prove it, I’m referring you back to my knock-out recipe for my Tangy Middle Eastern Salad (date molasses in the dressing). Look for it in Middle Eastern groceries — cuz it ain’t in Safeway yet. And remember, you heard it here first.

(p.s. when you go to the salad recipe, try substituting kumquats for the clementines. DEEEEE-licious!! Dried figs also work in place of dates….)

“Ooo, yum, I love these, they’re Swedish,” my husband’s cousin says.

“Really? You mean, like puff pancakes?” I ask. We are standing on the rooftop terrace of a swanky Mumbai apartment building scarfing the little dumplings as part of the six-day wedding we’ve all come to attend. Yeah, the black, cast iron pan looks a bit like the dimpled cooker you can buy at Williams-Sonoma to make the Scandinavian treats. But as I survey the cityscape and feel the 80-degree December night waft past my skin, I’m skeptical. I think perhaps this particular relative has lived too long in California.

Which doesn’t stop me. The little puffs are moist, and supple, and they melt on my tongue, so I stand there making a spectacle of myself long enough for one of the aunties to join me.

“Kaku,” I ask, “what are these?”

“Pani yarram,” she says. Of course, I can see that from the handwritten sign that sits on the table.

“Yes, but I mean…are they Swedish?”

“Are they what? No, they’re from South India.”

Okay, so not Swedish. I tell her I taste banana. She speaks to the guy in the toque. “Yes,” she says definitively. “They are made from rice, banana and coconut, because in the South they have all these things. Swedish…” she shakes her head in disbelief as she puts another in her mouth.

All I can say is, somebody got the idea from somebody….

“Brazilians HATE cilantro. They use lots of parsley” — chef at the CIA’s street food conference today.