Mirchi Ka Salan, meaning "Peppers in Sauce". Its like an anaheim pepper, similar to what you might make a Chili Relleno from, in a thick brown sauce made from peanuts and sesame. Its traditionally served with a Biryani (which is a rice dish). It originates from Hyderabad, about 500 km north of here.
We need to establish a scale to rate this stuff on. 1 to 15 sounds like a good place to start. Here are some examples from each level to set a standard:
1 - The free dessert served at the Tandoor restaurant at the Taj two days ago. Some kind of slimy white chocolate flower petal flavored like flowers (supposedly) and covered in slimy brown coconut paste. A terrible story was told over lunch today about some indigenous people in the Himalayas that still eat dog. One of their dishes is dog rice, which is rice that is fed to the dog prior to slaughter that is then eaten out of the stomach in its partially digested form. It was unanimously decided that the coconut topping on the "chocolate" was created in some very similar fashion and should be referred to as dog coconut. Anyway 1 from 1 to 15 is this dessert.
2 - real, literal poison. something God or chemists made violently bitter or sour to alert you to the fact that you are soon to die from ingesting it.
3 - dog rice.
4 - Lufthansa food
5 - MREs (meals ready to eat). foil packaged highly dense highly caloric food with decades long shelf life made for the military. The modern day K-ration like you used to pick up for extra health in the 1985 Data East arcade game Commando.
6 - Fast food
7 - 3am diner food (IHOP, Denny's, etc). Must be eaten drunk.
8 - chain pizza - Pizza Hut, Dominos, etc.
9 - most casual dining
10 - good sushi
11 - most fine dining
12 - Wolfgang Puck in his heyday. The early/mid 90's before all his casual dining cafes and his canned soup and his shit in the freezer section. When he was still re-inventing fine dining in LA at Spagos. The first time you had his smoked salmon pizza! His daring seafood dishes at Granita's in the Malibu colony. For a few years there he was a God.
13 - Reserved for something awesome I haven't had yet.
14 - A pitcher of ice cold hefeweissen, some garlic cheese bread, and a tuna sandwich (made the old way on an italian roll and baked,, like from the early 90's not the new way like from '97 on) from Oregano's in Scottsdale, AZ
15 - The first meal I have when I get back to the states.
Anyway, Mirchi Ka Salan. It was not a hit in my book. The peppers were sour not hot, and as they are fried before put in the sauce they are very slightly crunchy which doesn't taste right. The nut sauce is way too strong, its like heating up peanut butter till it was runny, and then completely changing its chemical makeup so that it tasted like sesame seeds and not peanuts. And I'm not a fan of sesame.
It would be a tough call for me if given the choice of Mirchi Ka Salan or Lufthansa food, so, I'm going with
4/15
This might be one of my favorite posts! and whoeveer decided that flavored like flowers was a good thing was in error. Flowers are tasty to tortoises and cows, humans like food and enjoy the SMELL of flowers, not the taste.
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