In 2010 I asked here for help choosing stuff off an Indian restaurant menu that I could enjoy. I went, I ate, I got my face melted off of course but was no worse for the wear.
This weekend a new Indian Orthodox Church in my city is having a fair and I am extremely excited for it, one because I absolutely love diversity and culture in my city and two they’re promoting it as a “zero waste” festival which makes me love them even more. Also I think Indian music is the shit and am looking forward to groovin’ to it while I walk around.
Here’s the menu for the event. What’s good for someone who can’t take any sort of heat? Also for someone who can’t do cilantro. To be honest most of the stuff looks SUPER benign but I still want some input from y’all. I want to be able to try as much as possible and not be messed up by what I do try.
These all look pretty safe. Am I right?
Ethekya appam
mango lassi
masala chai
masala dosa
Pani puri and dahi puri look good but I’m not sure if they’re meant to be hot or if they just have a smidge of chili powder.
A what now? This is an Orthodox Christian Church aimed at Indians? I had no idea such a thing existed. I mean, I know there are some Catholics in India but this is a new one on me.
The pani puri and dahi puri should be fairly mild and really good. The mango lassi is going to be sweet, as is the masala chai.
Edited to add, post Googling, they’re probably these guys.
Are only chillies and cilantro problematic? E.g. one recipe for masala for dosas includes (besides potatoes, etc.) onions, mustard seeds, curry leaves, turmeric, and- optionally!- a couple of finely chopped green chilis. The dosas may also be made with some fenugreek.
Then again, if nothing actually bad happened besides your face getting melted off, you could decide to live dangerously…
Valid point! I know I’m not going to be sitting down to a feast there but I know what’s going to happen is that I like the look of everything and will want to try it but don’t want to get myself in a pickle of having to spit it out.
And yes, it’s the Malankara Orthodox Church. My little tiny suburban area has had a lot of Indian families moving here in the past decade. In fact our city park has been the location for “Sikh Games” for a few years. The church is new, they took over the location of a Baptist church.
These two are beverages. Easiest to think of a mango lassi as a creamy mango smoothie. Full fruity flavor, no spice to be found.
Masala chai is a tea-based drink that’s not too far off a cafe-au-lait in creaminess and mouthfeel. If you every have had hot tea with a little milk and sugar in it, the masala chai will not be unfamiliar. Around here, a masala chai will be spiced with cardamom and cinnamon, maybe some other things. But the spices fall squarely into the “dessert spices” category, not in the “face-melting spices” category.
I wouldn’t expect a default masala dosa to be any more spicy than, say, canned Hormel chili or mild grocery-store salsa. The dosa will have spices for flavor, of course, but nowhere near face-melting.
The ethekya appam are not spicey at all – they’re just battered and fried banana slices. I could see some dessert spices maybe mixed into the batter for a little extra flavor, but that’s not the default.
Mango lassi is a good coolant–a yogurt-based drink.
The people who like their Indian food mouth-searing hot won’t tell you this, but you want to have a selection of complimentary coolant foods at hand if you run into something that’s too spicy for you. Cold water alone won’t do it; if you drink too much water at once it might even make you sick, as I learned some years ago with a goat curry.
Good coolants:
[ul]
[li]Lassi drinks[/li][li]Cucumber and/or tomato slices[/li][li]Raita (which is basically a yogurt sauce with shards of cucumber and maybe carrot)[/li][li]Tahini (a sweet sesame paste, the condiment of the gods)[/li][/ul]
Oh, pani puri is delicious (one of my favorite Indian snacks) but the water (pani) is flavored fairly strongly with cilantro and mint, so if the OP can’t stand cilantro, this is not the dish for them.
Dahi puri, similarly, usually contains cilantro, or at least is topped with green chutney and/or cilantro. Perhaps you can get them to give you one without the chutney and cilantro, but it’s possible the stuffing itself has cilantro.
Chicken 65 is another one of my favorite dishes, but it’s going to have some heat to it. The amount varies. Usually no cilantro in that one, though (at least the way I’ve had it. Curry leaves, yes, cilantro, not so much). Typically when I attend South Asian events, it’s what I’d call medium hot at most, like Chinese-American take-out hot. But if you can’t take any heat at all, then maybe also not for you. It’s a dish that looks more like a Chinese deep-fried chicken stir fry dish than a stereotypical Indian dish.
ETA: Oh, I see there’s biryani. That’s usually pretty mild and I’d describe it as the South Asian version of “meat & rice” type dishes. Can range from really tasty to mind-blowingly good. It may be garnishes with cilantro, but you should be able to get a scoop that avoids the cilantro (or request it not to be garnished with it, if it’s an after-the-fact garnish.)
I missed that Zipper gave a link to the event’s menu.
I see only two items that potentially have any real heat, and that’s the Chicken 65 that pulykamell mentioned and the sambar soup that’s served on the side of the masala dosa, the idli, and the uzhunnu vada. If you don’t do heat, avoid the sambar at all costs.
Given that they are served with sambar, I would expect the dosas and vadus to be pretty mild. Idlis, so far as I know, are always mild on their own.
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That chicken cutlet looks pretty good … doesn’t seem like it would be spicy at all.
Infrequently. Since this event is using sambar as kind of a spicy condiment, I would expect the chutneys to be mild. Here’s what I’m guessing they’ll offer, chutney-wise:
Tamarind chutney – dark brown/maroon color. Reminiscent of sweet (but not sugary) barbecue sauce.
Mint chutney – kind of guacamole-colored, expect more mottled – it’s based on finely chopped mint leaves. Adds a pretty tasty mint tinge to your dish, no sugar and no heat. Avoid if it’s artificially colored an unnaturally bright kelly green.
Coconut chutney – a pale beige color with some small brown flecks. Not a sweet “desserty” coconut flavor. Hard to compare with anything familiar in American cuisine. It is tasty, though.
No, it’s right in the OP that you “can’t do cilantro.”
Chutney, in general, is not spicy. It’s usually just a fragrant or sweet compliment to the food. Be aware, though, that the green mint chutney often contains a healthy cilantro component, at least the way I’ve had it served around here. Most of the recipes I see online for mint chutney are actually 2:1 by volume of cilantro:mint.
OP - I know this isn’t what you asked but I think this would be a great ice breaker/conversation starter. Simply explain to the people service the food that you’d love to try something new but you really have zero tolerance for heat. To me one of the best parts about new food experiences is talking to people who prepared it - bonding over food is as old as…well…food
Interesting. Looking at recipes, there does seem to be some chiles or chile powder included in most green and tamarind chutneys (the standard ones around here). I’m surprised, as I don’t detect any heat in them at all, usually. (Or perhaps I’m just assuming the heat is coming from the samosa or whatever chaat I’m eating it with. Or, then again, I also have an extremely high tolerance for heat, so it may just not register.) I’ve always thought of them as a cooling/contrasting complement to the food (though not as cooling as a raita, of course) but it sure looks like all the recipes do have some chiles in them.
The only comment I have is that given that is church is based in Kerala - state at the very south of India - I saw only one item that was authentically from that area. Kerala cuisine is varied and quite unique. Wish there was some puttu on the menu.
I’ve had spicy dosa but it’s usually specified as such.
