Chus On Chow

We just found one of the very best food values anywhere: the New Taj India Cuisine Restaurant in the historic Corn Hill neighborhood of Rochester, NY.  There are actually several new restaurants here, and we will get to all of them eventually. But we knew about this area from our several visits to Tony D’s.  Just a week before we arrived in Rochester for a few get-away days, this Indian restaurant opened. It’s a 3-minute drive from the heart of downtown Rochester yet has free parking and is right on the Genesee River.

We went to the New Taj first for their buffet lunch. Then we went back the next day for dinner, it was that good. The restaurant is quite lovely and extremely clean. Don’t be fooled by the drawn curtains – the place is open and they are anxious to serve you some of the best Indian food we’ve ever had.

The buffet had the usual wonderful selection one finds, and I’m guessing the offerings will change from time to time. But what we were not prepared for was the sophisticated spicing of every dish. We thought we knew tamarind sauce until we had it here. It had a tiny extra kick and the slightest hint of banana, making it a standout among tamarind sauces. The green sauce was alive with fresh ginger and was not as overpoweringly piquant as the green sauce usually is.  We never got to the cold offerings – salad items, raita and the like, as the hot food beckoned. Even so, there were so many we only got to about half of them.

Chicken and vegetarian prevailed but this is logical in a buffet that costs only $7.99. We have often commented that, were we to become vegetarians, we would be eating Indian food all the time. It’s the best all-vegetable food on the planet, but Chef Avtar has created unusual spice combinations that were a revelation. My two favorites were the chick pea dish and the winter squash dish. Normally I find these two items to be pretty boring and almost inedible. Not these dishes. I want to know how they were done so I can eat them at home, too!

Included in the buffet, astoundingly, was a delicious hot chai, made with milk and just a touch of sugar. Also there were numerous desserts: rice pudding, a mango pudding, gulab jamin, fruit and more. We totally stuffed ourselves and for the two of us, the bill came to just over $17 including tax.

At dinner we got to sit and relax, and enjoy concentrating on just one dish. The usual crispy bread with sauces was available to eat while we waited for our dinners to be prepared. Dave ordered the Goa fish curry ($13.95): fish cooked in a spicy tangy sauce with coconut. I ordered seafood biryani ($14.95): Basmati rice cooked with shrimp, scallops, fish with onion and bell pepper, spices and garnished with cashews and raisins. I asked for extra cashews and raisins and got them with no problem.

Dave ordered a medium spicing on his fish curry and it was very good, with a savory coconut sauce dotted with peppercorns. I ordered mine mild and it came out very mild indeed. In some restaurants, “mild” still means pretty darned hot for those of us not accustomed to it. Not the case here. In fact, I was pleased that a dish of raita (savory yogurt sauce) came with it. This raita, unlike many, actually added “heat” to my dish and an extra layer of fascinating spice combinations. In my opinion, if you get this dish mild, you’ll enjoy adding the spicy raita to your own heat tolerance.

Dave polished off all of his curry but that biryani was so large, I could only eat half of it. Poor me, I’ll have to have it for lunch tomorrow. We had no room for dessert, mango lassi, tea, nothing. But we will definitely be visiting this restaurant next time we’re in Rochester.

New Taj India Cuisine
298 Exchange Boulevard
Rochester, NY  14608
Tel. 585-546-7775
Fax: 585-546-7778
Open 7 days a week
Lunch Buffet: 11:30 am – 3:00 pm  $7.99 every day
Dinner: 5:00 pm – 10:00 pm Mon-Sat
5:00 pm – 9:30 pm Sunday

Dr. Mercola has the most popular natural health website. His articles sometimes seem alarmist, but too often they’re just telling the pretty awful truth. Just ran into this interesting article about Dr. Shiv Chopra, a whistle blower fired from inside Health Canada (the Canadian counterpart to the FDA):

The Toxic Five: Why Are They Still in Our Food?

Love this handy list that we find in the article, the first two being USDA websites:

Alternative Farming Systems Information Center, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)

Farmers’ Markets– A national listing of farmers’ markets.

Local Harvest – This Web site will help you find farmers’ markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.

Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals — The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy, and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns, and hotels, and online outlets in the United States and Canada.

Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) — CISA is dedicated to sustaining agriculture and promoting the products of small farms.

FoodRoutes — The FoodRoutes “Find Good Food” map can help you connect with local farmers to find the freshest, tastiest food possible. On their interactive map, you can find a listing for local farmers, CSA’s, and markets near you.

Farmer Dave is at it again with food activities he’s never done before. This time, it’s peach preserves. We saw a giant box of peaches going for six dollars at Rochester’s Public Market so we had to nab them, along with a box of mangos for something like seven. Such a deal!  But then what to do with all those peaches?

Dave just did his research and followed instructions. And we ended up with some lovely jars of peach preserves. You see them here, with three kinds of heirloom tomatoes in the background that the garden has offered up. The concentrated peach flavor is so good!

NY Gianni’s Bronx Style Pizza is already getting lots of rave reviews, both here and in numerous other websites like that of “the pizza geek.” So why write about it again? Because I took a little trip to heaven on the gossamer wings of something I had never eaten before: tomato pie.

Hard to  believe that a native Syracusan wouldn’t even know the difference between “tomato pie” and pizza, but it really is a different animal. A little research tells me there’s the Sicilian-inspired style that Gianni’s making, and there’s a completely different southern style, made with mayonnaise and baked in a pie crust. We are definitely not referring to the latter.

Gianni’s tomato pie was sitting in the case, waiting to be heated up, when we walked in. While our pizza was cooking, three of us polished off two large slices of tomato pie. While in any other pizza joint I usually leave a lot of pizza crust behind, the crust on this baby was every bit as much the star as the sauce. It was so light and airy, I had to ask Gianni how he made it (you go in and ask, I’m not telling!). It had just the right touch of oil and a crispy edge that gave it depth and interest.

The other star of the show, the sauce, took me by surprise. Living in upstate New York, you end up eating a lot of red sauce and most of it is pretty bad. But this sauce was as light as the crust, deeply tomato flavored, with a touch of garlic and basil and the lightest sprinkling of Parmesan. Ooo! I’m salivating just thinking about it! When Gianni asked how it was, my response was “heaven on earth! como si la hubieran hecho los ángeles!”   – as if the angels had made it!

It’s hard to believe something this seemingly simple could be so mouth-watering. But let me describe a similar experience. The garden these days is bursting with cherry tomatoes. So when you’re standing out there in the sun, they must go into the mouth. Bite into one and you first go through the part that holds it together, the skin, and then suddenly your mouth is filled with the most intense, warm, sweet-tangy burst of tomato flavor. Light as a feather, you must eat another. There is only one experience equivalent to this: biting into one of Gianni’s tomato pies.

When I first knew Dave about a dozen years ago, he didn’t know the difference between a tulip and a daffodil. Now he spends so much time in the garden, weeding and differentiating between leaves that used to look all the same to him, I call him Farmer Dave.  Last winter he chose the Poona Kheera, a cucumber from India, as “his” plant for the garden and today he harvested the first two of what looks to be a bountiful crop.

Folks, this cucumber has changed my world view on what cucumbers are all about. I have grown cukes before, harvested them when they were young and tender, enjoyed eating them. But nothing like this beauty. You don’t have to peel it, first of all, but it’s a good size. It’s sweet and very mild, and completely lacking whatever it is in cucumbers that makes me dislike most of them. And the crunch! With a beautiful texture and taste like this, we were able to eat sliced cucumbers with nothing to doll them up. No salt, no dressings, nothing. Just pure pleasure.