[Warning: although this post is about the topic at hand, it takes a little longer than usual to get there…]
I don’t know how I became such an Indophile, all I know it is that it happened. It probably was around the time I returned from my first trip to India, and realized how dull everything looked. I missed the women wearing magenta and gold, or turquoise and orange, not to mention the jewels between their eyebrows. It seemed like I had been wearing Technicolor-colored glasses, and then all of a sudden, everyone around me had faded into shades of grey, brown and black.
My love of all things Indian caused me to seek out an Indian-style wedding dress, and get henna on my hands and feet for my wedding day. The fact that Paulie, my husband, chose to wear an Indian suit as well meant that the studio that printed my wedding album called my photographer just out of curiosity to ask her whether ours was a Hindu or Jewish wedding.

I mention all of this because last week, I had a cooking date with Swati, the amazingly talented woman who designed my wedding dress www.swati.us/wedding3.html. (The peach one at the bottom of this web page is my actual dress, if anyone cares about such silly things)…She lives in the South Bay, about an hour from me, and like so many wonderful things in my life, I found her online (I met my husband online, too). She designs the gowns from her home here, and then has a team of people embroidering and sewing to her specifications in Bombay. I know, I know, I hardly went local for a wedding dress.

Anyhow, while I clicked with her in my several visits to her studio, I also learned that as fascinated as I was by India, she was equally fascinated by Jews. She loved that she was designing for a Jewish wedding rather than an Indian one, as so far, the only Western brides who had chosen her dresses were those who were marrying Indian men. When I picked up the gown not long before the wedding, she made me promise I would return with my video for her to watch, and that we would keep in touch.

I knew we would. Especially because what I really wanted was to get into her kitchen.
Once she learned I was doing a natural foods cooking course, that sealed the deal further. She was tired of only knowing how to make Indian food, she told me, and was wanting to expand her repertoire. She had traveled to Italy, and wanted to know how to make a good tomato sauce. Not to mention, that she never could get the timing on the pasta quite right, and always overcooked it. She also wanted to learn a nice tofu dish.

When I got there, I showed her my basic tomato sauce, one of my favorite tofu dishes in Miso www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/230466 and a simple broccoli, walnuts and goat cheese sauce for pasta that is one of my lazier creations.
She in turn, showed me a soup, a North Indian curry (she is Punjabi), and what she calls a “dry veg,” meaning vegetables sautéed just in oil and spices. Of course she doesn’t measure anything, and I loved how she called the cumin seeds “jeera,” and the coriander powder “dania” (terms I knew from reading Indian food blogs) and took little spoonfuls of them from a silver tray with small silver cups on it. We cooked until my t-shirt was stained with turmeric. We also watched the “highlights” portion of my video, and unlike the last time, no money was exchanged. I kept her food and she kept mine, and let’s just say that when Paulie tried the leftovers that evening, all he could say was “you mean you’re going to be able to make it just like this?”

Interestingly, I saw that while she buys a lot of organic, she said it was mostly for her son (he is now 15 months) but she cared less about herself and her husband, after all, it is more expensive.
Well, it just so happens that it was my day with her was right after our “meet the farmer” night for our Tuv Ha’Aretz group. I was so charged by the presentation of Nigel Walker, that I couldn’t help but extol the virtues of the produce I had tasted, and especially the eggs we had sampled. (Nigel brought enough eggs with him to show why we should spend the $6.25 or whatever it is a dozen. We went home and promptly scrambled some up with some spring onion we had gotten from him for dinner, and we were instant converts. I thought of Michael Pollan’s descriptions of the eggs from Polyface Farm. I had never tasted such creamy eggs, and I would be willing to bet money that everyone who tasted those eggs will be buying them, too).

Swati had never heard of CSA, but was very excited by the concept. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a farm that had a drop-off point near her, but she promised to look into getting a group of friends together to investigate starting one. The huge population of Indians in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area (I’ve read that it’s the largest in the world, outside of India) means tons of Indian grocery stores, importing produce and spices. While I know those stores will continue to get plenty of business from those who long for the taste of the subcontinent, it is nice to know that some locals might begin to look for produce a little closer to their adopted home.