What are your Cantonese favorites?
As a professional chef, I'm ashamed to say I know very little about the many cuisines of India. Would be willing to try some basic dishes, though not too hot...went thru neck radiation 2 years ago and my taste buds are much more sensitive. I can do Frank's Hot Sauce Scoville heat.
When I moved to The Netherlands a lot of my favourite takeaway / restaurnant / pub food was no longer available so I just found out how to cook them for myself. Cantonese (Chinese we get mostly in England) I love sweet and sour chicken Hong Kong style, Char siu dishes, Beef and black bean sauce and that sort of stuff. Also like Peking duck but I haven't attempted that (even though we do have a very large bicycle pump).
With Indian food there are quite a lot with more subtle than hot dishes. A basic 'curry' was the first dish I learned to cook from a medical student friend. I do a pretty nice chicken Tikka Masalla without a Tandoor (pretty popoular pub meal), and a recently I learned to do a Biriani without the usual 8 hours of work! I think my favourite is a dish which originated in the small indian restaurants around Birmingham. They used to use newspaper for tablecloths and you could bring your own beer. That dish is called a Balti and it sort of a potage you scoop up and eat with naan bread. In restaurants they sometimes come still sizzling in an iron skillet.
Crikey I'm hungry again now. So for Christmas shall I send you some recipes Max? Remember as with ACM I am only an amatuer!
