KitchenSavvy

Tales from an Old Salt

I recently learned that all white salt is processed and devoid of some 80 minerals. Is that why iodine is added?
--Name Withheld

Salt, whether of the table salt variety or harvested by vestal virgins under a full moon in October contains almost no iodine, unless it is added.  According to M. G. Venkatesh Mannar, Executive Director The Micronutrient Initiative Ottawa, Canada, and John T. Dunn, Professor of Medicine, University of Virginia Health Sciences Center, Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A.¹:

"Since iodine is a constituent of sea water, it is often incorrectly assumed that sea salt contains sufficient iodine for nutritional purposes. The total dissolved salts in seawater contain less than 2 micrograms of iodine per gram of salts, equivalent theoretically to about 3 micrograms of iodine for every gram of recovered sodium chloride (3 parts per million). Even this small quantity of iodine is mostly lost in the residual mother liquor that is drained out during the production process and should be disregarded in calculations to establish the level of iodine supplement."

Mother liquor is the liquid part of a solution that is left over after crystallization.  In other words, when salt is made by evaporation of sea water, the small quantity of iodine that was in the water stays there and does not precipitate out in significant amounts when salt crystals drop out of solution.

The main dietary sources of iodine are seafood, sea vegetation, such as kelp, and until recently dairy products.  With recent changes to sanitary practices at dairy operations, the amount of iodine found in dairy products is decreasing in some parts of the world².  It is also found in foods supplemented with iodine and in vegetables grown in iodine rich locations, typically close to the ocean.

Iodine is added to table salt not to make up for it not being found in salt deposits, but because in some places there is not enough iodine from local dietary sources to prevent the occurrence of goiters, an enlargement of the thyroid gland visible as a swelling of the front of the neck, and cretinism in infants from a deficiency of iodine in the mother's diet during pregnancy.  The Great Lakes, Midwest, and inner mountain areas of the United States were once called the "goiter belt" because a high number of goiter cases occurred there³.  Usually this is caused by iodine-poor soil.

The dietary requirement for iodine is about 150 micrograms (μg) daily for adults, less for children and more for expecting mothers⁴.  Iodine is added to table salt, in the form of potassium iodide (KI) or potassium iodate (KIO3), in most, if not all, developed countries.  In some coutries it may be added to flour also.

As for the rest of the 79 or so minerals, supposedly found in sea salt, the question isn't really what is there, but rather a) can you really taste a difference, and b) are any of those minerals essential for human health and otherwise absent from normal diets.  If you are a frequent reader of KitchenSavvy, you have likely heard me riff on before about claims that you can taste the difference.  If you have a really good sense of taste and a really mild food, then maybe.  For most cooks in most recipes, I would hazard a guess that in a controlled, blind tasting of something like stew, you probably would never know what kind of salt was used.

So, this is the problem I have.  Star chefs spout off recipes calling for sea salt, or flaky kosher salt, or salt harvested from the dark side of the moon.  Readers and viewers happily follow the advice, paying exorbitant prices to buy specialty salts and the salt companies laugh all the way to the bank.  Meanwhile, there is a very real risk to health, due to iodine deficiency, that is completely neglected.  Combine that with a food fad like the 100 Mile Diet and you have a recipe for disaster!

For most foods, plain old boring table salt is all you need.  As a garnish, or maybe in a few special cases, fancy salt may add something, but most of the time, it is just money down the drain.

Oh, and by the way, much of the time the colors in specialty salts are either impurities such as clay that are found in the water where the salt is harvested and have no nutritional value, or coloring agents, such as finely ground charcoal, that are added at the processor to make the salt look exotic.

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1	Salt Iodization for the Elimination of Iodine Deficiency; V. Mannar and J. Dunn; International Council for Control of Iodine Deficiency Disorders, 1995; pp 10; an ICCIDD/MI/UNICEF/WHO publication; ISBN 90-70785-13-7; http://www.micronutrient.org/resources/Salt_CD/4.0_useful/4.1_fulltext/pdfs/4.1.1.pdf
2	Iodine Facts; Nutrition Australia website; http://www.nutritionaustralia.org/national/resource/iodine-facts
3	Goiter - simple; MedLine PLus, National Institutes of Health website; http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001178.htm
4	Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs): Recommended Dietary Allowances and Adequate Intakes, Vitamins; Food and Nutrition Board, Institute of Medicine, National Academies, USDA Food and Nutrition Information Center website; http://iom.edu/Activities/Nutrition/SummaryDRIs/~/media/Files/Activity%20Files/Nutrition/DRIs/RDA%20and%20AIs_Vitamin%20and%20Elements.pdf

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com

 

Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered, nor can we guarantee we will answer questions immediately
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Dave Recommends: "How to Cook Everything" iPad App

Being an incurable foodie and techie, I of course have been grabbing cooking apps for my iPad.  Some apps are little more than shameless money grabs or self promotions.  Others are poorly constructed technically or have little quality content.

The exception, far and away, is Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything application.  This is perhaps the best cooking resource I own.  Some readers may recognize Bittman as the author of the books How to Cook Everything, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, Food Matters Cookbook: 500 Recipes for Conscious Eating and a number of others.  He is also a writer for The New York Times.

So, what do I like about the app?  Well, for starters, the recipes.  If it didn't have clear well designed, easy to follow recipes I wouldn't care how well written an app it is.  From simple recipes like how to cook Corned Beef to more complex recipes like a classic  Bolognese Style Meat Sauce, in How to Cook Everything the instructions are clear, easy, and well explained. Index sections for browsing include not only the expected Soups, Salads (one of Bittman's specialties, apparently), Beans, Meats, etc., but also a complete section on Kitchen Basics, covering equipment, appliances, and ingredients. The section on knives includes basic knife skills, as well as how to sharpen and store them.

But it doesn't stop there.

Being a computer app, How to Cook Everything has features that no paper cookbook can muster.  For example, in the Lasagne recipe, one of the ingredients is Béchamel Sauce.  The words are underlined, indicating that this is a link to the recipe.  Touch the words on your screen, and the recipe for Béchamel shows up. Touch the "Back" button and you go back to the Lasagne recipe.

In the Béchamel Sauce recipe, like many others, there is a choice.  In this case, for "30 grams butter or extra virgin olive oil" with circles beside the choices.  Butter is the highlighted ingredient, but if you want to use olive oil, just touch the circle beside that ingredient.  Two things will happen.  First, "extra virgin olive oil" will become highlighted, and if necessary the measure will change.  Second, if you are building a shopping list, all you need to do is touch the blue shopping cart above the ingredients and they are added to your list.  But here is where it gets good!  If you choose olive oil, then that is what gets added to the shopping list.  If you choose butter, then the shopping list will show butter.  If you are planning a meal, you can go through all of the recipes and add the ingredients from each of the to the grocery list.  One enhancement I would like to see, though, relates to when you add ingredients to the shopping list from a recipe that contains another recipe, like above.  As it works now, How to Cook Everything simply warns that the ingredients from the second recipe are not added to the grocery list.  I would really prefer a pop-up with selection buttons to let me choose to maybe add the ingredients for the Béchamel Sauce, but not the homemade pasta.  As it works, I need to click and add the ingredients from each sub-recipe manually.

Staying on shopping lists for a moment, it is worth noting that if the same ingredient is chosen in multiple recipes, then the total amount needed is shown rather than multiple occurrences of the ingredient.  Once all of the recipes are added to a grocery list, you can go through and edit the list to remove items you have in your pantry or change quantities.

Once you are cooking the recipe, if there is an instruction like "Cook for three minutes" with a clock icon, touching the amount of time will open a timer dialogue for you.  You can have multiple timers running simultaneously.  When one of them goes off, a dialogue will pop up allowing you to halt the timer, add time if you think it is necessary, or show the recipe where you started the timer.  And it tells you on the timer which step you were at when you set the timer.

As you go along, you can bookmark steps in a recipe so that you know where you are at any time.  Bookmarks have a couple of advantages.  First and most obvious is that you can turn away to stir a pot or help your grandson play Angry Birds, and return to see where you were at.  Also, you can skip between recipes on the fly.  Think of bookmarks like the ribbon in your old Joy of Cooking, only you can have as many as you want and they keep themselves sorted out.  A button on the bottom of the screen shows Bookmarks and Timers.  Touch it and you can instantly go to one of your bookmarks or open the dialogue on one of your times, or you can delete them if you want.  With practice, bookmarks and timers can keep you on track in the kitchen.

Those are the main techie bells and whistles, but How to Cook Everything has a lot more to offer.  Most if not all recipes have a section on Techniques following the instructions that show basic techniques like "preparing Onions" or "Crushing and Peeling Garlic".  Most recipes also contain a tab that gives Variations, for instance how to make Pesto with arugula instead of basil or different options for Chicken Soup.  They also have a Related Content tab that may give information on ingredients, or additions to the recipe.  And they have a Notes tab where you can make your own notes.

Some other useful features include the ability to show metric ingredients, change text size. or prevent the screen from timing out in mid-preparation.  And for the social media types, you can even Tweet or post on Facebook directly from the app!

All in all, How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman is by far the most well thought out and robust iPad cooking app I have found so far.

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com

Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

To Salt or Not To Salt, That is the Question

A friend recently told me that every ingredient should be salted as it is added to a dish when cooking.  Really!?

--Lynn

 

Cooking is full of a lot of myth and pretense, and perhaps even a little interference from special interests, and salt seems to be one of the big ones, nowadays (see Salt [of the Earth], and Fixing Over-Salted Food). 

I have two major problems with this particular fad.  First, and I think foremost, is that most of us are already getting way too much sodium in our diets.  It makes food taste better and we need salt as part of our diets, but the USDA Dietary Guidelines suggest that we should limit our consumption of salt to less than 2,300 milligrams (mg) per day, if we are under 51 years of age, and 1,500 mg if we are older.  2,300 mg is the amount of sodium in only one teaspoon of table salt.  The lesser amount, 1,500 mg, is just less than 2/3 of a teaspoon.  And that is sodium from all sources consumed throughout the day, including not just the salt you sprinkle on, or the salt in packaged foods, but also sodium in the baking soda or powder used to make cookies, biscuits, cakes, etc..  At present, the average American gets about 3,400 mg of sodium a day, or about half again the maximum recommended amount.  Adding salt at each step just increases the chances that you will have way too much salt in the final product, from both the  health and flavor points of view.

Second is simply, can you tell the difference?  Here is the experiment to construct.  Cook two identical versions of the same dish, one where the salt is added at each step, and one where the same amount of salt is added at one time, preferably toward the end of preparation.  Now have a bunch of friends taste the two dishes, without knowing which is which, and preferably mixing it up so some start with dish "A" and others with dish "B".  If you have enough tasters and they can consistently tell which is which, then go with that.  My bet is they won't know the difference, particularly on longer cooked dishes like stews.

There are reasons, however, why you might want to salt a particular ingredient.  If you are making caramelized onions, for instance, some salt at the start of cooking helps to draw out water and soften the onions faster.  Salt also draws water out of eggplant (aubergine) and cucumbers.  In the case of eggplant, it can significantly change the texture, too.  Salting meat may help encourage the Maillard reaction, creating a more flavorful dish. There is at least one dish I cook where I deliberately under-salt during cooking and then add salt at the table because it brightens the flavor.

Used strategically, salt enhances flavor and texture, helps in preserving, and speeds cooking.  Used recklessly, it can ruin the taste of food and be a contributing factor in  health problems.

If you feel you must salt at every step, then don't just throw salt in from your salt shaker (cellar, box, pig, ...).  Instead, read the recipe, measure out the total amount of salt beforehand, and then use small pinches from the pre-measured amount.  If there recipe doesn't provide a total amount, or says something like "Salt to taste", then you need to use your judgment, but you would still be wise to pre-measure the amount of salt you intend to use.  In either case, aim to use half to two-thirds the salt you have set aside so you have some left over at the end to adjust the seasoning once the dish is complete.

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com

Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Art and Artist - A Shameless Promotion

If you know my wife, Pat, or even if you don't, click on over to her artist's e-store here:

http://pat-katz.artistwebsites.com/

to see some of her beautiful watercolor paintings. 

"Tucked in my backpack, on a post college trip to Europe over 35 years ago, were a pencil, six small tubes of watercolor, a paintbrush, and a sketchbook. Very little remains of my artistic efforts from that adventure.

In the intervening years, my love of color and design expressed itself in many different mediums."

On her site you can browse through her paintings, and if the image strikes you, buy art cards, reproductions and, for some, the original painting.  Her paintings and watercolor sketches can be found in private collections around the globe - in France, England, Saudia Arabia, the USA , and Canada.

Enjoy,

Dave

King Arthur Flour - Artisan Baking at Home

Regular readers of KitchenSavvy will know that one of my quests is to make the perfect loaf of bread.  You may have read some of the articles and maybe even tried my Breadmaker Jewish Rye Bread recipe (Hint - you don't need a breadmaker.  It is just as easy to make by hand or with a mixer).

Well, I just spent four great days at the King Arthur Flour Baking Education Center in Norwich, Vermont taking their Artisan Baking at Home class.  I honestly can't say enough about how much I enjoyed the class and how much I learned. 

The content  took us through focaccia and lunetta (made from the same dough), ciabatta, lavash, baguettes, croissant, pain au chocolat, bear claws, sourdough, rye fougasse and pizza.  With the exception of the ciabatta, which was demonstration only, we made every one of these items.  We learned how make the dough, how to shape the various loaves, including baguettes (a skill that had previously defied most of my attempts), and how to slash the loaves prior to baking.  We saw how the bread was loaded into professional ovens, and helped a little, too, and we even got to use their wood-fired oven to cook our own pizzas.  Now, if I could just convince Pat that I need one of those!

The class was well designed in two important ways.  First, there was a good mix of demonstration and hands on.  For each item we made there was an up-front demonstration by the instructor, followed by hands-on at our benches, learning by doing.  For most recipes, there were two or more up front demonstrations.  For the focaccia and lunetta, there was one on mixing the dough and one on forming the bread.  For croissants, there were more since we needed to prepare the dough and butter, bring them together, roll them to form the final dough, and then roll, cut and shape the pastries.  I found the movement between demonstration and bench was just right for me to learn the steps in chunks that were easy to remember.

Second, as you know if you have made bread, there is a lot of down time while dough rises, loaves rise and breads bake.  The flow of the class was well planned.  We would prepare the dough for one item, move onto learning or preparing for another, getting a demonstration and hands on, and then return to the first dough to take it to the next step.  This alternation kept the class active and informative.  Never once in the 20 hours did I feel bored, at loose ends, or over-stuffed with information.

I also appreciated that when it came to shaping baguettes and boules, the instructors brought in pre-made dough for us to practice on before we shaped our own loaves.  When we were doing the baguettes, for example, we each got three or four practice loaves first, and we did them two students at a time so that the instructor, Amber, could coach every one of us.

Our up-front instructors had an easy and informative style that kept the class engaged.  They all were quite knowledgeable and experienced, and seemed genuinely enthusiastic about our learning.  Kudos to them, and to the instructors at the back of the room who helped in so many ways, from supporting the lead instructor to helping during hands on and making sure we had the ingredients and equipment we needed, when we needed it.  And when they weren't doing all of that, they were cleaning bowls, loading the washer, and generally taking care of all of the mechanics of keeping the class running smoothly.

Thank you Jessica, Amber, Robyn, Michelle, Karen, and Susan for making the class so much fun and so informative.  If I missed someone, my apologies.

In all ways this class met or exceeded my expectations.  If you are a bread enthusiast, this is the class for you, too.

Oh, and King Arthur, I  hope to visit again soon in your new facilities for Artisan II.

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com

Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Flabbergastronomy

Flabbergastronomy (ˈflæ bə gæ ,strɒn ə mi): the shock of realizing just how many calories are in that slice of gourmet cheesecake you just ate.

Beautiful Pastries at Pan'e Dolci on Las Olas in Ft Lauderdale

At the end of January, Pat and I enjoyed an Eastern Caribbean cruise leaving from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.  After our travel fiasco of last April, we decided to play it safe and give ourselves an extra day for unplanned interruptions.  That ended up giving us an extra day in Ft. Lauderdale before the cruise, which we used to wander around Las Olas Boulevard.

We ended up at Pan'e Dolci Italian Bakery three times.  First was just a stop on the way by to see what they had.  After a brief look, we went next door to Big City Tavern for a late breakfast, and then back to Pan'e Dolci for gelato to enjoy while we wandered Las Olas.  Yummy gelato made without the additives too frequently found in North America versions.  Reminiscent of our first trip to Florence.

Then, after a few hours of wandering, back to Pan'e Dolci for a taste of the beautiful desserts we had seen on the first stop.  My apple tart was nothing short of a masterpiece - Pâte Brisée with a layer of pastry cream, topped with thinly sliced apple arranged in a rose pattern, lighly glazed and topped with a few berries.  Put that with a cup of perfect espresso, and you have a wonderful afternoon treat.

Of course, there were other pastries -- strawberry and fruit tars, cannoli and more - but the apple tarts were so pretty, trays of them, that I couldn't imagine the labor to make so many.  I knew immediately what I had to try. 

Pan'e Dolci Italian Bakery
613 E Las Olas Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com

Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Egg Wedger

Generally, I am not a fan of unitaskers, those kitchen tools that have only one purpose.  An asparagus steamer or a fish poacher may be just the tool for the job, and if storage space is never a problem, you may want one of each, but for a practical home kitchen, we just don't have enough room for every device that comes along.

That said, there is occasionally a tool that is just the one you need for a task, and no other tool seems to do as well.  One unitasker that gets a place in my kitchen is an egg wedger -- sort of a tong like device that has a cradle on one arm to hold a hard-boiled egg, and on the other arm a criss-cross of wires that, when the device is squeezed together, slices the egg into six perfect wedges.  Perfect for one of my specialties, Salade Niçoise!

What's so great about it?  Well, for one thing the slices are uniform.  I find it much harder to get nice even wedges using a knife.  Quartering is a bit easier, but making six uniform pieces is more challenging.

Also, the pieces stay together.  When using a knife, it isn't unusual for the yolk to stick on the knife and pull away from the white.  With a little care using the wedger, the wedges remain intact, meaning no pieces of white uncurled from their yolk.

Finally, it's cleaner and faster.  Little bits of yolk clinging to the knife stick to the next slice leaving a yellow rim.  Fussy, I know, but easily solved with the wedger.  You can avoid the mess by repeatedly dipping your knife in warm water, but then you take more time and end up with a water slick on things.  With an egg wedger, one brief squeeze and you're done.  Neat, clean, even pieces in nearly no time at all.

Sometimes the payback on a unitasker justifies its existence.  This is one of those devices.

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com

Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Gastro-Economics 101 - The Price is Right

Every once in a while someone will ask, "Why can I buy a steak at the grocery store for $5.00 but I have to pay $40.oo for the same steak in a restaurant?"  OK, I sanitized the wording a bit.  Use your imagination if you want the full text version.

Well, suppose that you were running your own kitchen at home as if it was a business, just like the restaurant. 

First off, the steak isn't the only thing that comes on the plate.  It will usually have a starch, some vegetables, perhaps a sauce, maybe some other toppings like sautéed mushrooms, and so on.  If it comes with a baked potato, then you probably have butter, sour cream, chives and maybe some bacon bits with it.  Rather than try to price out all of these items separately, let's just assume that your $5 steak now costs $10.

Next, consider the infrastructure costs.  Your restaurant likely pays rental on its space.  Chances are good that you pay both a mortgage and property taxes.  If you have an average priced house in a major city, your mortgage is likely over $2,000 a month.  Your property taxes will vary from city to city, but let's just say $7,500 per year.  Also, let's say that 10-15% of your floor space is used for the kitchen, dining room, pantry or other food related activities.  If that is so, then your food area costs around $10 per day to maintain.  Since supper is the big meal, the one that costs the most and takes the most to prepare, let's say that the space rental costs $7.50 for supper, with the other meals taking up the rest.  Now your $5 steak comes out to $17.50.

Next, let's include kitchen appliances, pots and pans and such.  Suppose you have $5,000 worth of major appliances that you amortize over 10 years and another $3,000 worth of smaller appliances, pots and pans, and other paraphernalia (don't forget the bread maker, rice cooker, slow cooker, countertop induction burner and the yogurt maker) that you replace on average every 5 years.  Together, these will contribute maybe $3 per day, bringing the total up to $20.50.

We are already half way there, and we haven't yet counted in your dining room furniture, dinner ware, silverware, stemware, serving dishes, drinking glasses, tablecloths, napkins and so on.  To make it easy, let's just lump them all together and say that they add another $2.50 per day.  Think that's too high?  Don't forget that just like your restaurant friends, you need to replace broken dishes at some point, or that drinking glass with the chipped rim.  I know that we just got our dining room table refinished after years of wear and tear, and that wasn't cheap. 

The cost is now up around $23 for your five dollar steak, and we still have more to go.  How about the energy costs to prepare the food, the cost of water to wash the dishes, the dish detergent and other non-comestibles?  That should take us up to maybe $23.75.

Are we done yet?  Not quite.  Did you cook your steak in the kitchen, or on that fancy stainless steel barbecue your spouse gave you for Christmas last year?  It doesn't really matter.  Regardless, just like amortizing other appliances, the barbecue is costing you another 40¢ or so per day, whether you are using it or not.  $24.15.

Did you pay yourself?  Remember, we said that you were running your own kitchen at home as if it was a business.  Restaurants have to pay the cooks, the dish washers, the waiters, the bus boys and girls, and the parking attendant.  OK, maybe I went to far with the last one, but you get my drift.  Say for simplicity that it took a half hour to cook supper and a half hour to set the table and clean up afterward.  Even at a minimum wage, that should add another $10 to the cost.   While you're at it, throw in another $2.50 for menu planning, grocery shopping and the gas to get you to and from the store.  $36.65 and counting.

There are also a number of operating costs that restaurants incur that you don't have to at home,  like the overhead of maintaining a kitchen and dining room that will meet Department of Health and/or food safety standards.  No one is going to come into your house and give you grief for not cleaning under the fridge or behind the fryer, but restaurants face the very real risk of being shut down  if the inspector isn't happy, so they clean way more and way more often that you would, and they pay way more attention to maintaining their equipment than you would.  They also throw out food that you might take a chance on.  They have to advertise, print menus, pay higher insurance rates, and make employer contributions to pension, employment insurance and maybe health coverage.

Now we're done!  Suddenly the question isn't why a $5 steak costs $40.  Now it's how can anyone stay in business selling food at such cheap prices.  Just something to think about!

Footnote:  As I was getting ready to post this article, my wife told me about a posting on the blog of her friend Shelle Rose Charvet. The two of them had been talking about made up terms, one of which was "Gastro-economics".  When I heard the phrase, I immediately thought of this article.  If you want to read Shelle's article, click here.

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com



Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward

Welcome Back, Taj

One of my major good fortunes, food-wise, was that my father was a nuclear physicist  working at a university which had a fairly good international reputation.  What does nuclear physics have to do with food?  It turns out lots, but my particular good fortune was that Dad had a habit of offering his post-grad students the deal that he (Dad) would provide all of the ingredients and the kitchen, if the student was willing to cook a traditional meal for our family.  This meant that at a very young age I was exposed to a very broad range of different ethnic foods.  Frequent among these, and my favorites, were meals prepared by students from India.

While my wife isn't a huge fan of Indian food, our youngest daughter is.  Whenever Pat was away, Lindsay and I used to go to the Taj Mahal restaurant on Broadway Avenue in Saskatoon.  It was a chance to enjoy delicious food and have a pleasant Father-Daughter time together.  Then "the Taj" shut down about a year and a half years ago, with plans to open in a new space downtown.  That was the plan.  I never learned the complete story, but there were rumors of first one location and then another, but no Taj Mahal.

The Taj quietly re-opened last November.  So quietly, I hadn't heard about it for some time. Finally, a few days ago, Lindsay and I found a chance to go and check out the new digs.  We shared one of the non-vegetarian meals for two, which included for appetizers Bhajia (potato slices, dusted with a spicy lentil flour and deep fried), Pakoras (chickpea fritters) and Sheekkh Kebabs made of minced meat with spices and grilled on skewers.  The appetizers were served together on a plate with a sweet chutney and a cilantro sauce, both of which were wonderfully tasteful and complemented the foods beautifully.

For the main course, we had Beef Korma, Anar Chicken, Aloo Gobi and rice, served with Nan Bread.  Each dish was wonderful.  Together, they reminded me of the feasts of my childhood.  Complex, exciting flavors that went together, each with the other, to make an amazing meal.  The  kitchen was more than willing to change the lamb korma on the menu for beef for us, since Lin isn't a big fan of lamb.

All I can say is, "Welcome back, Taj.  I have missed your food and am thrilled to find the Taj Mahal back on the Saskatoon food scene."

Using the KitchenSavvy Restaurant Rating:

• Atmosphere/Ambiance - 8/9
• Service-8/9
• Food- 8/9
• Presentation - 8/9
• Menu Variety- 5/9
• Appetizer + Entrée price range $55-$75 for two people
• Will I return? - "I can't wait to come back"

The Menu Variety requires a bit of an explanation.  We were told that they are in the midst of training new cooks.  The owner's wife used to do all of the cooking single-handed.  In order to bring the new cooks up to speed, they have reduced the menu to four fixed price selections each planned for two guests.  Hopefully they will return soon to the full a la carte menu.

If you are a fan of Indian food, this is the place to go.

Taj Mahal
157 2nd Ave N
Saskatoon, SK S7K

(306) 978-2227

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If you have food or cooking questions, send them to Questions@KitchenSavvy.com



Due to the volume of questions received, not all can be answered.
© Lost Hobbit Enterprises 2004 onward