The Magnificent Simon Majumdar

Episode Information

Date of video

August 4th, 2014

Date of upload

August 9th, 2014

Duration

13 minutes 29 seconds

Appearances by

Michael Aranda

Simon Majumdar

Sybil Majumdar

Stefan Chin

Katelyn Salem

Nick Jenkins

Matthew Gaydos

Karem Mohamed

Location

Missoula, Montana

Transcript

Michael's Office

(Random Hank noises on computer)

Michael's Apartment

Michael: I've been having some connectivity issues with this drone today and I'm not exactly sure why. My current hypothesis is that maybe has to do with, uh, powerlines? I was standing over there on the other side of that batco, and I'm wondering if maybe that, that powerline with the transformer on it was causing me problems. Anyway, we're going to have a special guest here today. His name is Simon Majumdar and he's a food critic, chef, person who was a judge on, uh, one of the Iron Chef, uh, shows on Food Network I believe. So he's going to come over tonight and cook a meal for a bunch of us and we're all going to judge his food very harshly, of course.

Outdoors Missoula

(Music)

Michael's Apartment

Michael: So I'm here with Simon and Sybil, who've arrived to cook us a fantastic meal.

Simon: You hope!

Michael: I hope!

Simon: We're going to do some Indian food so I thought we'd do a whole mixture, so we're going to start with some onion bhajis, which is like an Indian street food of deep fried onions in chickpea flour batter with lots of spices. Then we're going to do some Tandoori style chicken, uh, so this is some chicken. I'm just going to take the skin off 'cause what I like to do is render that down and deep fry it so we can start with some little chicken cracklings, 'cause chicken cracklings are always a good thing. Um, then we're going to do an Indian salad. We're going to do a very hot Indian dip, very spicy Indian dip, and then we're going to finish with something totally un-Indian, we're going to do a crumble with some beautiful nectarines we found today and, uh, some blueberries and a little topping and we'll have that with vanilla ice cream. So hopefully enough to feed ten hungry people?

So we did an event for a Filipino charity where I cooked for them, and I spent days preparing everything, days, but the one thing that they all loved more than anything else was when I deep fried the chicken skin.

Michael: How d'you like that kitty?

Simon: So I'm just taking the skin off. I leave a bit of the fat on 'cause fat's flavor.

Michael: Hey kitty. D'you find something interesting?

Simon: Oo and the other one.

So this is lots of minced green chopped serrano chili. As we say in England, enough to come back and haunt you in the morning. And then this is a pulp of ginger and garlic. Traditionally they would cook this in a very hot tandoor oven, which is like a clay oven that gets up to, like, temperatures as hot as the sun, almost. Not quite, but you know what I mean. And so, it gets charred on the outside and really juicy on the inside. But what we're going to do is just do this in a hot oven, or you can do it under the broiler or you can do it on a grill. This is a fantastic dish for the grill.

Michael: It smells really nice.

Simon: Yeah, already the smell of that ginger chili garlic - I love it. If they could bottle that and turn it into a scent...

(laughter)

Simon: Normally I say I grind all my own spices and I've got my grinder here, but just for sake of time and convenience, because we don't have as much time as I'd like, we're going to do a little mix, so that's garam masala, then I'm going to put some cumin and some coriander, I think I've got some turmeric there. I notice you've got... gonna put some chili pepper flakes as well.

Michael: What do you think you're doing?

(laughter)

Simon: Oh!

Michael: Simon has eaten kitty before!

Simon: I have eaten kitty, dog, cat, rat, snake, all kinds of weird things in this world.

Michael: How does that make you feel?

Simon: So this is just a little bit of yogurt. Just a tiny bit, you don't need a lot. And that yogurt basically speeds up... accelerates the marination process. So we use yogurt on tougher pieces of meat, and I just get... to be honest I'm going to get filthy with it 'cause it's... you need to really massage it in well.

Michael: It makes a really nice sound too.

Simon: You seem terribly impressed.

There are few things better in the world than crisp chicken skin.

So this is just chickpea flour or what they call in India gram flour or, in your store here, in your Gourmet Good Food Store or whatever it was called, yeah, which we rather liked, they call it garbanzo flour.

Michael: How did you find the Good Food Store?

Simon: I'm er, I do a lot of research because, y'know, particularly as you're travelling around the country, often you find you go into towns and you're cooking for people and they don't have a good food store of any sort-

Michael: Mmm-hmm

Simon: -so I had no idea so I just put "best gourmet store in Missoula" and Good Food Store came up, and I have to say it was terrific-

Sybil: Yeah, it was nice.

Simon: -they had a good selection, good quality of meat, everything seemed to be really nicely done. So we're just going to thinly slice this. I've got my very nice and sharp Japanese knife that was a gift from one of my friends on the food network. Just going to spice this up a little bit. This is a great- this is a chili powder from Kashmir, a part of India, and it's really good for giving color. This is my all-purpose cast iron skillet. It's the single best piece of equipment I have. I do everything in that. Roast whole chickens... We're gonna make dessert in it tonight. The key when you're making anything that you're gonna deep fry is you must season the flour.

So this is the batter. We want it to be quite thick and you want a few lumps in it 'cause you need those little bubbly bits. So what we're gonna do is get the oil nice and hot for deep frying and we're gonna pull out... there's a lot of hand work for this food, a lot of hand work involved... we're gonna pull out little clumps that look like something out of Doctor Who and we're gonna drop them in the oil and fry them, so they're gonna be like very spicy Indian fritters. And if my beautiful assistant wouldn't mind putting those in the fridge for me... So yeah, if you ever eat anything that's really spicy and you're suffering, the worst thing you can do is drink water, 'cause that's just gonna spread it around your mouth, so the best thing to do is to eat dairy, a piece of cheese or a piece of bread, drink milk, or in this case with Indian food you have this thing called a raita, which people in America also seem to pronounce incorrectly, they call it a 'ri-E-ta', but it's not it's a raita. And that's a yogurt dip that can be filled with, in this case it's gonna have cucumber and mint and a little bit of cilantro.

Michael: This is already way more effort than any dish that has ever been cooked in this kitchen!

(Sybil laughs)

Simon: You know for a lot of people (and I guess just the circles I move in) food is just our way of relaxing, it's everything. Y'know, to me time that I don't spend in the kitchen preparing food for my lovely wife here is just, it's time I miss so much when I'm on the road. So actually now we're travelling and doing this thing that we've called, y'know, 'Give Us a Bed and I Cook You Dinner', a lot of that is really just me being selfish because it means I get to cook while I'm on the road and I get to use other people's kitchens to do it, so I like that. I like that a lot. People like yourself are very kind.

Michael: I mean, I feel like I'm the one getting the better deal in this situation!

(Simon laughs)

Simon: Trust me, it's equal, and you're giving us a bed.

Michael: In honor of you becoming a US citizen, I've brought you Abraham Lincoln with the Michael Aranda blond stripe.

Simon: That is pretty cool!

Y'know, it's trial and error.

Stefan: Yeah.

(Abby barks)

Matt: What? Why?

(laughter)

Stefan: I've been wanting to figure out Thai food-

Sybil: Ok, that's difficult.

Stefan: -because I've, yeah... I'm really into Thai food but there's not a lot of good choices here in Missoula.

Simon: But, y'know, interestingly enough... So the gourmet store that we went to, Good Food? or whatever it was called? They had really good selection of the ingredients you would need for Thai food. They had galangal (which is like ginger), all the lemongrass, they had all the things, and the thing with Thai food is, like a lot of south-east Asian food, it's basically about four things - the balance of four things. Hot, sweet, salty, sour. And if you think of all the great Thai dishes that you like, like tom yum soup or, y'know-

Sybil: Pad thai.

Simon: -pad thai, it's all about balancing those four flavors.

Sybil: Oo! Ok!

Stefan: There we go!

Sybil: I'm not gonna put my hand in there! (laughs)

Nick: Let Stefan do it.

Michael: He's an expert. An expert hand-putter-inner.

Simon: We're gonna... I'm gonna start cooking up in a few moments. We'll start doing the appetizers and then we'll just clean up and... I was just gonna put stuff out here and let people just tuck in, rather than doing anything more formal. Normally I'd marinade it without yogurt overnight and then put the yogurt on the next day, er, because that really accelerates the marination. So if you've ever got a tough piece of meat, like a piece of lamb that's tough or... beef they do in... all around the world, and the yogurt really speeds up the process.

Michael: It just smells so... clean.

Nick: It does! Yes it smells very clean.

Simon: This isn't rocket science. Just like, I'm sure you guys would say to me about how to edit a video or do this, you're so used to doing it now that you, you don't think twice. But that's how, y'know, cooks think about food like this. It's because it isn't rocket science. It just takes a bit of time and a bit of effort.

Nick: There's no undo button.

(laughter)

Simon: Well no, but there are... that is very true.

Nick: I think that's the main thing that keeps me from-

Simon: The decent thing about doing Indian food for people who aren't necessarily that familiar with it is it could be completely crap and I could tell you that's how it's supposed to taste.

(laughter)

Simon: So that's the other reason why I do it! That's absolutely perfect, you're spot on. That's just right.

Stefan: Ok! Cool.

Simon: So now we're just going to-

Michael: You crumbed it?

(Sybil laughs)

Stefan: I'm crumbing! I'm crumbing!

Simon: This, we were talking about it earlier, if I called it what it is (which is kachoomar) people go, "Well what the hell's that?", and they won't eat it and then if I say it's Indian salsa they go, "I love it!", so... so it's an Indian salsa.

So I'm just going to bring these out, so put them on a little side plate and have it with, y'know, some of these salads. So just break them up, take some of this hot fiery dip, take some of the raita, squeeze some lime over it. We always say with Indian food, 'Lime is the ignition key'; it starts everything off, it's like it lifts all the flavors up.

Michael: The appetizer's have been finished. How would you describe that experience?

Stefan: Delicious!

Katelyn: Mesmerizing.

Matt: Heavenly.

Karem: uUuh!

Nick: (silence)

Stefan: We've gotta get a picture. Everyone take a picture!

Karem: Instagram!

Simon: I guess it is, from what you were saying about, y'know, playing piano and playing jazz, once you learn how those things work you can go in a million different ways with it. And this, y'know, this would work, y'know, putting math into a different format, but that's also the next day because there's lemon juice and-

Michael: Empty plates. Satisfied customers.

Stefan: Yeah.

Michael: So Simon, is there any fast food that you legitimately enjoy?

Simon: Yes. Believe it or not, anyone who's been down south, I am a sucker for Bojangles biscuits-

Michael: Ok.

Simon: -do you know Bojangles?

Michael: Yep, yeah.

Simon: I love Bojangles biscuits and I shouldn't, but I do.

(Michael laughs)

Simon: I really, really like them. Of all of them I guess people like Chipotle is better than most, but the rest of them there's no need.

It's hot as Hades.

Nick: Watch your language, sir!

Stefan: Look at that texture!

Michael: It's bubbling.

Karem: Everybody's bubbling.

Simon: Spoonful of that. Ice cream on top, so the ice cream melts over the top of it.

Matt: Ok then.

Michael: Simon is about to go to bed. It was awesome having you cook.

Simon: It was fantastic being here. I've found out a new word, "vlog"-

(Michael laughs)

Simon: -I've also learnt never to say "v-log"-

Stefan: YES.

Simon: -'cause that'll get me killed, um, and I'm going to have to go and watch far more YouTube than I ever thought possible to catch up on everything!

Michael: YEAH!

Simon: So, to everybody in the YouTube world, you have one new admirer. Thank you very much.