Uthappams (South Indian lentil pancakes)

I just learned that my all-time favorite vegetarian South Indian restaurant, Madras Saravana Bhavan, is a chain. A chain with locations in Singapore, London, Paris, Chennai, Dubai, Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, Atlanta, and New York, among other super-cosmopolitan locales. But a chain all the same. How to react? I've had amazing Sri Lankan cuisine in Paris. I've had lick-your-fingers-and-squeal-in-delight delicious Bhojpuri cuisine in London. But, seriously, the very best South Indian I've ever had was in Atlanta at Madras Saravana Bhavan. If they're opening restaurants worldwide I guess they must be doing something right. Right? Truth be told, I don't usually trust that logic. But I've not had better vegetarian South Indian anywhere, so perhaps this is a logic that works if you're part of the vegetarian Indian transnational jet set? I don't know. In any case, I have been missing Atlanta and dreaming about those dosas and uthappams for years. Also, my mom has been on a soak-your-grains-before-you-cook-them kick for a little while now, so I've been interested in recipes that involve soaking and fermentation, which happens to be a staple in South Indian (and more specifically, Tamil) cuisine. The soaking and fermentation process makes grains and pulses more digestible and somehow produces a greater variety of amino acids (vegetarians and gluten-haters, pay attention!). It also creates a much more complex, interesting, flavor. Think sourdough vs.Wonder bread.

South Indian style eggplant curry

YouTube is a great source of information for cooks wishing to learn techniques from other culinary traditions. After Camellia Panjabi's eminently user-friendly curry primer, I learned a great majority of the Indian/South Asian techniques I know by watching Indian and Indian-American home cooks and professionals demonstrate their methods on video. Among other things, I learned how to make naan bread, homemade paneer, flaky paratha, and (my favorite) Idlis, all on YouTube. Some of the videos are poorly edited, cheesy, or just plain weird, while others are quite polished. But as long as you get a good visual sense for each step involved and the textures you're supposed to aim for at each stage of the process, as well as any special hand or tool techniques involved, a video is still more valuable, in my opinion, than any cookbook. For one, videos tend to demystify cooking techniques while cookbooks tend to do the opposite (an unintentional byproduct of the linguistic encoding, in precise terms, of techniques that are traditionally transmitted in the kitchen, mother to daughter, cook to cook, etc., where language only has an ancillary function). This is especially true with any recipe involving a yeast dough, where it is critical to observe textural factors such as wetness, gluten-level-stickyness, oiliness, etc.

Anyhow, YouTube cooking manifesto aside, I wanted to share a recipe from one of my favorite online Indian chefs, Sanjay Thumma. First, read this nice feature on Thumma that appeared in The Hindu two years ago, and which explains why YouTube is particularly useful for Indian cooking. Then, check out his video recipe for eggplant tomato curry. I looked specifically to Thumma when my garden started producing more eggplants and tomatoes than I knew what to do with, and was pleased with what I found. The inclusion of freshly roasted and crushed peanuts and sesame seeds in this particular recipe is what sold me.