That there is a photo of white mountain yogurt, which is my new favorite yogurt.
Years ago there was a restaurant in Venice Beach called Hurry Curry. It’s gone now. It was one of those places where, between 9am and 9pm, you could walk in and Raj would hook you up with anything you might want that was your typical Indian fare, aloo gobi, palak or saag paneer, matar paneer, chicken tiki masala, vindaloo, you name it. You could get various levels of spice, but almost all of their food had a kick to it, and I was raised on Irish cooking, for the most part. I love cucumbers, but I’ve never been a fan of raita, because they’re too mushy in it. I had eaten yogurt in my life, but, if you grew up like me, the yogurt you ate was a crime against yogurt, Dannon. My mom bought one that was fruit on the bottom that was okay, but really, yogurt was always like a “when you really want a good sweet, but you’re too fat for one,” sort of thing, and as fat as I have ever been, and I have been quite voluminous, I ain’t never been that fat. LOL. Actually I am not even that into sweets. So why waste the sweets you are going to eat on freaking Dannon?. But Raj, the very sweet very large man in charge, gave me some plain yogurt to try as a way to cool down the spice.
Raj made the yogurt from scratch. Raj was probably 20 years older than me, and his entire family was back in India. Raj was here hoping to make enough money to send them back there so that his kids could do well in life, and he hadn’t seen his family in the same room as him in about ten years when I met him. Raj was illegal, and he could not go back to visit and hope to come here again easily, especially after 9/11. But he owned Hurry Curry, and he was beloved in the neighborhood.
Raj’s yogurt was slightly warm, as he took it from the pot on the stove, and runny. Dannon’s was only runny if it had gone over. Raj’s yogurt had a tang to it, but not sour, and so soft and smooth. It was delicious. Raj taught me how to make it by taking home some of his yogurt, and heating up milk on the stove, letting it almost boil, cooling it down to room temp., and then pouring in Raj’s yogurt. (I am not a food scientist… please do not consider this a “how to” on yogurt making. It is a reminiscence from 20 years ago.)
Raj had a little “fatherly” crush on me, I think. I was not a petite person then, and he thought I was just the cutest, plumpest thing outside of his wife in India. He always used to put extra cheese cubes in my saag paneer. Oh, man, was it good!
Indian restaurants, in general, in my opinion, have the best yogurt going. I am not a fan of yogurt with sweet things in it. I like it plain. And, actually, I have to make another tangent here to rave about Turkish manti.
Turkish manti can most easily be described as tortellini filled with meat and presented with a creamy buttery garlic yogurt sauce on top, but the kind I had was made like that, and then “soupefied” (it’s my word, I created it!) with some of the pasta water. The ones I see photos of on the web have missed this (IMHO) crucial step. I once had a little group of Turkish graduate students I’d become friends with, and they took me to a restaurant in NYC that served manti, which they said is normally a food not served in restaurants, because “Only Mama makes it.” And then they had Mama send some, somehow, frozen like a brick, and they made it for me at home too. I don’t eat a lot of meat these days, but if someone put a steaming bowl of manti in front of me, especially if it was soupefied, it would be impossible to say no.
Back to the yogurt, because I want to tell you about white mountain yogurt, which I found at Sprouts. I’m not gonna lie. I bought it because of the beautiful glass jar. I am a jar lover, and a jar hoarder. I mean it’s endlessly reusable! And this jar is beautiful.
May they never switch to paper or plastic! Imagine those flowers you are going to buy yourself sticking out of this damn jar! Wow! Imagine the terrarium you could make in it! Imagine the leftovers, like something soupified, you could store in it after you have pulled a Gene Simmons and somehow gotten your tongue all the way down to the bottom of the jar. This yogurt tastes exactly as I remember Raj’s tasting. It is thin in spots and thick in others, but a good shake of the jar makes it more uniform. It has that silky thin texture and absolutely perfect taste. It is, so it says, Bulgarian! And, just like that, another country on my “wish I could visit” list. I want to go!
Which brings me to tangent #2: Immigrants, illegal or otherwise.
I found a photo of Raj! God bless the internet!
What a cutie!
And here are some photos of Hurry Curry!
Wasn’t it beautiful?
Right before I moved back east, Raj had a heart attack. At the time his wife was able to visit, and was coming to take care of him. Of course, she couldn’t stay any more than he was supposed to have stayed. I don’t know the real story of why Hurry Curry is gone. I was having my own very real life crisis at the same time, so I could not even attempt to keep connected. I hope he closed because he went home to his family. I know he always wanted to. I’m mean, Los Angeles is great, but his family wasn’t here, and he always wanted to return to them. The immigrant situation in the USA is a problem of our own making, in my humble opinion. If you want to move here from England, you have a much easier time than if you want to move here from Mexico, or India, or many other places. The way to move here is not standardized or the same for each country. Many Americans, long before the current mess of an administration, married immigrants only to find there was no way for their spouses to get citizenship, and they left the USA for their spouses’ home countries. But many countries are not safe to go back to at all, and so people go “underground” because they fear harm back home. But really, if home was safe, and your family was safe, you would probably prefer to be in your home. I’ve met and become friends with many international students, and none of them wanted to stay. They wanted to go back to Turkey, to Vietnam, to Eastern Europe, to Mexico. And it breaks my heart, every day, to see what the current administration is doing to my fellow humans. A person who happened to be born in Columbia, or Haiti, or Yugoslavia, or Sudan is no different from me. They may like different foods, or have different spiritual beliefs, but we all have the same dreams: happiness for ourselves, and, as we have them, for our children. Stephen Miller and his goons are as wrong and evil as any other proponent of monoraciality in history. He would deny us our friends from other places, our family from other places, and our food from other places too. I see what is going on today as simple cruelty that is out to hurt people like Raj. And why? What for? I don’t buy the whole “crime & rapists” stuff, and I don’t buy the “they’re using all the resources so we don’t have enough!” The Republicans keep cutting aid programs, which is why we don’t have enough. It’s got nothing to do with poor children from this country or any other.
This article really moved me, and gave me some small insight into a world I don’t know anything about. “A day in the strawberry fields seems like forever”
I hope people who judge immigrants harshly will take a moment to read it.
Anywho, as a woman who loves to eat, and quite likes spicy food, but can also collapse into an asthma attack if it is truly spicy, yogurt has saved my ass too many times to mention. I’ve been known to bring my own (small plastic container secreted in handbag or coat pocket) if we’re going for spicy food at a place where I don’t expect them to have any… like a Korean restaurant. I’ve never not been grateful for being introduced to non-English, Irish, or Italian foods. Diversity is one of the things I most enjoy in the world. I can think of one of my favorite and most challenging students, and young guy named Mole (pronounced mole-eh! like ole!), who introduced me to, you guessed it, mole sauce! But that’s a story for another day.
I hope that Raj recovered, and was able to go back to India to live happily ever after with his family. I can’t thank him enough for all the good food, for being so kind, and always so tickled to see me (he always came from behind the counter to give me a hug), for thinking I was cute, and for teaching me about plain, and delicious, yogurt. Go try some white mountain. You can drink a shot glass of it: it is so liquidy and delicious. Take a shot of probiotic bliss and toast to your own health, mine, and Raj’s. And buy yourself flowers to put in the jar after you empty it!
Dianne Pearce Writes 