I made an English curry with the leftover roast beef from Christmas the other day. It’s important to stress the English part of this recipe: it’s not Indian. As the Wikipedia points out:

Curry powder is a mixture of spices of widely varying composition developed by the British during their colonial rule of India.

The word “Karhee” or “Kadhi” from which “curry” is derived, comes from Southern India and refers to a sauce of any kind. “Curry powder” was developed by the British, who wished to take the taste of Indian food home, without having to utilize fresh spices. As a result “curry powder” in the Western world has a fairly standardized taste, but there are literally millions of curry flavors in India.

My mother used to make this all the time with leftover meat when I was a child, so I thought I would do the same. Here’s the recipe:

Chop up one large onion, and two large apples (peeled and cored). Saute them in a pot in oil with a lot of Madras curry powder. Add a lot of chopped up leftover roast beef, lamb or chicken, and continue to saute until the onions are well done. Add a bunch of water and simmer for 20 minutes, or until you have a thick soup.

Serve over rice with chopped bananas, raisins, peanuts, shredded coconut, and Major Grey’s Chutney on the side.

It will get hotter over time, so if it is spicy when you first make it, it will be spicier tomorrow.

I love sushi, but it has been clear for a long time now that bluefin tuna are being hunted to extinction. The final blow to the tuna seems to have been struck at the recent meetings that have set the tuna fishing quota at an unsustainable level. See Bluefin tuna – magnificent fish too valuable to save for the details.

Which leaves me wondering what I should do? In the past, I’ve tried to assuage my conscience by telling myself that my abstaining from tuna sushi will not make a difference, and that’s certainly correct: the vast majority of tuna is flash frozen and sent to Japan. At this point, though, I think I have passed the point of rationalization. Every time anyone eats blue-fin tuna, they are eating an endangered species. And, I don’t think I can do that anymore.

By popular demand, here’s my recipe for Quince-pear tart:

1. Mix 8 cups of water, 1 cup of sugar, some sliced ginger, and a pinch of cinnamon. Bring them to a boil. Peel, core and slice up two large quinces. Throw them in the boiling water, and simmer for fifteen minutes.

2. While the quinces are simmering, peel, core, and slice up four pears. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Coat the pie crust with butter, slit, and put the pan lined with pie crust in the oven to bake for 10 minutes.

3. Mix the quinces, pears, a half cup of brown sugar, a half stick of melted butter, and enough of the sugar water you boiled the quinces in to make a filling with a nice consistency.

4. Fill the pie crust with filling, and bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

I took a break from my vacation in Alabama to drive up and visit our Louisville office. As always, I had an enjoyable visit. The people who work there are great. The bar-b-q at Mark’s Feed Store was awesome as always. Last, but not least, I got to drink a can of Big Red.

Big Red is hard to describe. It’s a bit like liquid cotton candy, and I’ve only ever seen it in Louisville. I wouldn’t recommend it for regular drinking, but the occasional one is delicious! If you are interested in learning more about Big Red, here’s a link to their web site.

For dinner I had half of a veggie burrito from the taco truck. It was extremely spicy, and damn good.

According to my sources, they also have tripe burritos

I ate a Chipotle barbacoa burrito for lunch. It wasn’t that good. Way too salty (as were the accompanying chips). Moreover, they are incapable of wrapping a burrito.

I have had Chipotle burritos several times before, and they all fall apart and leak. Plus, they gave me lettuce after I said no lettuce. If I wasn’t such a burrito addict, I would never eat one again. But, you know I will.

and, boy are my arms tired (Sorry, couldn’t resist). Here’s all the places I visited:

• The Post House
• Club Macanudo
• Carlton Hotel

Why all these places have to use Flash on their web sites, I don’t know. I heartily recommend two out of three of them. I also ate at a great sushi place (called 28 Asian Cuisine) on 28th Street across from the Ziff Davis building. I can’t find a web site, but they’re easy to find.

Articles like this one in the New York Times continue to make me nervous about where the food I eat is coming from. It’s like an Asian version of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. The real problem I face in avoiding food like this, though, is when I eat at cheap restaurants. The workers often have no idea where the food comes from, but you can be sure it is somewhere cheap. It’s almost enough to start making me bring lunch to work.