Flying again

I started to schedule a trip to India at the beginning of this month and was planning to stop by for a weekend in Paris to visit the little monkey and his growing family. For once I even had started all formalities early, that was without counting on bureaucrats creativity. The visa process for India got changed, now they request a criminal record to the French autorities, which are well known for their speed. I was supposed to fly 3 days ago and got the visa delivered today...
So I am still going to India but will have to skip on France this time, I am very sorry, especially for my dear little monkey. I'll try to hop by to visit you before Christmas still. I hope things will be fine for me also as it's not even sure I'll get seats on my return flight...

All the news aren't bad though, next weekend Ashok and Aravindh are taking me to Madurai and Munnar, I am excited just at the thought of hiking in the tea gardens :).

Old pictures

I started to go over my old digital pictures and am slowly posting them on my Zenfolio, today a pretty good batch from 2000 to 2005 (California, Japan, Colombia, Mexico, Turkey...). A lot of pictures from France and the USA are still missing though (I still have over 5000 of those to sort).

French - middle eastern cuisine equivalences

I have been eating and cooking here long enough that I gathered a few tricks or equivalences between our cuisines. Basically what I will list are ingredients in french cuisine that if swapped with their middle eastern "equivalent" will definitely give a middle eastern taste to your dish:

- lettuce -> cucumber (typical salad has finely chopped cucumber and tomatoes as the base)
- vinegar -> lemon juice
- butter/oil -> olive oil
- sour cream -> tehina (sezame sauce, goes very well with meat by ex. in sinia)
- pepper -> cinamon (can mix with some nutmeg too, generally dishes here are not hot)
- chilli -> paprika (on chicken or humus by ex.)
- beef -> lamb
- pork -> chicken
- parsley -> coriander or mint
- pasta -> rice

If you just try these swaps on simple everyday french dishes you'll discover interresting oriental tastes and it actually works for pretty much all the dishes using these ingredients. Obviously if you're coming from the middle east you can try to reverse it :).