Tamicon Tamarind Paste

Do you know about this cookbook, Heartland Masala? It’s great. I’ve been having a lot of fun going through the recipes. At the same time, I’ve been a little troubled to realize that I’m not a very good cook. When I wing it, things come out okay, but they don’t come out good.

But that’s a realization about myself, not about the book. The book has been full of wonderful little tricks and tips and encouragements for which I’m grateful. For example, I’ve been making ghee. It’s so easy! Why was I not doing this for my whole adult life?

When one of the recipes called for tamarind, I ignored the very good advice in the book, which was to just buy Tamicon Tamarind Paste. Instead, I bought this huge block of tamarind that felt like a block of concrete, and then realized I had to boil it and spend the rest of my life trying to strain the resulting goo through a mesh strainer. I spent, like, a whole afternoon working on that, and then gave up and ordered some Tamicon, and the result was a truly delicious ghugni.

There is no lesson to be learned here. Sometimes it’s a good idea to just buy the already produced thing. Sometimes it’s a good idea to do something a little more from scratch. You’ll never know, honestly. We’re just fumbling around down here. Tamicon, though, is really a good product.