The Family Dinner

What is patriotism but the love of food one ate as a child? -- Lao Tzu

I started this sojourn on Long Island with three thoughts in mind regarding the daily preparation of the Family Dinner: short summer, small kitchen, small ambitions. I would buy semi-prepared meals from the supermarket or from Dream Dinners (Austinites will know an equivalent company called Super Suppers). The only scratch-cooking I'd do would be breakfast. Lunch would frequently be a slice of pizza or something local. Life would be good.

But some habits refuse to die. Here I am, having just put away eighty dollars' worth of raw groceries: onions, garlic, things you chop and things you fry before combining with other things you've steamed. I'm still wondering what, exactly, happened.

I blame England. Other people hold her responsible for stealing the Elgin Marbles from Greece and bringing opium to China. I blame her for HP Sauce, an addictive, spicy, brown catsup-like condiment that makes that most heavenly of foods -- bacon -- even more divine. I've seldom known such happiness as barely surviving a climb up a rain-soaked English mountain and then celebrating my survival with a giant soft-roll loaded with English back bacon and HP sauce. My first experience with the sauce was, er, several decades ago. I haven't been able to eat bacon without a squirt of HP since. Or mashed potatoes. Or steamed potatoes, unless they're in a bhel-poori, about which more later.

So my first item of business when arriving on Long Island was MUST FIND SAUCE. Before we came to Long Island, my impression was that, since it was so close to New York city (so close it's actually, you know, under parts of the city), it would be positively lousy with international markets. There would be no need to cart HP Sauce in my luggage, I thought. Surely I can get it up there. They're Yankees, after all.

And then I discovered that Long Island, much as I love it (I've convinced myself that I was switched with a New Englander at birth) is, well, a bit set in its culinary ways. And for good reason. The local, Italian-influenced food is hands-down fantastic. There are plenty of ethnic restaurants if not grocers locally. And, if you feel the urge for something really exotic, it's only an hour on the train into town. But an hour is too far for me to go almost anywhere. It's all I can do to persuade myself to go into NYC one day a week. So, while in Huntington, I came to realize, I'd have to live without the essential oases for an Austin foodie. No Fiesta. No Central Market. No Phoenicia Bakery. And no HP Sauce.

But, thank the kitchen gods, there are South Asians everywhere. And there aren't many Indian grocers where you can't get some English foods. Yahoo Yellow pages was not too helpful on the subject of Asian grocers, but it seemed there was one cluster of Asian shops not far from the Wee Cottage, in Hicksville (never, ever, stay at the Days Inn there). Bravely, GPS in hand, I set out.

After a mere twenty minutes' drive, I found it, the Vatican of Indian grocery stores.

You know how Central Market or Whole Foods has bin after bin of flour, of rice, of eighty different kinds of granola, and in Central Market's case, twenty different types of chili powder? Patel Brothers has twenty different bins of Indian Crunchy Bits, snack foods that are eaten as is or are mixed into other dishes. I was weak just looking at it all.

Staring gape-mouthed at this abundance, my resolve to walk in and just snag the HP Sauce and a jar of mango chutney -- brilliant on cheese toasties -- crumbled into ashes. I could make a bhel-poori. I've written about this before, this salad that heroes surely eat on Olympus. I'm so attached to it and other Indian foods because of my years in London, when I could never feel so lonely or despairing that a quick trip down Brick Lane, the curry mecca in those days, couldn't fix. There was also a bhel-poori stand behind Euston station, the station where I would get trains to Liverpool. I would feast at that stand and be prepared for what was sometimes an awful journey, standing all the way, for the whole 3 or 4 hours. I'll never forget that time I managed to get a seat and a middle-aged nun, saying she had back trouble, asked me to give my seat up to her. Of course, I was happy to oblige, but why did she have to pick me?

Anyway, before I knew it, I was taking a hand-basket and filling it with potatoes, frozen panir, frozen spinach, fresh parathas, a string of garlic (Patel Brothers' clientele rightly goes through garlic too quickly to justify buying one globe at a time). And, kitchen gods help me, I nearly bought a crate of mangoes because it was going for a mere $25. Briefly, I wondered if I could sell the mangoes I wouldn't need on the streets of Huntington. But I came to my senses.

Somewhat. As I stared at the shelves, I noticed the boxes of PG Tips tea. The wee cottage is equipped with enough tea already, one might argue, but I've lived for years with PG Tips in the house. Mark Twain said a house without a cat may be a perfectly good house, but without the cat, how can it prove its title? For me, PG Tips tea means the same thing. If you don't have a box in your cupboard, you haven't really moved in yet.
And, no, Patel Brothers didn't have any HP Sauce. We'll just have to make do.