... with Adora and Alan Palmer and their love of Indian food.
It spread to friends who shared the Palmers’ love of concocting all manner of spicy Indian dishes. Now, after about 15 years, the Coastside’s informal “curry club” carries on the tradition of cooking, gathering and sharing a variety of dishes of the spicy, savory Indian staple.
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Once a month — always on a Saturday evening — the group gathers at a member’s house that is roomy enough to accommodate diners from about 26 households.
“Everyone brings an offering,” said Palmer.
Most of them hail from the Coastside, but one couple treks over from Menlo Park, and others from Santa Cruz. “They say it’s well worth the drive,” said Palmer.
Once they arrive, they find a table laden with steaming dishes of foods like “aloogobi,” a vegetable dish made with cauliflower and potatoes, “palakjannu” made with spinach, or meats such as lamb, chicken or beef cooked with “masalas,” or blended spices.
There is also plenty of rice: white “basmati” rice or pots of rice of varying spiciness, to which saffron or turmeric is added.
And there is dessert, maybe sweet rice with rosewater, almonds, cinnamon and cardamom. Or the traditional English trifle, made with custard, jello and fruit with sponge-cake soaked in liqueur. If the cake is well soaked, it is appropriately named a “tipsy trifle.”
Spiciness defines many of the club’s offerings. On Thursday morning, Adora Palmer’s husband Alan was in the kitchen whipping up a hot “vindaloo” with beef that he promised would make diners’ eyes water.
“I like a good spicy curry,” he admitted.
There is enough of a variety of dishes — and spice levels — said Adora Palmer, to satisfy a range of palates from the fierce to the fainthearted. The group includes gentler dishes like the cooler cucumber raita, made with cucumbers pieces and yogurt, or “korma,” a “safe, mild, creamy sauce for the timid.”
But, she added, “then again, we always do the hot ones.”
With Alan Palmer’s British heritage, the Palmers fit right into the curry lovers’ profile. The British have been linked with Indian food from the days of British rule of India, euphemistically called the “raj,” from about the mid-1800s to 1947. Since then, curry has become one of the most popular of foods for the British, Alan Palmer said.
His wife’s taste buds helped with the founding of this group. The couple always loved Indian food but found nowhere on the Coastside that served it, she said.
So they headed to the Peninsula and a business which served as a source of spices, which they bought in bulk. They also invested in an Indian cookbook.
And reality struck. “We found out how much time and effort it takes to cook every dish,” Adora Palmer said ruefully.
Deciding they needed some help, they polled friends to find out who liked Indian food and was willing to take the time to cook it.
Their son Cameron’s business in Half Moon Bay, Cameron’s Restaurant and Inn, also stocks several English foods and treats, as well as some Indian spices and “pompadons,” or fried wafers similar to dipping crackers.
The club was “an instant hit,” Adora Palmer said.
About six years ago, Medicine Shoppe owner Harish Odedra and his wife Shilpa Odedra took part in the club to “make sure it was true to taste and we were doing it correctly,” said Adora Palmer.
They liked what they saw - and sampled. “It was actually very nice,” said Harish Odedra. “Most dishes were almost perfect.”
She noted that the club “is always looking for new people” who share the kind of daring palate that seeks spices.
For information on the club and subsequent meetings contact Alan Palmer at 726-2973.
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