
{"id":9779,"date":"2010-04-08T12:56:04","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T20:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=9779"},"modified":"2010-04-08T13:52:12","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T21:52:12","slug":"new-restaurant-to-showcase-indian-flavors-and-local-farmers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2010\/04\/08\/new-restaurant-to-showcase-indian-flavors-and-local-farmers\/","title":{"rendered":"New restaurant to showcase Indian flavors and local farmers"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_9807\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9807\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2010\/04\/08\/new-restaurant-to-showcase-indian-flavors-and-local-farmers\/indian-restaurant\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-9807\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Indian-Restaurant.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Indian-Restaurant\" width=\"500\" height=\"317\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9807\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Indian-Restaurant.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Indian-Restaurant-113x71.jpg 113w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Indian-Restaurant-150x95.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Indian-Restaurant-360x228.jpg 360w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/Indian-Restaurant-120x76.jpg 120w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9807\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Austin McCall spooning some of Vimala Rajendran\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kerala kozhi stew onto his plate as the smiling chef entertains her guests at her last community dinner before the restaurant opens in April.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><strong>By Catherine Rierson<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>Courtesy of the Carrboro Commons<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\nOpening her kitchen to both strangers and longtime friends, Vimala Rajendran has hosted weekly community dinners in her home since 1993, fusing her love for authentic and local food with her value of community. But come mid-April, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be moving the enterprise out of her kitchen and onto Franklin Street.<\/p>\n<p>Vimala\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Curryblossom Cafe, opening in the Courtyard in the space formerly occupied by Sandwhich, will blend flavors from the chef\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s roots in Mumbai, India and her life in Carrboro.<br \/>\nRajendran, celebrated locally for both her virtuosity in the kitchen and her involvement with food activism, plans to honor localism and sustainability in her business by bringing local farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 produce to the table.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153When it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a private, catered event, food and knowledge isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t available to the whole community,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In a restaurant, everyone can have access to organic, local food.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>The idea of a restaurant has long been marinating in Rajendran, but it was the ever-increasing demand for her food, in a kitchen already brimming with hungry guests, that impelled her to begin the endeavor now.<\/p>\n<p>Her new collaboration with young food activists has also been a factor. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What food activists do now, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve always done in my family,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rajendran said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a great partnership with the youth because I already have some of the knowledge they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re seeking. In this inter-generational communication, we can learn from each other.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Rajendran buys her meat and produce from farms like Ever Laughter, Eco Farm and Cane Creek, which are all within a 15-mile radius of town. When the restaurant opens, she plans to continue using pork from Cane Creek and Cliff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Meat Market chicken, which is brought fresh daily from Siler City and butchered in-house.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I try to bring an edible presence from the local farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 bounty to the community, and I want to do that with my restaurant too\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said.<\/p>\n<p>Her cooking techniques remain faithful to Indian tradition. She cooks from scratch, first roasting fresh, whole spices, then grinding them down to a powder to season the meat and produce she plunges into enormous woks and vats she lugged from India.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I make everything from scratch, which is why all my food tastes so authentic and wholesome,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Rajendran said.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the restaurant\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s menu will be Indian cuisine, but Rajendran said it will also include Southern staples like pork barbecue and cabbage from Cane Creek Farm as a way to pay homage to her adopted community.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I lived here for over two decades without being able to see my family in India,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The people of this place became my family. It was the proverbial Southern hospitality, and I was the beneficiary.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>The final community dinner she hosted featured several items on trial for her restaurant\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s menu: Kerala kozhi stew, a chicken curry swimming in coconut milk, fennel and curry leaves; Appam, a rice and coconut fermented pancake; Vatana usal, a whole pea curry; an egg roast with whole eggs atop a caramelized onion base; tomato-carrot chutney with tamarind; and, finally, her notorious cardamom brownies.<\/p>\n<p>The last time Rajendran went to India, everyone in her family was buying pre-packaged bags of curry.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I was the only person in my family who knew how to grind down whole spices,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It really is a dying art.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p><em>Catherine Rierson is a UNC student writing for the<\/em> Carrboro Commons<em>, a bi-weekly online lab newspaper for Jock Lauterer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Community Journalism class at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Opening her kitchen to both strangers and longtime friends, Vimala Rajendran has hosted weekly community dinners in her home since 1993, fusing her love for authentic and local food with her value of community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":9807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-land-and-table"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9779"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9830,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779\/revisions\/9830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}