Subject: Indian food plants/food allergies

Hi folks!
A colleague forwarded this message to me because we have quite a few resident 
and visiting Indians and Sri Lankans in the lab who have introduced our 
colleagues to 'exotic' foods. However, I think this may be of interest to the 
group esp. those with the desired combination of culinary and botanical talent.

Shaily
______________________________________________________________________________
Shaily Menon, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Associate
Department of Biology
University of Massachusetts, Boston
100 Morrissey Blvd. 
Boston, MA 02125

Phone: (617) 287-6659
Fax: (617) 287-6650
menon@umbsky.cc.umb.edu
______________________________________________________________________________

Forwarded message follows: 
I have been constructing a large list of food plant relationships, the
current version of which is available on my website via

            http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/Food/foodindex.html

This is primarily intended to help people with food allergies, but may be
interesting to other people with a botanical curiosity about what they're
eating.  The newest version has much more taxonomic information than the
previous ones.

Three questions about Indian foods.

Firstly: the one food species in the entire plant kingdom that I only have
a common name for is tinda, the small green gourd used in Indian cooking
(one of the dullest vegetables in creation, but if people eat it I've got
to list it).  What is it?  I'm guessing it's either _Sechium edule_ or
_Lagenaria sicheraria_.

Secondly: I have Indian foods used in the UK very well covered - i.e. when
I go into groceries serving the local Indian community I see nothing at all
on their shelves (tinda excepted) that I haven't got classified - but I must
be only scratching at the surface for foods used in India itself.  Please
check my list and let me know what I've left out.  Documentation on food
allergy in Third World countries is virtually non-existent; what I'm doing
is partly intended as a kick up the arse of the medical establishment to
start thinking about it.  More Indian common names for species that I have
listed would be useful as well as species I've omitted.

Thirdly: are the large black and small pale kind of cardamom both varieties
of _Elettaria cardamomum_, and does the word "elachi" and its cognates cover
both of them or only one?  If they are the same species, what are the
varieties called?

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http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/purrhome.html - includes food allergy/intolerance
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