South Florida is the Hell of cooking environments! Actually, Hell would probably be dry and have more consistent heat, so South Florida is worse than Hell when it comes to cooking. Today, I tried to make bhaturas, a puffy deep-fried Indian flatbread, and after a lot of cursing and sweating and scraping dough off of a French rolling pin, I finally threw out the whole batch of dough and just improvised my own chapati recipe, which turned out pretty well. What really made me feel worse is that I actually followed the recipe...a recipe that fails to take into consideration that in South Florida you will always get about 1/2 cup to 1 cup of extra water in whatever you cook, whether you're baking or making a stew. Suvir Saran wrote his little recipe in NYC where he lives, I'm sure. Even though there is humidity all over the world, and most especially in India, I'm convinced that the humidity in South Florida is intent on ruining the lives of cooks and bakers.
Add a little more flour, you say? With any recipe calling for flour - chickpea flour, rice flour, bran flour, corn flour, any flour - it seems as if the more flour you add, the more moisture it attracts, and before you know it you have a ten pound ball of dough that's just as sticky and unmanageable as when you started. I've tried making besan ki laddoos once, an Indian sweet made by cooking chickpea flour in ghee (clarified butter) until it forms a ball and then mixing it with sugar and nuts. After following the recipe and watching the online video, I ended up with a very buttery porridge.
To accompany my chapatis, I had made aloo keema, an Indian dish consisting of ground meat (beef in this case) and sliced potatoes. I used a Masala Mixins packet from Rhode Island and used the attached recipe, which called for two cups of water. I knew that this was a ridiculous amount for the quantity of beef, potatoes, and tomatoes I was using, and it would give me a curried hamburger soup. I cut the water in half, and still ended up with a soupy curry which I had to simmer over high heat to thicken. In other words, when making a stew or curry in South Florida, it's probably best to use less than half the amount of liquid that it calls for. I've found myself having to do the same when using Shan Masala seasoning packets from Pakistan, too.
Rice is another issue. I've heard that people up north can actually make a pot of fluffy white rice using a 2/1 water to rice ratio. If you were to use that ratio in South Florida, you'd probably have yourself a decent congee (Chinese rice porridge). This was something that used to perplex me for years until a Cuban friend of mine gave me the correct proportion: 1 1/4 cups of water to every cup of rice....and it can still be a little clumpy on a rainy day!
A cookbook should be made with recipes on how to cook underwater, which is pretty much what cooking in South Florida can be like.
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