On our arrival in France, one of the first things we did was to find out the nearest food sources! We had 4 or 5 supermarkets in our vicinity including a tiny Chinese grocers who kept among other things ‘kancha lanka’, ‘dhonay pata’ and bhindi: a life saver for me in those early days when artichauts, endives, bette rave, celery, poireuax, champignons, girofles were such mysteries to me (and still are)!
There were the Indian Stores at Gare Du Nord and just a walk away, The Bangladeshi store for all sorts of fishes, bori, and other Bengali essentials etc at Gare de L’est. There was a problems however. Isn’t there always? Our ‘appartement meuble’ or furnished apartment had a tiny ‘frigo’ and one that was of an ancient model and not the frost free variety and was not very efficient. So whatever we bought, we bought in small quantities. They would spoil quickly otherwise.
One afternoon when A was in office, I decided to cook one of his favourites – korola bhaja : Simple enough. Wash and cut the korola, season with salt and halud and fry. I picked up the knife and as I sliced throught the korolas, some of seeds too were split and they fell away on to the cutting board. But what’s this? Why are they writhing? Moving? EEeeeeeeeeeeeeeks. Worms. They are crawling with worms. (I shudder even as I write this nearly 2 years later). I dropped the knife and ran to the sofa and sat there feet up, shuddering. After a few minutes, I rang A and demanded he come home immediately and remove them. He couldn’t ofcourse and so till he did as usual at half past six, I sat there shuddering. Ofcourse we did not eat at home that night. No question of me venturing into the kitchen.
Many women and men share my dislike of worms but mine is not just a dislike. It’s a phobia. It started when I was six. I was running around barefoot in our garden in Assam when I stepped on and thus crushed an earthworm. It had me screaming and jumping around hysterically for half an hour and completely turned me into this wreck ever since. Before that, I would spend hours in our garden crawling with all sorts of creepy crawly including snakes without turning a hair.
This has of course taken away many small enjoyments – things others would not even notice. For example, I can never relax on a patch of green on a lazy summers day when practically all of Paris (perhaps all of France) is lolling around on grass. Or enjoy a walk in the garden in springtime, or even a bouquet of flowers. No gardening , not even indoor plants thankyou. At first, I was quite content in my plant less existence and would infrequently water the enormous potted plant which came along with the furniture and not too bothered by the fact that the expensive tulip bulbs that A presented to me – my first Valentine Day’s gift from my husband (and the last) died because I mixed up the watering instructions: Instead of watering twice a week, I watered it once in two weeks.
But as I slipped more and more into my Domestic Bliss avatar, the idea of having a bit of greenery indoors began to appeal to me. But how was that too be? Just a couple of months ago, I raised hell when a tiny black worm was seen crawling on the creamy tiles of our apartment? It had apparently come out of bouquet A had got for me that morning when I had asked him to get me some flowers for my Durga Thakur. It was on ashtomi’s day in 2002. He picked up a bouquet from the florist and I used some petals in my puja. The rest I put into a large bottle. But the minute I saw that worm…bye bye bouquet! A had to go and throw it away. What a pity.
I did manage to overcome this problem of worm phobia and get my own bit of greenery indoors: 5 Potted Plants. I got one as a gift, soon after I bought one. Then two more and then yet another given free by a local nursery. How green was my windowsill! But I said I had. Now I have only two. That too in 3 short months. This is how.
Passing by the florists one day, I had a Brainwave: What about some Cacti? They are green and I have never heard of worms in Cacti. (Maybe I am wrong but please please…don’t anyone of you enlighten me on this).
I took to looking at the tiny cacti at the local florists and the enormous price tags and sigh. Then A surprised me by getting me my first plant / cactus. On my birthday, he went out early saying he was going to get cigarettes and came back with a fan shaped cactus. I didn’t suspect a thing because just days before we had returned from a trip to Cote D’ Azur, which was he told me, my birthday gift. It took me quite some time to notice the cactus waiting on my kitchen table!! I didn’t notice it till A dropped some very obvious HINTS!!
Wow! How sweet of A, how thoughtful…whenever did he think this up? But what’s this? Bits of the cactus looks eaten away?! So we went out to the florist to get it changed who didn’t think much of the eaten away cactus. She said we should have looked carefully before picking up. I let A do the taking. His lack of French is such a deterrent even to the most tenacious vendors! The florist gave up her stance and quickly led us to the cacti, where I selected a healthy but a plain, normal sort of a cactus. It’s a smallish blob with two or three blobs on its sides, dark green with grey spikes. Not as elegant with the other one, but it would do. It came in a teeny-tiny pot and I would soon have to repot it. I brought it home lovingly and promptly dropped it on to my palms and got stuck with 100’s of tiny thorns which A had to pluck out using my eyebrow tweezers.
Bien Commencé!
A few days later, I got another cactus from our supermarket which was giving a ‘promo’ on potted plants. This one was a beauty. Three long bright green tubes covered with yellow thorns. Now there were 2 of them on my windowsill. A tall one and a short one. Reminded me of us two sisters. I have always been a feet and a half taller than my sis!
My enthusiasm knew no bounds. I looked up the watering schedules on the net. I tried looking for their names but gave up after going through a few pages of photos of cacti which did not remotely look like mine, since I had only a 1000 or more odd pages to go through! Doesn’t matter. What’s in a name, anyway?
Both of them came in very tiny pots and I was worried they would die if I didn’t repot them soon. But where could I find pots? Or the small dishes in which the pots rest? Or soil? I looked around in the supermarkets and soon discovered a variety of plain earthen pots, very affordable at one. Now, soil. A said he would nip out one night and dig up some from the fields!! Eeeeeks. I had to act fast to deter A who would carry out something if he got it into his head. I asked N (who came here 10 years ago and therefore is my yellow pages for most things).
Before answering my query, she said:
“gardening’er bhoot chepeychey? Amaro chepeychilo, ekhon aar nei…(pointing to the row of wilted dried plants on her balcony). Bricomarché tay paabey”.
It’s this enormous store which sells hardware, Do it Yourself stuff. I searched for nearly half an hour in the bewildering array in the ‘jardinage’ (gardening) section. Found some sacks too but these were on closer inspection fertilizers. Ki jay Kori? I tried to ask a burly guy (a shop security) but quite forgot the French word for soil / earth. I pointed to a potted plant. At first he thought I wanted a pot.
Non, non…(No, No)
Terre? (Earth / Soil)
Oui Oui! Terre! (yes, yes! Soil)
Venez avec moi (Come with me)
And he took me behind the store to an enormous enclosed area – a good sized nursery. I found sacks and sacks of soil. I picked a 5 kg of one for 1E50 only!! Yippee. I thanked the guy profusely and flashed him a brilliant smile of gratitude but perhaps he got it wrong since he sort of swivelled on one of his heels, and gave me a slow and leery wink. Eeeeks. I ran out despite the 5kg bag in my hands.
Back home, A and I got to repotting the two cacti. Easier said than done. Nothing to scoop out the earth (had to use on of my table spoons), no thick gardening gloves to hold the prickly cactus. We managed it at last…But our results were a bit shoddy. I had one short lopsided bulbous cactus and 3 wobbly leaning towers. And soil all over the floor. Oh well. I watered them once in 15 days. And made sure they got plenty of sunlight, shifting them around so that each side got plenty of sunlight!!
A month later, I added 3 more plants to my collection. During the Foire d’Autone or Autumn Fair, a nursery was selling saplings for 1E each. Picked up a pot of mint and bergamot and another of a succulent plant with green leaves arranged just like the petals of a flower. Succulents are very hardy and do not require much care. (How blissful, my own herbs…mint, bergamot)!
The owner of the nursery had set up a small corner where he was urging people to pick up a tiny sapling from a tray, a pot from another and soil from a third and take away a plant home! I stood in the line for my own free sapling. When my turn came, I scooped earth using a pot and put it into another one instead of using my hands. The chap looked at me and said mock-seriously “Mais non Madame, Vous trichez. C’est n’est pas sale”. (No Madam, You are cheating. Its not dirty). Sheepishly I put down the pot and used my hands. Heartened by his talking to me even though only to rebuke me, I managed to ask him if I needed to repot it. “Non! Non! Leave it like it is and in printemps(springtime), they will blossom into flowers as blue as my eyes; Look at them then, and think of me”!! For once I was glad that A could not follow the chap’s high speed French. A might have just upset the whole tray of soil on the poor chap’s head!
I spent a happy week with all my five plants in a row till end of October when I had to switch on the heater just below the window sill. Kothai rakhi? Idea? I put them on a carton in which we bought our CPU. I put the pots on it and placed it on the wall opposite to the window and heater. It looked quite nice there.
But, problems struck soon. Firstly, A who is generously built ashtey jetey would often bump into the box and which would upset my already wobbly leaning cacti, throwing soil all over the place. Once, I too knocked them over with the edge of my blanket, which I had wrapped myself in while watching a late night movie….again repotting…cleaning the soil, the mud stains and lastly…the thorns and spikes that had stuck onto my blankets at that late hour. Aargh!
Soon after this, I heard a strange scratching noise from the mint pot. It went on for couple of days and A said he would change the earth in the pot with some fresh earth that I had bought. But that night I was woken up by those same noises (as if some tiny thing scratching its way out of the pot, trapped under all that soil) …. So loud they sounded in the stillness of our flat. I managed to convince a very sleepy A to put the pot outside our apartment, in the landing where it stayed for couple of days. I watered it everyday but it was obvious that it was dying in the hot and dark corridor. One day, A picked it up and put it among the green shrubs in the green swathe nearby, very scrupulously maintained by the town municipality. Couple of days later, A found the pot gone. Hurrah! It had found a home and kinder and braver(than me) owners. It was not a poor, abandoned, orphelin (orphan) anymore.
The tiny sapling however, flourished. When I had first brought it home, it was level with the edge of the pot. But it grew slowly, first sending up a shoot up straight and then tiny branches and pale green leaves. It gladdened my heart. I watered it dutifully, a few drops, morning and evening. Put it on the window sill whenever a bit of sunlight broke in through the murky autumn skies. We would be leaving for India soon. What would become of this sapling? I don’t know my neighbours well enough to ask them to water it twice daily. I could give it to N…but she has three kids, one of them a 3 month old baby. Suppose she forgot to water it? Etc Etc. The shoot was now 10cm high and I thought a bit leaning on to one side (because of its weight). A suggested sticking in couple of the thin wooden sticks from the Chinese chicken brochettes that A had eaten the day before. Next morning proved to be too late. The plant was not leaning, it was wilting. By evening, it has shrunk and drooped life less over the side of the pot. I thought it was the heat in our apartment. A thought I watered it too much. He was right. On closer inspection I found a sort of whitish mould all over the pot. My poor sapling. Now I won’t be able to see “blue as his eyes” flowers in printemp. Not in my apartment atleast. My cacti still exist…a bit wobbly, a bit uncertain…but still there and hopefully will be there in the new year as well.
Glossary French Words
Bien Commencé! - Well begun
promo - A special deal
artichauts - artichokes
endives - Endives (thats what my dictionary says)
bette rave - Beet
poireuax - leeks
champignons - Mushrooms
frigo - french slang for fridge
Glossary Bengali words
kancha lanka - green chillies
dhonay pata - fresh coriander
bhindi- Okra
korola - a type of bitter vegetable
bhaja - fry
halud - turmeric
Oshtomi - 8th day of the bengali festival of Durga Puja
gardening’er bhoot chepeychey? - Got a gardening craze?
Amaro chepeychilo, ekhon aar nei…Bricomarché tay paabey”. - I too had it, not any more
Ki jay Kori? - What shall I do?
Kothai rakhi? - Where shall I keep (it)?
Astey jetey - while coming and going
Sunday, November 30, 2003
Saturday, November 29, 2003
Of Cabbage Soup and Christmas Lights
After the sumptuous beans and rice lunch yesterday, A did not want a repeat for dinner. He asked me what I would be cooking. “Something vegetarian; Carrots, cabbages, potatoes…lets see”. Cabbages Please! With Lardon fumés!! And before I knew what was happening, A was back from the supermarché with 2 packs of smoked ham strips. I had first chanced upon a recipe for a quick onion (shallots really), noodle soup in a French cook book. Later on, another similar one with sausages. With a little variation, it soon became our favourite soup meal. First take a heavy pot, put the lardon fumes into it and stir till the fat melts (you don’t need any additional oil for this soup), then add onions and fry and then tomatoes and any vegetable of your choice – shredded cabbage, carrots, potatoes, turnips, beans etc. Add water, chicken stock (known as court bouillon) and cover. When the vegetables are half cooked, add in a handful of pasta / noodle of your choice. And hey presto!!
As usual, I couldn’t not stop myself after two large bowls full and forced down another bowl which left me feeling heavy to put it mildly. “Hansh Phansh” would describe it better.
As soon as I was able to, I pulled on my sweater, coat, and shoes and went out with A for a post-soup walk. A, who had gone out earlier, had seen the Christmas lights up and wanted me to see them.
In fact last night, the lights in Champs Elysees were officially inaugurated, this year by actress Carol Bouquet who did the honours. I thought I spied (on Tele) ex-PM Jospin grinning away, next to her.
Anyhow, our town decided to light up today. So, 1st we went straight down to ‘Hotel de Ville’ or the Town Hall an impressive old building with a large clock in front and a small bell on top. The windows were bordered with strands of green holly and golden lights entwined together. The foreyard had a christmas tree strung up with red ribbons and lights. All pillars were covered with what looked like showers of golden lights.
The Quay Victor Hugo (quai in French) adjacent to the Mairie (Mayor’s office, here the town hall) with the five bridges spanning the river La Marne, was all lit up. The old bridge which is closed to the public too was lit up. The next bridge which is also the marché bridge on account of the vendors plying their wares each Samedi, was done up beautifully. The lamp poles were lit as were the large potted plants suspended from the poles had long lengths of tiny lights suspended from it. The other day, on my way to somewhere, I had seen municipal workers fixing spiky white branches onto the bare trees on the roads along the river front. Turns out, the white spikes were tiny lights!!
We walked down on a big avenue away from the river front down to ‘Place Henri Quatre’. It’s a large paved square strewn with benches, bordered by flower beds and trees. But what a transformation! Each tree was strung with lights, cardboard boxes, gift-wrapped in bright colours – orange, yellow, red, blue and cardboard cut outs of elves perched on the braches. An enormous Christmas tree stood in a barrel, unlit. I don’t think the lighting is yet complete. Last year, the two weeping willows were lit up as well. Some of the inner streets are lit too…each one in a different way. The store fronts are changing their window dressing!! Soon each one will try and out do the others with sleds and reindeers and santas and holly and lights and cotton snow!!
Reminds me of Calcutta and the puja lights. Unfair to compare this with the magnificent puja light. I keep trying to describe it to A, who has never seen a puja in Calcutta, yet. Nevertheless, I caught myself several times, gaping happily in admiration up at the light festooned trees. This brought to my mind an incident from long ago.
It happened during one of our annual trips to Calcutta from Assam, where we used to then live. That year too, we put up with our mother’s elder sister (mashi to us). Her only child, a son, ‘dada’ to me and R, had an uncle ‘Kaka’ who took the three of us out one day. Kaka, a young bachelor then, took us all over Calcutta – to places of his interests and intriguing to us because of the novelty of his choices. Football grounds (East Bengal first followed by Mohemmadan Sporting), Eden Gardens, in between a heavy lunch at ‘Aminia’, where he ordered a ‘Special’ – the dish was called special. Mughlai Chicken curry with two eggs apiece. Neither R, nor I would eat our eggs and so dada and Kaka ended up eating 4 eggs each!
The day was far from over though!! Around sun-set (6ish I should think), the 4 of us boarded a bus (another novelty for R and I since we did not go around in buses in Assam) and went to Howrah Station to see the ‘lights’.
It does sound puzzling today, here and now. Howrah and Lights? A million people, cars, buses, lorries, animals, carts, rickshaws, smoke, exhaust fumes, heat and dust. But Lights??
But we did see the ‘Lights’ that day.
Lights twinkling in the huge red Victorian station building.
Lights on the massive cantilever Howrah Bridge.
Lights twinkling in the boats and streamers under the bridge in the murky waters of the Hooghly.
And from the bridge, 1000’s of twinkling lights in the city we had left behind!!
It was quite interesting to us then, at least interesting enough not to have questioned kaka’s choices of venues!!
We came home, clothes crumpled, faces grimy, very tired but CONTENT! Ma and mashi asked us where we had been (the answer to which they already knew, but wanted to hear it from us). They burst out laughing when we replied Howrah Station to see the Lights!
They laughed uncontrollably, their laughter growing progressively hysterical each time we asked them what was so funny about our answer?!
It took me a fair number of years to understand the meaning of something mashi had managed to spew out, incoherent as she was with laughter: Ga thekey esheychey era sob! Howrah station’er light dekhtey gechilo!!!
Glossary french words:
supermarché - supermarket
Lardon Fumés - smoked ham
Mairie - Mayor's office
Glossary bengali words
Hansh Phansh - Huffing and Puffing
Samedi - Saturday
Quai - Quay
Mashi - mother's sister
Dada - brother
kaka - dad's younger brother
Aminia - a famous eatery in Calcutta serving Mughlai cuisine
Ga thekey esheychey era sob! Howrah station’er light dekhtey gechilo!!!- Villagers all, went to see the lights of Howrah Station!!
As usual, I couldn’t not stop myself after two large bowls full and forced down another bowl which left me feeling heavy to put it mildly. “Hansh Phansh” would describe it better.
As soon as I was able to, I pulled on my sweater, coat, and shoes and went out with A for a post-soup walk. A, who had gone out earlier, had seen the Christmas lights up and wanted me to see them.
In fact last night, the lights in Champs Elysees were officially inaugurated, this year by actress Carol Bouquet who did the honours. I thought I spied (on Tele) ex-PM Jospin grinning away, next to her.
Anyhow, our town decided to light up today. So, 1st we went straight down to ‘Hotel de Ville’ or the Town Hall an impressive old building with a large clock in front and a small bell on top. The windows were bordered with strands of green holly and golden lights entwined together. The foreyard had a christmas tree strung up with red ribbons and lights. All pillars were covered with what looked like showers of golden lights.
The Quay Victor Hugo (quai in French) adjacent to the Mairie (Mayor’s office, here the town hall) with the five bridges spanning the river La Marne, was all lit up. The old bridge which is closed to the public too was lit up. The next bridge which is also the marché bridge on account of the vendors plying their wares each Samedi, was done up beautifully. The lamp poles were lit as were the large potted plants suspended from the poles had long lengths of tiny lights suspended from it. The other day, on my way to somewhere, I had seen municipal workers fixing spiky white branches onto the bare trees on the roads along the river front. Turns out, the white spikes were tiny lights!!
We walked down on a big avenue away from the river front down to ‘Place Henri Quatre’. It’s a large paved square strewn with benches, bordered by flower beds and trees. But what a transformation! Each tree was strung with lights, cardboard boxes, gift-wrapped in bright colours – orange, yellow, red, blue and cardboard cut outs of elves perched on the braches. An enormous Christmas tree stood in a barrel, unlit. I don’t think the lighting is yet complete. Last year, the two weeping willows were lit up as well. Some of the inner streets are lit too…each one in a different way. The store fronts are changing their window dressing!! Soon each one will try and out do the others with sleds and reindeers and santas and holly and lights and cotton snow!!
Reminds me of Calcutta and the puja lights. Unfair to compare this with the magnificent puja light. I keep trying to describe it to A, who has never seen a puja in Calcutta, yet. Nevertheless, I caught myself several times, gaping happily in admiration up at the light festooned trees. This brought to my mind an incident from long ago.
It happened during one of our annual trips to Calcutta from Assam, where we used to then live. That year too, we put up with our mother’s elder sister (mashi to us). Her only child, a son, ‘dada’ to me and R, had an uncle ‘Kaka’ who took the three of us out one day. Kaka, a young bachelor then, took us all over Calcutta – to places of his interests and intriguing to us because of the novelty of his choices. Football grounds (East Bengal first followed by Mohemmadan Sporting), Eden Gardens, in between a heavy lunch at ‘Aminia’, where he ordered a ‘Special’ – the dish was called special. Mughlai Chicken curry with two eggs apiece. Neither R, nor I would eat our eggs and so dada and Kaka ended up eating 4 eggs each!
The day was far from over though!! Around sun-set (6ish I should think), the 4 of us boarded a bus (another novelty for R and I since we did not go around in buses in Assam) and went to Howrah Station to see the ‘lights’.
It does sound puzzling today, here and now. Howrah and Lights? A million people, cars, buses, lorries, animals, carts, rickshaws, smoke, exhaust fumes, heat and dust. But Lights??
But we did see the ‘Lights’ that day.
Lights twinkling in the huge red Victorian station building.
Lights on the massive cantilever Howrah Bridge.
Lights twinkling in the boats and streamers under the bridge in the murky waters of the Hooghly.
And from the bridge, 1000’s of twinkling lights in the city we had left behind!!
It was quite interesting to us then, at least interesting enough not to have questioned kaka’s choices of venues!!
We came home, clothes crumpled, faces grimy, very tired but CONTENT! Ma and mashi asked us where we had been (the answer to which they already knew, but wanted to hear it from us). They burst out laughing when we replied Howrah Station to see the Lights!
They laughed uncontrollably, their laughter growing progressively hysterical each time we asked them what was so funny about our answer?!
It took me a fair number of years to understand the meaning of something mashi had managed to spew out, incoherent as she was with laughter: Ga thekey esheychey era sob! Howrah station’er light dekhtey gechilo!!!
Glossary french words:
supermarché - supermarket
Lardon Fumés - smoked ham
Mairie - Mayor's office
Glossary bengali words
Hansh Phansh - Huffing and Puffing
Samedi - Saturday
Quai - Quay
Mashi - mother's sister
Dada - brother
kaka - dad's younger brother
Aminia - a famous eatery in Calcutta serving Mughlai cuisine
Ga thekey esheychey era sob! Howrah station’er light dekhtey gechilo!!!- Villagers all, went to see the lights of Howrah Station!!
Friday, November 28, 2003
Whatever happened to the Turkish Beans?
For those of you who are interested in the fate of my Turkish beans, here’s an update: Well they have been cooked. But not eaten. Not yet. Not as I write this. They were not cooked on Wednesday. I was too busy inaugurating my journal turned blog.
Yesterday, Thursday evening, I finally got down to cooking half a kilo of beans, 'andajey'. Yup that’s how good a cook I have become, unlike in the earlier days when R’s lovingly handwritten recipes were my life-line and if by mistake she had forgotten to write, season with salt, I would happily cook the 'aloo gobi' or whichever recipe it was, without salt. Infact, had she written, 'this recipe is best cooked standing on one leg', I would have probably done that)! I took 3 tomatoes, 2 onions, 4 cloves and begun as the recipe suggests, by napping off the ends of the beans. (Actually, I have to confess, I find it easier snipping them off with my lavender coloured kitchen scissors).
A decided it was time for his evening walk. He doesn’t really have a scheduled evening walk, although we do take several unscheduled walks per day, in and around our residence. This one (this evening walk of his) I would say is one of his clever ploys of how to get out an uninteresting dinner situation without angering his “domesticated bliss” of a wife. He uses this unscheduled walk to get out of all sorts of sticky (for him) situations, but that’s for another blog.
There I was snipping the ends off the beans, when A rang. He was calling from outside ‘La Moulin’, our favourite ‘resto’. The daily menu (as is the norm here) is chalked onto a tiny blackboard which hangs outside the shop.
A: Bhalo menu achey aaj. Veau sauté avec champignons.
Me: Taholey amaar beans?
A: Kaal khabo
Me: Okay…Kay kintu ranna ta koray rakhi.
I went ahead with the cooking. One central bright red tomato in my trusty green ‘dekchi’, surrounded by long, uncut beans, topped by beans cut into one-thirds, grated garlic cloves, slices of onions and more tomatos. Half a cup of hot water and olive oil liberally sprinkled and instead of the salt, I cheated (was not taking any chances after singing such paens to this recipe) and sprinkled two cubes of chicken stock (good taste guaranteed). Covered it and left it to simmer for an hour or so. It cooked well, looked good and tasted good too. And then we went out to La Moulin!! The recipe calls for eating it cold. So just as well, I refrigerated it. The recipe also calls for inverting it on a dish so that the beans are on top and the onions and tomatoes below. I couldn’t do that. I spooned it out in one of my plastic containers and so we will have cold mix of beans, onions and tomatoes this afternoon with rice.
So obviously, the beans weren’t eaten last night. This is such a favourite ploy of A’s. He never openly disparages my choice of cooking. Choices mind you and not the cooking itself. If I cook something badly, he spares no effort to give a constructive criticism of it.
If he is not keen on anything I have suggested say cabbages (unless made into his favourite soup with tons of ‘lardon fumes’), or repeats of any other veggies like carrots or cauliflower etc, he will keep quiet till the last minute and then suddenly spring up from whatever he is doing and announce:
- Ekta begun bhejeynichi
- Duto deem baniye nichi
- Onek din aloo bhaja khai ni
- Aaj bairey kheley hoy naa?
So maybe or maybe not, yesterday’s evening walk was one such ploy of his. Beans, Turkish or not…are not so high up on his list of favourite foods!
I have to point out here that it didn’t turn out all in favour of A either. This going out to La Moulin. This is a small pop and mom resto, neat and clean, not too fancy and has its own dedicated lunch time clientele. Evenings are mostly empty except for couple of old die hards. We included…but that too once a month or so and not on any particular date (and therefore don’t count as evening regulars). They therefore concentrate on the quantities etc for lunch. Often, we have found in the evenings, items we ordered from the blackboard were over and something else was suggested in its place. So to avoid that, I asked if everything on the menu was available and not finished. The amiable owner “nodded his head and said everything was available”. Fine!! We took two menus:-
Entré – saussicon sec – five thin round slices of dry sausage with cornichon(dill) and a blob of butter and slices of French bread.
Plat – two roundels of rice and veal with a mushroom sauce
Desert – A slice of brie cheese
When we were nearly at the end of our delectable meal, the owner walked up to me and whispered his apologies about the tiny quantity of ‘veau’. It seems they had enough only for one person and since we both asked for it and he had expansively told us not to worry, everything was available, he had to divide it into two. Had we not known this, we would have been quite happy and satisfied with our meal, but once we got to know, A looked a bit put off at the idea of being done out of a nice meal. He declared ‘Let’s not go there again’. Again would be, till the next time. He has made this statement several times before!!
But aaj to khetei hobey!! The hour approacheth.
**************
Half an hour later: We have finished our lunch. I thought it was plate licking good and I indulged in good bit of it (plate licking) and then stopped when I remembered that the family next door with the attic windows, can look straight down into our apartment! Eeks.
A ate some as well. But he thought there was no need to do any song and dance about it and said it could be improved by adding vast quantities of ‘mouton’. Hmph.
Glossary French Words
Veau – veal
Resto – Restaurants Popularly
La Moulin – The Mill
Champignons - mushroom
lardon fumes- smoked ham
mouton – Mutton
Glossary Bengali Words
andajey : by hunch
aloo gobi : potato and cauliflower dish
dekchi: hindi and bengali for pan
Ekta begun bhejeynichi: Am frying an aubergine
Duto deem baniye nichi : Am frying two eggs
Onek din aloo bhaja khai ni : Its been a long time since I ahve eaten potato chips
Aaj bairey kheley hoy naa? : Could we not eat outside today?
aaj to khetei hobey : we have to eat (it) today.
bhalo menu achey aaj : There a good menu tonight.
Taholey amaar beans? : What happens to my beans?
Kaal khabo : Will eat them tomorrow
Oook…Kay kintu ranna ta koray rakhi : OK but let me do the cooking
Yesterday, Thursday evening, I finally got down to cooking half a kilo of beans, 'andajey'. Yup that’s how good a cook I have become, unlike in the earlier days when R’s lovingly handwritten recipes were my life-line and if by mistake she had forgotten to write, season with salt, I would happily cook the 'aloo gobi' or whichever recipe it was, without salt. Infact, had she written, 'this recipe is best cooked standing on one leg', I would have probably done that)! I took 3 tomatoes, 2 onions, 4 cloves and begun as the recipe suggests, by napping off the ends of the beans. (Actually, I have to confess, I find it easier snipping them off with my lavender coloured kitchen scissors).
A decided it was time for his evening walk. He doesn’t really have a scheduled evening walk, although we do take several unscheduled walks per day, in and around our residence. This one (this evening walk of his) I would say is one of his clever ploys of how to get out an uninteresting dinner situation without angering his “domesticated bliss” of a wife. He uses this unscheduled walk to get out of all sorts of sticky (for him) situations, but that’s for another blog.
There I was snipping the ends off the beans, when A rang. He was calling from outside ‘La Moulin’, our favourite ‘resto’. The daily menu (as is the norm here) is chalked onto a tiny blackboard which hangs outside the shop.
A: Bhalo menu achey aaj. Veau sauté avec champignons.
Me: Taholey amaar beans?
A: Kaal khabo
Me: Okay…Kay kintu ranna ta koray rakhi.
I went ahead with the cooking. One central bright red tomato in my trusty green ‘dekchi’, surrounded by long, uncut beans, topped by beans cut into one-thirds, grated garlic cloves, slices of onions and more tomatos. Half a cup of hot water and olive oil liberally sprinkled and instead of the salt, I cheated (was not taking any chances after singing such paens to this recipe) and sprinkled two cubes of chicken stock (good taste guaranteed). Covered it and left it to simmer for an hour or so. It cooked well, looked good and tasted good too. And then we went out to La Moulin!! The recipe calls for eating it cold. So just as well, I refrigerated it. The recipe also calls for inverting it on a dish so that the beans are on top and the onions and tomatoes below. I couldn’t do that. I spooned it out in one of my plastic containers and so we will have cold mix of beans, onions and tomatoes this afternoon with rice.
So obviously, the beans weren’t eaten last night. This is such a favourite ploy of A’s. He never openly disparages my choice of cooking. Choices mind you and not the cooking itself. If I cook something badly, he spares no effort to give a constructive criticism of it.
If he is not keen on anything I have suggested say cabbages (unless made into his favourite soup with tons of ‘lardon fumes’), or repeats of any other veggies like carrots or cauliflower etc, he will keep quiet till the last minute and then suddenly spring up from whatever he is doing and announce:
- Ekta begun bhejeynichi
- Duto deem baniye nichi
- Onek din aloo bhaja khai ni
- Aaj bairey kheley hoy naa?
So maybe or maybe not, yesterday’s evening walk was one such ploy of his. Beans, Turkish or not…are not so high up on his list of favourite foods!
I have to point out here that it didn’t turn out all in favour of A either. This going out to La Moulin. This is a small pop and mom resto, neat and clean, not too fancy and has its own dedicated lunch time clientele. Evenings are mostly empty except for couple of old die hards. We included…but that too once a month or so and not on any particular date (and therefore don’t count as evening regulars). They therefore concentrate on the quantities etc for lunch. Often, we have found in the evenings, items we ordered from the blackboard were over and something else was suggested in its place. So to avoid that, I asked if everything on the menu was available and not finished. The amiable owner “nodded his head and said everything was available”. Fine!! We took two menus:-
Entré – saussicon sec – five thin round slices of dry sausage with cornichon(dill) and a blob of butter and slices of French bread.
Plat – two roundels of rice and veal with a mushroom sauce
Desert – A slice of brie cheese
When we were nearly at the end of our delectable meal, the owner walked up to me and whispered his apologies about the tiny quantity of ‘veau’. It seems they had enough only for one person and since we both asked for it and he had expansively told us not to worry, everything was available, he had to divide it into two. Had we not known this, we would have been quite happy and satisfied with our meal, but once we got to know, A looked a bit put off at the idea of being done out of a nice meal. He declared ‘Let’s not go there again’. Again would be, till the next time. He has made this statement several times before!!
But aaj to khetei hobey!! The hour approacheth.
**************
Half an hour later: We have finished our lunch. I thought it was plate licking good and I indulged in good bit of it (plate licking) and then stopped when I remembered that the family next door with the attic windows, can look straight down into our apartment! Eeks.
A ate some as well. But he thought there was no need to do any song and dance about it and said it could be improved by adding vast quantities of ‘mouton’. Hmph.
Glossary French Words
Veau – veal
Resto – Restaurants Popularly
La Moulin – The Mill
Champignons - mushroom
lardon fumes- smoked ham
mouton – Mutton
Glossary Bengali Words
andajey : by hunch
aloo gobi : potato and cauliflower dish
dekchi: hindi and bengali for pan
Ekta begun bhejeynichi: Am frying an aubergine
Duto deem baniye nichi : Am frying two eggs
Onek din aloo bhaja khai ni : Its been a long time since I ahve eaten potato chips
Aaj bairey kheley hoy naa? : Could we not eat outside today?
aaj to khetei hobey : we have to eat (it) today.
bhalo menu achey aaj : There a good menu tonight.
Taholey amaar beans? : What happens to my beans?
Kaal khabo : Will eat them tomorrow
Oook…Kay kintu ranna ta koray rakhi : OK but let me do the cooking
Thursday, November 27, 2003
Turkish Beans
I was watching a documentary on L’ecole des chefs on ‘Des Racines et des ail’ on TF3 when I had this idea: The idea of keeping an electronic or manual (plain paper and ink journal) “Cooking and Living in France”.
Though the idea of keeping a journal on this topic is a brand new one, it has its roots in something which I had first thought about a while back: to try a new recipe each week, instead of the unbridled, roaring passion leading me to a new recipe, often two everyday, with good, bad and ugly results and frightening A, in the process. Really concentrate on one new recipe per week, using new ingredients, spices, planning for it, taking into account my logistical limitations – no pressure cooker, 2 electric plaques which are rarely used simultaneously because only a very tiny pan can fit onto the 2nd one should I be using the first plaque.
Obviously my scribbling about my simplistic cooking experiments, failures and success are meant only for those who knew me from before:- me in my pre-France, pre-marriage days: Tomboy, well actually “Mahila Mastaan” – (thankyou Jayanta), office person, with nil idea of kitchen / cooking and who went along with the idea propagated by others : Cooking and S? Ha! Ha!
My classic quotes:
“Too many cooks spoil the broth” : ma, K and R being the cooks.
“dorkar naa porley, I never do anything”
And the most silliest of them all, one that comes back to haunt me, not at being proven false but at the sheer silliness of it. How could I have been so urgh : “Porashuno koraychi khunti narbar jonno naki?”.
And all the things I told A before our marriage and not only to him, to the wives of his friends how I hated cooking. I made a virtue of not knowing my hatas from my khuntis. Eeeeks. I am embarrassed. Whatever must they have thought about me…
Infact, the very idea was such an impossibility that even now, my friends who see or learn about my culinary skills can’t believe it. Infact the feeling I get is that they don’t like it:
Swati - "Tui kemon hoye gechis. I will call you domestic bliss".
Shaikat – "Shunlam you have become a boudi"?
Shane – "Heard you have become a BaWdi"?
My cooking inability is well known among relatives. Mama would usually introduce us to his friends as: My two nieces. One cooks and the other eats. The only exception being Mamima who for a very long time sighed about not being able to taste the German spice cake I had once baked which mama tasted. This was one of the rare things I cooked and usually it turned out pretty well. I loved it and had ¾ of it(and was constipated for the whole week). Baba would have a slice – always a staunch supporter of my culinary efforts and Rupa would have the rest. Ma claimed she did not like the cinnamon flavoured sugar I used to dust the cake. This time however, it flopped. Wasn’t inedible but it was far from a German spice cake. More like a Jatin Bagchi Road Cake (where we were staying during this baking session). Mama had popped in that morning and tried a slice.
Anyhow, the point is that only they will understand my experiments with the kitchen, the house and domesticity in general and marvel about my transition. My ecstacy at discovering a good de-greaser for the electric range, my delight (a bit confused that) at finding shooji ( 3 or 4 varieties infact) and my tears of joy at finding paneer in a French supermarket!!
I tried two new things today, which I will not take into account. I made shuji kaa halwa and kanchkola and aloo’r chop, both in the evening instead of preparing a straightforward dinner. [This prompted A to raise an eyebrow and ask : Eto kichu? I replied “Kanch Kola kharap hoye jabey boley”].
So, then the recipe of the week 24 – 30 November will be Beans in Olive Oil. It’s a Turkish recipe, I got from this really nice site. The recipes are interesting, not too difficult and are explained well.
(By beans I mean one can use what we in India call French beans and here are known as mangetout or the really thin green beans called haricot fin).
This one calls for beans to be used in 2 different ways in the same dish! Half of them kept whole and the other half, divided into 3 pieces each. All arranged around a central tomato in a pan, sprinkled with garlic and salt and sugar and topped by thin slices of onions and tomatoes, hot water and Olive oil and cooked covered till done!
The methodology of using hot water and oil is very similar to the recipe for begun from Iran “Mollah gash kardeh or swooned priest”. The priest swoons on tasting this dish – so good it is!! [This one calls for layers of begun, onion and tomatoes with salt, pepper and coriander minced sprinkled in between the layers].
This is not my first bean recipe however. My staple bean recipe is one of my own (YES!!). Mustard and methi phoron, thinly sliced onions and beans stirred over high heat and then sprinkled with couple of teaspoons of this amazing southindian curry powder (I have picked up from the Indian store at Gard Du Nord), tomato, amchoor powder, salt and sugar, a little bit of water and then covered and cooked till done. Just before it’s nearly done, I grab a bunch of dhania pata and cut it using my scissors, very closely so that they patas are chopped really fine, all over the beans in the pan. Cover and keep for a few minutes more and viola! The beans should be soft. Dhania is added in the pen-ultimate stage to avoid overcooking and to preserve the delicate typical flavour of dhania. The beans when cooked take an olive green hue.
The 1st time I made it, I ate it hot, right off the plaque with dal and bhat. It tasted so good to me – I nearly wept!! I kept asking A to try some which he wouldn’t since he prefers his food cool if not cold. This I thought was a pity since it doesn’t taste the same when cool.
I remember shooting off an email to R about my fantastic beans…and she must have thought: So what’s the big deal?? Its only Beans. True its only beans, but its more than that. It’s the soft beans with their own flavour combined with the flavour of the dhoney pata and the slight bite of the dried red chillie I used in the phoron and most of all…the fact that I made it with my own two hands, all by myself so far away from ma or K or R (the usual people around whom I dared to venture into the kitchen)!! Such a perfect torkari!!
So then, this recipe has served me well. But the same thing can get tiresome (diminishing returns to scale from a long forgotton eco class) especially since A says that the grocers at our mardi marché (et samedi marché aussi) refuse to sell anything less than un demi-kilo! This is a bit too much for the two of us. Un peu trop. And despite my various safeguards, a whitish fungus develops if left unused after 3 days or so. (Once in the early days ie..last year…how raw a cook I was back then….we both were very ill one night after having (I suspect) fungus sprayed beans). THIS REMINDS ME OF ANOTHER STORY…ONE I SHALL LEAVE FOR THE END.
Luckily, I found another do-able recipe for beans – a southindian one: Bean thoran which turned out pretty well on the first try itself and was greatly appreciated by both of us (gives you an idea how much over used my old recipe was). But thereafter, somehow, I haven’t managed to get it 100% correct and it has surfaced (despite his liking the beans thoran the first time), that A doesn’t care for coconuts – an integral part of Beans thoran or any thoran for that matter!! Infact he doesn’t like it all except in chingri macher malai curry – the only type of prawns I can cook reasonably well. Well actually I do have another recipe – one I tried with disastrous results in the early days of our marriage and my cooking in 36 Rue du Cardinal Lemoine, Paris V. (But my experiments with the garlic prawns, a recipe by Rupa the great, I will leave for another episode).
And so onto another recipe - My third one. Beans in Olive Oil. I got it on the Turgut Homestead site – each page has a border of bright floral (Turkish I presume) patterns in bright colours blue, red, yellow.
A relief really not only because a new recipe is refreshing but more importantly since this mardi dernière, j’ai acheté un kilo de haricot fin pour 2E50/kilo. The vendeur was infact forcing down 2kilos (at a bargain at 4E). This gave me an opportunity (Yipppeeeee) to make some small talk and thereby practice my French. [I am forever looking out for such chances and mostly my courage fails me at the last minute and I donot make small talk or squeak out a bonjour at best. Not this time however!]
‘2 kilos? C’est un peu trop pour nous. Parçe que on est juste deux, chez nous’.
Although I sort of murmered it, the vendor heard it and clucked
‘juste deux ?! Bon, peut être les endives? Non?
I have no idea what to do with these pale cream veggies with yellow tips which look like giant flower buds.
‘Concombre’?
‘Pas aujourd’hui’.
So, its Turkish beans in Olive Oil tomorrow.
Turkey happens to be the flavour of the week. Am reading Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red (a coincidence). I had first learnt about it on some one’s top 10 lists on the guardian website. I happened to come across it on the New Fiction shelves in the American Library in Paris. Of the 93 pages I have read – it’s everything the reviewers and critics have said it is.
And now, to end: THE OTHER STORY
I was addicted to roasted (senka) papod with dal and bhat, in Calcutta. And despite my pretty regular habits, ma would often wait for me to sit at the lunch or dinner table and then yell “papod” before giving me one. And ofcourse she frequently forgot to replenish her stock.
One day she served me with papod which I thought tasted funny. I asked her about it but she didn’t reply. Buy the funny tasting papods were served the next day and the day after as well. On close questioning, ma gave a guilty sort of a giggle. I ran to the side board where the papods are usually kept in the top drawer and found to my horror the entire set of them were covered with this whitish powder – FUNGUS. Ma was brushing it off with her hands and then smoking it over fire – her justification – the fire would take care of it.
I was indignant with a capital I. I was speechless with mixed emotions of anger, amazement and fear and incredulity at ma!! But she [as she is wont to, gave me her ‘oof ki baara baari’ look]. I wanted to fall ill just to prove a point, but ofcourse I didn’t. But nevertheless, what ma feeds her 1st born fungus papod? Mine did!!
Glossary french words:l’ecole des chefs - School for chefs
‘Des Racines et des ail' – The Roots and the wings
mardi marché (et samedi marché aussi – Tuesday market (haat) and Saturday market
demi-kilo – Half a kilo
Un peu trop – A bit too much
mardi dernière, j’ai acheté un kilo de haricot fin pour 2E50/kilo – Last Tuesday I bought one kilo of beans.
‘2 kilos? C’est un peu trop pour nous. Parçe que on est juste deux, chez nous’. – 2 Kilos ? Thats a bit too much for us since we are just two, at home.
‘juste deux ?! Bon, peut être les endives? Non? – Just two? Well then the endives?
‘Concombre’? - cucumber
‘Pas aujourd’hui’. – Not today.
Glossary bengali words
Mahila Mastaan – Lady Thug
dorkar naa porley - If not required
Porashuno koraychi khunti narbar jonno naki? - Did I study only to stir the ladles?
Hatas, khuntis – two types of ladles
Boudi – literally brother’s wife, here it means homely.
Shunlam U have become a boudi – Heard you have become a hausfrau.
tui kemon hoye gechis – You have become a bit strange
shooji – semolina, semoule
paneer – cottage cheese
kanchkola and aloo’r chop – green bananas and potato cutlet
Eto kichu – so many
Kanch Kola kharap hoye jabey boley. – the bananas will spoil
dhania pata – coriander leaves
methi - fenugreek
phoron – tempering with spices
papod - poppadums
dal and bhat - lentil curry and rice
Though the idea of keeping a journal on this topic is a brand new one, it has its roots in something which I had first thought about a while back: to try a new recipe each week, instead of the unbridled, roaring passion leading me to a new recipe, often two everyday, with good, bad and ugly results and frightening A, in the process. Really concentrate on one new recipe per week, using new ingredients, spices, planning for it, taking into account my logistical limitations – no pressure cooker, 2 electric plaques which are rarely used simultaneously because only a very tiny pan can fit onto the 2nd one should I be using the first plaque.
Obviously my scribbling about my simplistic cooking experiments, failures and success are meant only for those who knew me from before:- me in my pre-France, pre-marriage days: Tomboy, well actually “Mahila Mastaan” – (thankyou Jayanta), office person, with nil idea of kitchen / cooking and who went along with the idea propagated by others : Cooking and S? Ha! Ha!
My classic quotes:
“Too many cooks spoil the broth” : ma, K and R being the cooks.
“dorkar naa porley, I never do anything”
And the most silliest of them all, one that comes back to haunt me, not at being proven false but at the sheer silliness of it. How could I have been so urgh : “Porashuno koraychi khunti narbar jonno naki?”.
And all the things I told A before our marriage and not only to him, to the wives of his friends how I hated cooking. I made a virtue of not knowing my hatas from my khuntis. Eeeeks. I am embarrassed. Whatever must they have thought about me…
Infact, the very idea was such an impossibility that even now, my friends who see or learn about my culinary skills can’t believe it. Infact the feeling I get is that they don’t like it:
Swati - "Tui kemon hoye gechis. I will call you domestic bliss".
Shaikat – "Shunlam you have become a boudi"?
Shane – "Heard you have become a BaWdi"?
My cooking inability is well known among relatives. Mama would usually introduce us to his friends as: My two nieces. One cooks and the other eats. The only exception being Mamima who for a very long time sighed about not being able to taste the German spice cake I had once baked which mama tasted. This was one of the rare things I cooked and usually it turned out pretty well. I loved it and had ¾ of it(and was constipated for the whole week). Baba would have a slice – always a staunch supporter of my culinary efforts and Rupa would have the rest. Ma claimed she did not like the cinnamon flavoured sugar I used to dust the cake. This time however, it flopped. Wasn’t inedible but it was far from a German spice cake. More like a Jatin Bagchi Road Cake (where we were staying during this baking session). Mama had popped in that morning and tried a slice.
Anyhow, the point is that only they will understand my experiments with the kitchen, the house and domesticity in general and marvel about my transition. My ecstacy at discovering a good de-greaser for the electric range, my delight (a bit confused that) at finding shooji ( 3 or 4 varieties infact) and my tears of joy at finding paneer in a French supermarket!!
I tried two new things today, which I will not take into account. I made shuji kaa halwa and kanchkola and aloo’r chop, both in the evening instead of preparing a straightforward dinner. [This prompted A to raise an eyebrow and ask : Eto kichu? I replied “Kanch Kola kharap hoye jabey boley”].
So, then the recipe of the week 24 – 30 November will be Beans in Olive Oil. It’s a Turkish recipe, I got from this really nice site. The recipes are interesting, not too difficult and are explained well.
(By beans I mean one can use what we in India call French beans and here are known as mangetout or the really thin green beans called haricot fin).
This one calls for beans to be used in 2 different ways in the same dish! Half of them kept whole and the other half, divided into 3 pieces each. All arranged around a central tomato in a pan, sprinkled with garlic and salt and sugar and topped by thin slices of onions and tomatoes, hot water and Olive oil and cooked covered till done!
The methodology of using hot water and oil is very similar to the recipe for begun from Iran “Mollah gash kardeh or swooned priest”. The priest swoons on tasting this dish – so good it is!! [This one calls for layers of begun, onion and tomatoes with salt, pepper and coriander minced sprinkled in between the layers].
This is not my first bean recipe however. My staple bean recipe is one of my own (YES!!). Mustard and methi phoron, thinly sliced onions and beans stirred over high heat and then sprinkled with couple of teaspoons of this amazing southindian curry powder (I have picked up from the Indian store at Gard Du Nord), tomato, amchoor powder, salt and sugar, a little bit of water and then covered and cooked till done. Just before it’s nearly done, I grab a bunch of dhania pata and cut it using my scissors, very closely so that they patas are chopped really fine, all over the beans in the pan. Cover and keep for a few minutes more and viola! The beans should be soft. Dhania is added in the pen-ultimate stage to avoid overcooking and to preserve the delicate typical flavour of dhania. The beans when cooked take an olive green hue.
The 1st time I made it, I ate it hot, right off the plaque with dal and bhat. It tasted so good to me – I nearly wept!! I kept asking A to try some which he wouldn’t since he prefers his food cool if not cold. This I thought was a pity since it doesn’t taste the same when cool.
I remember shooting off an email to R about my fantastic beans…and she must have thought: So what’s the big deal?? Its only Beans. True its only beans, but its more than that. It’s the soft beans with their own flavour combined with the flavour of the dhoney pata and the slight bite of the dried red chillie I used in the phoron and most of all…the fact that I made it with my own two hands, all by myself so far away from ma or K or R (the usual people around whom I dared to venture into the kitchen)!! Such a perfect torkari!!
So then, this recipe has served me well. But the same thing can get tiresome (diminishing returns to scale from a long forgotton eco class) especially since A says that the grocers at our mardi marché (et samedi marché aussi) refuse to sell anything less than un demi-kilo! This is a bit too much for the two of us. Un peu trop. And despite my various safeguards, a whitish fungus develops if left unused after 3 days or so. (Once in the early days ie..last year…how raw a cook I was back then….we both were very ill one night after having (I suspect) fungus sprayed beans). THIS REMINDS ME OF ANOTHER STORY…ONE I SHALL LEAVE FOR THE END.
Luckily, I found another do-able recipe for beans – a southindian one: Bean thoran which turned out pretty well on the first try itself and was greatly appreciated by both of us (gives you an idea how much over used my old recipe was). But thereafter, somehow, I haven’t managed to get it 100% correct and it has surfaced (despite his liking the beans thoran the first time), that A doesn’t care for coconuts – an integral part of Beans thoran or any thoran for that matter!! Infact he doesn’t like it all except in chingri macher malai curry – the only type of prawns I can cook reasonably well. Well actually I do have another recipe – one I tried with disastrous results in the early days of our marriage and my cooking in 36 Rue du Cardinal Lemoine, Paris V. (But my experiments with the garlic prawns, a recipe by Rupa the great, I will leave for another episode).
And so onto another recipe - My third one. Beans in Olive Oil. I got it on the Turgut Homestead site – each page has a border of bright floral (Turkish I presume) patterns in bright colours blue, red, yellow.
A relief really not only because a new recipe is refreshing but more importantly since this mardi dernière, j’ai acheté un kilo de haricot fin pour 2E50/kilo. The vendeur was infact forcing down 2kilos (at a bargain at 4E). This gave me an opportunity (Yipppeeeee) to make some small talk and thereby practice my French. [I am forever looking out for such chances and mostly my courage fails me at the last minute and I donot make small talk or squeak out a bonjour at best. Not this time however!]
‘2 kilos? C’est un peu trop pour nous. Parçe que on est juste deux, chez nous’.
Although I sort of murmered it, the vendor heard it and clucked
‘juste deux ?! Bon, peut être les endives? Non?
I have no idea what to do with these pale cream veggies with yellow tips which look like giant flower buds.
‘Concombre’?
‘Pas aujourd’hui’.
So, its Turkish beans in Olive Oil tomorrow.
Turkey happens to be the flavour of the week. Am reading Orhan Pamuk’s My Name is Red (a coincidence). I had first learnt about it on some one’s top 10 lists on the guardian website. I happened to come across it on the New Fiction shelves in the American Library in Paris. Of the 93 pages I have read – it’s everything the reviewers and critics have said it is.
And now, to end: THE OTHER STORY
I was addicted to roasted (senka) papod with dal and bhat, in Calcutta. And despite my pretty regular habits, ma would often wait for me to sit at the lunch or dinner table and then yell “papod” before giving me one. And ofcourse she frequently forgot to replenish her stock.
One day she served me with papod which I thought tasted funny. I asked her about it but she didn’t reply. Buy the funny tasting papods were served the next day and the day after as well. On close questioning, ma gave a guilty sort of a giggle. I ran to the side board where the papods are usually kept in the top drawer and found to my horror the entire set of them were covered with this whitish powder – FUNGUS. Ma was brushing it off with her hands and then smoking it over fire – her justification – the fire would take care of it.
I was indignant with a capital I. I was speechless with mixed emotions of anger, amazement and fear and incredulity at ma!! But she [as she is wont to, gave me her ‘oof ki baara baari’ look]. I wanted to fall ill just to prove a point, but ofcourse I didn’t. But nevertheless, what ma feeds her 1st born fungus papod? Mine did!!
Glossary french words:l’ecole des chefs - School for chefs
‘Des Racines et des ail' – The Roots and the wings
mardi marché (et samedi marché aussi – Tuesday market (haat) and Saturday market
demi-kilo – Half a kilo
Un peu trop – A bit too much
mardi dernière, j’ai acheté un kilo de haricot fin pour 2E50/kilo – Last Tuesday I bought one kilo of beans.
‘2 kilos? C’est un peu trop pour nous. Parçe que on est juste deux, chez nous’. – 2 Kilos ? Thats a bit too much for us since we are just two, at home.
‘juste deux ?! Bon, peut être les endives? Non? – Just two? Well then the endives?
‘Concombre’? - cucumber
‘Pas aujourd’hui’. – Not today.
Glossary bengali words
Mahila Mastaan – Lady Thug
dorkar naa porley - If not required
Porashuno koraychi khunti narbar jonno naki? - Did I study only to stir the ladles?
Hatas, khuntis – two types of ladles
Boudi – literally brother’s wife, here it means homely.
Shunlam U have become a boudi – Heard you have become a hausfrau.
tui kemon hoye gechis – You have become a bit strange
shooji – semolina, semoule
paneer – cottage cheese
kanchkola and aloo’r chop – green bananas and potato cutlet
Eto kichu – so many
Kanch Kola kharap hoye jabey boley. – the bananas will spoil
dhania pata – coriander leaves
methi - fenugreek
phoron – tempering with spices
papod - poppadums
dal and bhat - lentil curry and rice
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