Hors d'oeuvre of affliction
April 27, 2005
Some years ago a friend of mine waxing rabbinic told me that during Pesach week, whilst eating charoset one must never say, 'Mmmmm, I love charoset!", because charoset, a delicious mixture of apples, honey, and/or nuts, dates figs, symbolises the mortar used by slaves to build the buildings of the fill in the blank here, and don't take things too literally, you!
That sounded like a quirky but plausible Jewiish behaviourism to me and I decided to incorporate it into my narrative.
Yesterday evening, two friends of mine from Kampala were back in the Heimatt and fortune placed them at my dinner table. Oddly I didn't feel much like cooking when I wrenched myself away from my work at 19h and I don't know how I did, but I did somehow manage to slap something together for us to eat. It just wasn't me not to want to cook for dear friends and somehow I convinced myself that it was OK to serve a ritual combination of matzah, charoset and bitter herbs (horseradish) as an hors d'oeuvre!
I show Alice and Lee how to do like the Jews do, make a little sandwich by piling the charoset and bitter herbs onto the matzah, how you take enough horseradish so that it causes you to shed at least one tear for the slaves that once were, for the slaves that still are, and finally, that even if you like the taste of the mixture, you're not supposed to say so. Charoset stands for the mortar of the enslaved and we're supposed to act like we hate it.
After the lengthy explanation I space out and Alice and Lee get to work making their own hors d'oeuvres with the materials provided, all the while telling me funny stories about the Amakula International Film Festival that they set up in Kampala last year. Alice takes a bite of her d'oeuvre, and with a pleading look on her face grasps her throat, pounds on her chest, shudders, starts looking frantically for her napkin as if she wants to spit in it, is barely able to swallow the mouthfull, slams her hand down hard on the table with a resounding BAM and pronounces, 'YHhUCK!'
I am completely shocked. The combination of witnessing a cherished friend intensely dislike something that I've dished up, plus all the guilty feelings for not giving it my all earlier that evening, plus a little bit of wonderment thrown in because I'd never actually heard of someone not liking the ritual combination. It's all just a bit too much. 'What, you don't like my cooking?'
Alice and Lee look at me with these puzzled looks on their faces and finally Alice musters, 'But, didn't you just say that...'
Please read more... "Hors d'oeuvre of affliction"
Posted by debra at 09:42 AM | Comments (10) | post to del.icio.us
Another short supply chain
April 26, 2005
This time it's dessert! Ladoos, to be exact. These gentlemen are working in the temple compound (Hanuman Mandir, CP, Delhi) 30 metres from the dung fuel sales and manufacturing woman. Their whole production setup takes place within 10 metres, their point of sale is 30 metres away.
A ladoo is a graham flour sweet, sometimes made with puffed rice. If someone would explain to me why one always finds ladoo near temples I would be most appreciative. I think it has to do with religiously sanctioning things that people like to do anyway, and I mean that in the most generous possible way.
Please read more... "Another short supply chain"
Posted by debra at 09:07 AM | Comments (3) | post to del.icio.us
Love those short supply chains
Here in Europe we can't stop talking about 'food miles', that is to say, how many kilometres our food travels before we actually get to touch it. There's that quite famous study of the strawberry yoghurt, It's the same for all products, including cow dung fuel. The images shown were all taken within 20 metres (!) of eachother in the Hanuman Mandir temple complex near CP, Delhi.
From top to bottom: Cow - dung collection - patty cake, patty cake, dry dry dry - fuel saleswoman
Please read more... "Love those short supply chains"
Posted by debra at 08:24 AM | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us
For the Luv of Gawd, Whip Me!
April 25, 2005
Patrick Faas fastens his kipa
I guess I should have known that something like this would happen when Reb Noam, the leader of our pesach seder appeared sporting a self-styled kipa with the words, 'Next year in Miami' written on it. But even my inner-fagele couldn't have predicted that during this auspicious ordered meal we would leap up from our seats and start whipping eachother with longish spring onions. Not that there's anything wrong with that! It's just an innocent illustration symbolizing the oppression from which we were liberated and bringing new meaning to the words, 'Hag Sameach'. I'm filing the Passover bitch-slap under the category, 'Nice Detail'.
Rev Noam's kipa says, 'Next year in Miami'
Please read more... "For the Luv of Gawd, Whip Me!"
Posted by debra at 10:49 AM | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
Passover cleaning
April 22, 2005
In December 2004, a Spanish Talmudic scholar named Sinterklaas was cited translating the Torah,
'Passover is the holiday when it behooves
us to clean the barnacles out of our grooves'.
If you don't have anything in the fridge, it's easier to clean it. Smetvrees, the fear of contamination, is an ancient Jewish tradition and therefore a once yearly scrub-down (and burning!) is on the menu today, the day before Pesach. Before the week of Passover commences, it's necessary to rid the house of all items containing leaven, creating an elaborate excuse for rarely performed activities such as dusting and refridgerator cleaning.
Since March 11 I've been in my home exactly 3 days. The contents of my fridge (l to r, top to bottom) are: 2 eggs, jars of mustard and homemade sambal from January 2004 (a gift from a then-not-yet-ex, indicating the period of time that has passed over since... YIPES = LEAVEN!!!), 1,5 train station supermarket courgettes, leftover film from a photoshoot in 2003. 2nd row; 2 1000 yr. duck eggs, 1 open packet of gari (pickled ginger), pickled daikon radish, 1 jar of anchovis. 3rd row; 1 tin of sheep cheese in brine containing 1/8th of a cheese, 2 tins containing only brine which I will also categorise as clutter I mean leaven, 4 St. Marcellin lait cru cheeses brought from Occitania on Wednesday.
In the vegetable 'crisper', which I realistically refer to as 'the rotter'; 1 piece of burdock from a 2004 automnal dinner, 1 carrot from same dinner, a lot of paper bags that act as an absorbent layer when I'm gone for any length of time ( = LEAVEN), 500ml of half fat milk, bought at the train station, 1 bottle of ketchup from last century. Ketchup is oddly exempt from all dietary law.
Please read more... "Passover cleaning"
Posted by debra at 10:20 AM | Comments (4) | post to del.icio.us
Avocado update
April 21, 2005
Safe and sound back in the Heimatt. Pity la geste Californienne. Compare the image above to the entry of hope before heading off to India and France. Looks like my sense of home in Amsterdam needs a bit of nurturing. My inner mother tells me to return the failed avocado sprouters to their original use as vessles of buffalo grass vodka.
Posted by debra at 08:01 AM | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us
Chopping block
April 20, 2005
In Delhi, right outside our house by the Jantar Mantar monument is a nameless restaurant that serves rickshaw drivers, bus chauffeurs and around 400 various people each day - including ourselves. At the crack of dawn, which in Delhi means a civilised 9 o'clock, the kitchen staff sets to work on the mise en place. The man in the image above has developed a way to do yoga and chop onions at the same time. I particularly love the self designed chopping block he's using. Vegetables spill over on either side, a perfect object and technique to cut one's way through mountains of onions.
technorati tags: India, Delhi, street food, outdoor kitchen, vernacular design, culiblog
Posted by debra at 11:57 PM | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us
Sticking to the streets
April 16, 2005
Delhi- Clustering their services in one Connaught Place kiosk are four paan salesmen, each selling a different recipe of this perfumed and intoxicating digestive leaf from the kiosk's cardinal points.
One very interesting thing we learned from two of the Nomadic Banquet participants, John Vijay Abraham and Sanjeev Shankar's street food research at the IIT Bombay, is that street food vending is not always a step on the path to restaurantdom. A case in point, they stated is Muchhad Paanwallah, a paan kiosk in Mumbai named after an impressive ear to ear mustache of the owner's father. The current owner, Jaishankar Tiwari has been immensely successful in his street-side paan business, so much so that his and the families of his four sons all live from it. If you can't visit his kiosk in Mumbai it's well worth checking out his website, where you can place orders for paan online.
In the Nomadic Banquet workshop in Delhi, we discovered street food vendors are an integral part of the social fabric and this is likely to be the greatest asset they offer a community. Muchhad Paanwalla is immensely successful and Tiwari chooses to continue selling from his kiosk instead of going upmarket like oh so many smart cigar shops. This is important for us to realise as the perception persists that the street is an undesirable place (for a vendor) - as if the street is merely a stepping stone on the road to 'something better'. The success of Muchhad Paanwallah and others like him prove that exactly the opposite is true.
Muchad Paanwallah http://www.paan.com/about.htm
Posted by debra at 09:33 AM | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
The most beautiful teapot in the world
April 11, 2005
Finally I can sit quietly with the several thousand images from my trip to Delhi and reflect.
WIth a pot of tea.
A giant pot of tea.
In a teapot from Bihar.
Bought at a craftsmarket in Delhi.
Made from dark clay, neither fired very hot, nor glazed.
Looks like it was fashioned by a caveman with a large extended family.
The lid doesn't fit.
It's perfect.
Posted by debra at 01:36 PM | Comments (5) | post to del.icio.us
Delhi Water Bar
April 02, 2005
A water bar on a sidestreet off Janpath in Delhi. Twenty metres down the street is a pump and a well. This water bar is actually a service on offer to draw customers into a shop selling Kashmiri handicrafts and into an alley with other small shops hidden from the street. I love this tented pavillion shared by several shop keepers and its water bar offering a cool place to gather and chat in the shade.
Posted by debra at 11:51 PM | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us
