SUNDAY SOLILOQUY

By: Lakshmi Reuben-Gopali

Powai - 25 May 08 : Travelling to countries near and far is one of the ways to expand one’s horizons, thinking and outlook. It helps us understand that variety in humans is not something to feel threatened by but something from which one can learn and by which one is enriched. That’s why I am grateful for all my friends who live in every corner of the world, friends made during my travels, others who’ve visited India from distant lands, and still others who’ve settled in countries I hope to visit one day.

I’ve found that in order to understand various peoples and their cultures one needs to keep sightseeing and all the touristy things to the minimum. Then if you find a way to spend time with the locals, learn their language and sample their cuisine, you’ll probably learn more than if you’d sat in a Geography class with the teacher reading out a lesson on Human Geography.

Make no mistake. A good Geography teacher can make the subject extremely rewarding if s/he engages the students’ interest by assigning them projects and then supplements the knowledge gained from research done by showing them DVDs or taking them on school trips, where they get a “feel” of the land, the people and the various aspects of the subject which had hitherto been confined to the classroom and one’s imagination. That’s why I’m grateful to have had a really wonderful Geography teacher who made the subject come alive. Thanks to Miss Clark, visiting another state in our country or a foreign land has been an enjoyable and rich experience every single time.

One teaching method my Geography teacher did not employ was exposing us to different cuisines in order to help us understand various cultures. I guess she couldn’t as students came from backgrounds which didn’t allow the consumption of certain foods. Sometimes, the students themselves didn’t want to experiment with different foods and flavours! Happily, my sister and I suffered from no such restrictions because unusually, it was our mother who encouraged us to try different foods for, in her words, “who knows where you’ll settle.” She also held that it’s not proper to turn up one’s nose at food which, even if it’s something you don’t like, is something that someone else may love. Besides, they won’t think much of your disdain of their food. I must say, that much like one would maintain the proverbial stiff upper lip, keeping one’s nose firmly in place will prove to be a huge challenge when visiting China someday. I hear the diet is quite varied, including creatures great and small which would basically make my skin crawl were they served up on my plate! It’s a good job I can’t read Chinese, or else I might be tempted to give China a miss!

What’s marvellous about most world cuisines is that they use familiar ingredients, but in such unusual mix-and-matches that you begin to think, “Hey! Why didn’t I think of that?” Take for example this Mexican restaurant which is having a chilli festival. Mexico has an array of chillies, with varying degrees of heat and different flavours, some sweet, some tangy and some smoky. The menu combines chillies with unusual ingredients to produce exciting recipes. One chilli called Chilaca is stuffed with chicken, apple, pistachios and green coriander served on a green chilli and tomato sauce. Sounds fiery but the stuffing appears to temper it. Another chilli is stuffed with squid, prawns, oyster, tomatoes and parsley and served with a mango salsa. I’m not too sure about the end result but I think “interesting” is one way of describing it.

I’m aware that Bombay [Oh, brother! Mumbai] has Tex-Mex, Italian, Chinese, Lebanese, Japanese and Thai restaurants. But I’ve yet to hear of pubs or of pub culture taking-off in here as much as it did in Bangalore. Still, while pubs became popular as watering-holes and discotheques, the authentic English pub ambience and the Pub Grub is missing.

So what’s pub grub? It’s usually a sumptuous meal, so large that you really need to have a giant’s appetite to finish what’s on the plate. Typical menus have the ubiquitous Fish and Chips, the fish usually being cod, haddock or plaice, dipped in a flour and beer batter, deep-fried, served with chips and ‘dressed’ in malt vinegar. The best place to get Fish and Chips is the corner “chippie” or “chip shop”. The next best place is the pub. What’s more, there, you can wash it all down with a pint of the best Lager, Beer or Stout [a very bitter beer].

Typical pub grub includes Shepherd’s Pie, a lamb pie cooked in a casserole with a layer of mashed potato, and Cornish Pasty, which is like the patties available at Merwan’s in Andheri, but more moist, with more vegetables complementing the meat. The puff-pastry encasing the filling is gorgeously flaky and crunchy, baked to the most delicious-looking golden-brown there ever was on earth!

Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding is a typical dish from Northern England. By the way, Yorkshire Pudding is not a dessert. It’s like a muffin, only but larger and made of a batter of flour, milk and eggs, poured into hot oil and baked. It’s a dish you can either make or break. The perfect Yorkshire Puddings stay puffed in the middle, while the flops seem to implode during baking!

Steak and Kidney Pie has chunks of steak and pieces of gurda in delicious gravy with veggies thrown in for good measure, covered with a flaky pastry ‘lid’ and baked to perfection. “Bangers and Mash” are sausages with mashed potato and onion gravy, while “Toad in the Hole” are sausages covered with a batter made of flour, eggs and milk and roasted in the oven and served with accompaniments like gravy, peas and carrots.

Some pubs serve breakfast where one can order Kippers or Kedgeree. Kippers are small bony fish, which are split and smoked, while Kedgeree is a mixture of rice and fish cooked with curry powder. Kedgeree comes from the Hindi word khichdi and is cooked similarly, but the ingredients are different.

Sampling the local cuisine is an absolutely delicious way of getting to know how others live, that is, if you have an adventurous palate. This not just expands horizons but allows you to discover your hidden taste buds.

The other, slightly cheaper, way to expand one’s horizons is by reading about other peoples’ food and letting yourself to drool without actually eating the stuff! So what say? Are you ready for some local food? Let’s start with the different cuisines in India first!

(The Author’s primary qualification is the ability to laugh at herself. She believes looking at life with humour-tinted glasses is essential. A thinker, she feels strongly about many issues. Daughter of noted writer Bunny Reuben, Lakshmi's talents with writing, poetry, music, painting and much more, come from both her parents who have encouraged her to give things her best shot. She loves teaching and believes that ultimate empowerment comes from knowledge. Her greatest awards are her students who continue to pass on the gift of knowledge for life. She may be contacted at Email: sundaysoliloquy@yahoo.co.in