Fried red plantains with beans
I sometimes wondered what it was like for those of you who followed my dispatches from our travels over the last year. If they were even half as interesting as Terrie’s updates from her Peace Corps training in Ghana, I can rest easy. Access to Terrie’s blog is restricted to friends and family, but I wanted to share one small slice of life that made me smile:
My favorite meal so far, and maybe my new favorite food…fried red plantain with beans…it was like caramelized sweet potatoes that you scoop up with baked beans…amazing! It was so good it made me teary and homesick for Thanksgiving.
Holy QR cupcakes, Batman!
If you happened to catch the recent Duncan Hines “Bake On” commercial, you may have registered a subliminal cupcake crop circle that momentarily materialized before disappearing beneath a giant flying brownie. I’m not making this stuff up. The first time I saw it, my brain didn’t even realize that it had seen a QR Code until after the next commercial started—and by then I had no recollection of what that crazy kaleidoscopic, cupcake-tastic commercial was even advertising. Here are some screenshots from the trippy 30 second spot:
At first glance, it seemed utterly pointless—flashing a QR Code so fast no one even knows that they’ve seen, let alone has the time to pull out their smartphones. I imagined people on the edge of their couches with iPhones primed, eagerly anticipating that split second when the commercial inevitably airs again. Visions of Orphan Annie’s Secret Society decoder pin danced in my head.
And then I remembered all those DVRs out there. Now assuming folks are not already skipping the commercials, this is actually a pretty neat strategy to get people to stop and take note of an ad, albeit one with a pretty high technical barrier to entry.
So where does the QR Code go? Well, that depends. It encodes the URL http://dhbakeon.com/qr/code/1, which, if you scan (or click) using a desktop web browser, will redirect you to Duncan Hines’ Facebook page. But if you scan with your iPhone (a more likely scenario), you’ll get a little web-based mobile site with recipes and coupons, including some features that are “locked”, requiring you to “Scan more [cupcake?] QR codes” (leaving no brownie unturned, I’d imagine).
Beef worthy of a Texas grill
Texas pride can be a little over the top sometimes, so when I saw a steak in the shape of Texas on the side of an H-E-B semi-trailer the other day, I had to get a photo of it. I was driving at the time, so I asked Stephanie to snap these out the window for me (with her original iPhone). It was only after passing the truck that we realized the entire ad was a barbecue-rific recreation of the Texas Flag, complete with “lone star” tongs. Absolutely brilliant!
Thinking to myself: man, what I wouldn’t give to see a Texas-shaped steak sizzlin’ on a Texas-shaped grill.
A taste of Parma
Parma started out as a whim. I mean, when people think about visiting Italy they usually think: Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, Milan—not Parma. But while looking at the cities between Florence and France, I thought to myself, “Hey we like Parmesan and Prosciutto, let’s go to Parma!” At least I figured we’d get to taste some cheese.
In the end we spent four nights at the friendly, family-owned Camping Arizona, we visited each of the Musei del Cibo (the incredible, I-can’t-believe-they-actually-exist “Museums of Food”: Parmesan, Prosciutto, Salami, and Tomato) and we discovered something even better than prosciutto: culatello. Though we never ended up in the city of Parma itself, we fell in love with the countryside. And it’s where, I can say with confidence, that I finally started to feel comfortable driving with a stick-shift.
This is Parmesan country
The real gem of our trip to Parma was visiting C.P.L., a working caseificio, one of over 400 independent “cheese factories” within the Parmigiano-Reggiano Consortium. Each makes what we commonly refer to as Parmesan: the famous hard Italian cheese that comes in 40kg (88lbs) wheels and fractions thereof (not the stuff that comes in green cylinders labeled “Kraft”).
A traditional copper kettle for making Parmesan cheese next to a modern one at the Museo del Parmigiano-Reggiano in Soragna
Inside a Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese factory
Ugandan chapati cooking
Though I found cooking classes pretty much everywhere I looked in Southeast Asia (e.g. Bali, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand), I discovered in India that they tended to cluster around a few tourist-friendly cities (like Udaipur and McLeod Ganj). When I got to Nairobi and looked for the same, I turned up empty. I’m not sure whether that results from a lack of interest in African cooking, or simply a lack of development in that segment of the tourist market.
In any event, I was amused to discover a cooking class of sorts—more of a cooking lesson—available right outside the gates of our campground in Jinja, Uganda. On our day off after rafting, in addition to resting our sore, sunburnt bodies, I signed up for a chapati-making lesson at the immodestly-named: Bujagali Chapati Company.
The one and only, Bujagali Chapati Company
The East African chapati closely resembles its cousin in India, the parantha, a chapati that’s lightly fried in oil. In Uganda the chapati is frequently rolled up with a vegetable omelette, popularly known as a rolex (apparently short for “rolled eggs”), and reminds me of the Hot Kati Roll I had in Kolkata (without the chicken curry of course).
The cooking lesson started with making the dough: 2kg of white flour with 3 “cups” of water and a handful of salt—which makes enough for 20-30 chapatis. To my eyes, their cups resembled about one and a half US cups, so your mileage may vary. The mixture is kneaded until the dough becomes uniform.
Knead
After letting the dough rest for a short while, they demonstrated the technique for forming the correct size ball per chapati. First rub a little bit of vegetable oil on the hands. Then squeeze a handful dough in a fist so it comes out in a ball between the curled index finger and thumb. Once it’s about the size of an egg or a golf ball, pinch it off at the bottom.
Ball
Indian cooking
We took a day train from Jaipur to Udaipur. We arrived at night and went to a nice hotel that had been recommended to us. Of the rooms they showed us, we particularly liked the one painted blue on the second floor overlooking Lake Pichola. It was 2500 Rs/night (almost $60—a splurge in our budget), and had it been daytime we probably would have tried to talk down the price (it being low season), but it was already past 10pm, we’d been traveling all day, and just wanted to go to bed. However when we woke up and saw the room and the view out over the lake in daylight, we realized we’d made an excellent choice (bargain or not). We ended up spending six nights there.
Panoramic view from our hotel room overlooking Lake Pichola
The old city of Udaipur, though definitely catering to visitors with its shops and restaurants, had the feel of a French village with narrow, crooked streets walled in by tall buildings. It was a place that invited you to explore on foot. Some corners were relatively quiet with little traffic. And there were things to do. Stephanie underwent a 45 minute ayurvedic full body massage and took a 2 hour painting class that stretched out to two days. And as is our custom, we signed up for a cooking class, this one taught by Shashi—at the time not only the highest ranked cooking class in Udaipur on Trip Advisor, but the highest ranked activity of any sort in Udaipur.
A rough paraphrase of Shashi’s life story goes like this: she grew up in a small village in Rajasthan, speaking only Rajasthani. Her marriage was arranged to a man from Udaipur who spoke only Hindi. So she moved to Udaipur and started to learn Hindi. After only a few years of marriage, her husband was murdered by his best friend. Shashi was now a young widow with two children. She was expected to mourn at home for a year. Remarrying was out of the question. She received no financial assistance from her mother- and father-in-law, though she was expected to continue cooking and cleaning for them. She became very depressed. She cleaned tourists’ clothes in secret (which one of her young sons would collect from local guesthouses) because Brahmins, the caste she belonged to, are not supposed to touch dirty clothes. She was shunned by the community because many people regard widows as bad luck. She could only go out at night. She did some cooking at a local restaurant, and one day one of the guests asked if she would teach him how to cook. At this point she spoke no English, but she learned a handful of cooking words to get by. Word spread, and more people asked her to teach them how to cook. Her English got better. Someone wrote down her recipes in English. Someone translated them to French, someone else to Spanish, German, Portuguese, etc. Someone from Lonely Planet reviewed her class. Someone set up a website for her. Now she is busy teaching, able to support herself and her sons independently, thanks to a cast of unlikely supporters from around the world.
Shashi’s humble cooking space
Fresh peanut masala
I ordered the “peanut masala” thinking it would be a nice crunchy snack to go with lunch. I did not expect to get something that I might have otherwise described as “salsa fresca with peanuts”. Though the combination was unusual to my eyes, it turned out to be a very tasty addition to my dal (lentils) and rice. The tang of the raw onion and the crunch of peanuts was a perfect complement to the mellow flavors and smooth texture of the dal.
I tried to identify its component parts to determine what it was made of. I found no trace of garlic, but there was a finely diced, flat, greenish-white vegetable that I could only guess was cabbage (I asked later and they confirmed my suspicions). Otherwise it was a pretty typical salsa fresca with the unusual addition of peanuts.
I searched online for “peanut masala” and discovered that I had not stumbled upon a revolutionary new dish. This is apparently a common snack all across India. However, the vast majority of recipes cook the peanuts in oil with dry spices. Of those that use fresh ingredients, none mention cabbage or any ingredient like it. So I thought I might add one more version to the pile. The proportions I chose are rough estimates. Use the photo below as a guide and adjust to taste.
Fresh Peanut Masala a la Jas Vilas
- 1 cup raw, unsalted peanuts: toast lightly and let cool
- 1 medium red onion, small dice (about 1/2 cup)
- 1 small tomato, medium dice (about 1/4 cup)
- 1 small green chili, sliced
- 1 small bunch cilantro, chopped finely (about 1/4 cup)
- 1/4 cup of green cabbage, very small dice
- 2 tbsp of freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp finely ground cayenne powder
- 1/4 tsp salt (or Kala Namak, Indian black salt)
Combine all ingredients and serve. As a variation, coarsely chop the peanuts to make it more “dip-friendly”.
Fresh peanut masala
A kati roll in Kolkata
To make a long story short, we survived Kolkata. But oh, the honking!
We arrived just before noon, took a yellow Ambassador taxi to a part of town where there were a bunch of guesthouses, ordered lunch at a local Bengali restaurant, ate with our right hands, found a grungy, overpriced, but acceptable hotel for one or two nights, took a taxi to find the tourist train ticket booking office, stood in the wrong line for half an hour, discovered we were in the wrong line 5 minutes before closing time, ran next door to the right line, miraculously got two tickets on an overnight sleeper train to Mughal Sarai (about 12km from Varanasi) the following day, took a taxi back to our hotel, taxi driver INCREDIBLY let us off on the wrong street saying it was the right street, walked around for a while to get our bearings, got our bearings, stopped at a restaurant for dinner, exited the restaurant only to discover it was pouring, ran from awning to awning all the way back to our hotel, damp but not drenched.
My wager, when I suggested to Stephanie that we actually spend a day or two in Kolkata to acclimate ourselves, was that it wouldn’t be that different from any of the other places we’ve been. The honking is just like Vietnam, it feels as crowded as Hanoi or Saigon, it’s as dusty and hot as Cambodia, and the reckless driving is similar to Bali or the Philippines. Of course there are elements that are uniquely Indian, like the odd cow wandering in the middle of the road or the horse pulled carts, but I think all our previous travel experiences, combined, prepared us well for what we experienced on that first day in Kolkata.
On the second day I wanted a kati roll, the street food specialty of the city. It is made by frying an egg on a roti bread, topping it with onions, hot sauce, and a filling of your choice—chicken curry being the most popular. So we walked down to aptly-named Hot Kati Roll on Park Street, and I got one.
Rolling my “egg chicken roll”
Enjoying myself, thoroughly
