Adventures at Mealtime

Food stories are the best! And when traveling, there never seems to be a shortage of them. Here are some of my favorites from this week.


Auntie's Birthday

This Tuesday, Auntie celebrated her 50th birthday. Since she was going to host a large dinner the next evening, she was too busy to be concerned with celebrating her birthday this year, so I decided to cook her dinner. I made the easiest, most American thing I could think of - grilled cheese and tomato soup. Besides a boring pasta salad, it was the only kind of American food I could have made here anyway.

I made a special trip to a special new grocery to find sliced bread and cheddar cheese cubes, and I bought some tomatoes from a local farmer on my way home from work. Amazingly, everything went smoothly in the kitchen. I cooked the tomatoes in a pressure cooker with salt and pepper and some wheat flour to thicken it. I mixed in a dollop of fresh cream (homemade by Auntie, who boils the fresh, unpasteurized milk we have delivered to our house every night!). The grilled cheese was easy because Auntie has a little sandwich griller - antique, but it works. I greased up the bread and popped them in. As I was cooking, I warned her, "I'm not gonna lie, Auntie, I don't know how this is going to turn out." She responded, "You put in love?" I said "of course!" and she replied, "Then is okay. Cannot be bad if you put in love."

We sat down to eat and Auntie was very impressed, or at least she acted like it. I tried to talk up the meal by telling her this is "very typical American food," and "we eat this dish a lot in the wintertime." But I bit into the grilled cheese and tasted something different. I commented on the interesting flavor of Auntie's oil, and I asked her what kind it was. I had thought it was just sunflower oil, which she often uses instead of ghee because it has less cholesterol. She said, "Which one you use?" I told her it was from the bottle in the fridge. She shook her head and said, "Nooo... there is no oil in the fridge," very puzzled. I assured her there was, and we went back and forth arguing like this. I took another bite of the sandwich and said, "it tastes kind of sweet..." Auntie's head snapped up and she said, "Ohh! Morel! That is rose syrup!" So the grilled cheese was a little sugary, and we had a good laugh, but I had "put in love," so it was all okay.


Muslim prayer circles and communal dinners

On Wednesday, Auntie invited her Muslim women's prayer group over to our house for prayer and dinner. She had been preparing the meal for four or five days. About 16 women came, plus some of her extended family in Udaipur.

Auntie made nearly all of the dishes from scratch. Only the roti she ordered made and delivered to her, because it would be impossible to make enough individual pieces of bread for everyone and still have them be hot and fresh when everyone came. Together Auntie and I made the sweet dish - a kind of sugary milky paste with cardamom and coconut flakes. (She even shelled and crushed the cardamom herself, and bought whole coconuts to crack and grate the flesh from.) Then there were fried balls made of a potato and ground mutton dough, filled with cashew nuts, raisins, and pieces of boiled egg. Then there was a sweet and salty carrot salad. The main dish was a mutton and onion curry, which was amazing beyond words. We ate it with rice and roti.

The fun part of this dinner is that all the women ate out of communal large plates on the floor of the living room. We split into two groups around two different plates, and Auntie put the food on each plate and we devoured it with our hands. I'm proud to say I've just about mastered eating food with only my right hand. It all seems to taste better when eaten with your hands anyway.

Dal and Cow Dung

Yesterday, I went to the field again with my coworkers at KVK. Once a season, KVK holds a "Field Day" in one of the villages. They choose a farmer whose crop has grown well and will give good output at harvest time, and they gather all the other farmers in the area so they can discuss and learn from the one farmer what specific techniques he used to make his crop do so well.

So we were scheduled to head out at 9am. Of course, the "condemned jeep" had some issues so we didn't get going until 9:30/9:45ish. We arrived at the selected site for the Field Day in the village Kempur. There on the farm is a small Hindu temple dedicated to a diety in the form of a black cobra, but I can't remember the Hindi name. It is very pretty and simple, and we sat under the tall columns on the cool stone. There were about 7 or 8 farmers there already, and they were busily cooking our lunch. I asked my coworker Dr. Seni what time the farmers were supposed to come, and he answered, "Yes, they are coming now." So we wait, and wait. Farmers slowly trickle in. We drink chai, chai, and more chai.

Meanwhile I watched the farmers cook dal bati, which are balls of lentils and wheat flour. It is very traditional Rajasthani food, and sure enough, they cooked it the very traditional way - in cow dung ashes. First they gathered cow dung patties, lit the pile on fire, and then when all was burnt, they burried the dal bati balls in the ashes for them to bake. Then I watched the men take out the dal bati and beat them with rags until they are free of ashes, more or less. Then they soaked them in ghee.

The food was not finished until about 2:30, at which point we started the Field Day. Scientists from KVK spoke for about thirty minutes about farming techniques for mustard seeds. I sat in the back with all the women, who paid no attention to the talks, but instead played with my bangles and attempted to talk to me in Hindi. I loved it.

We finally ate at 3:30. Though I had brought my own lunch (my supervisor had told me to because I would not like the food), I knew there was no way I could pass up this meal. How many times in my life will I get an opportunity to eat traditional dal bati cooked in a cow dung fire in a Rajasthani village? I also knew that all the food was kneaded and cooked with the farmers' bare hands, and since there was no soap in these villages, I knew I would probably get sick. (And I know some certain Aunties of mine in the United States are shaking their heads at me right now, but I don't care.) My decision was made. I dove fingers first into the food, and it was delicious. There was also a very spicy soup to dip the dal bati in, which made it even better. And, there was another dish called churma, another traditional Rajasthani food, made from wheat flour. It was a very sweet, dessert-like crumble. Wheat flour was mixed with a lot of sugar and nuts and raisins and ghee. I couldn't get enough of it.

To finish off the meal, they served chach, a salty buttermilk with cumin seeds that happily cooled my mouth after the spicy soup. It's not my favorite, but they say it is good for digestion, so I drink it sometimes.

I'm pleased to say that it's been over twenty-four hours, and I'm still a healthy girl!

Churma

Dal bati