1/21 A Taste of India

Our cooking class took place at the home of a middle class woman who kept us waiting for 1/2 hour while she completed a tour of the Spice Market with the third student comprising our class - a young woman from NYC. A bit of a mix up since we wanted to go ourselves, but we were mollified by a cup of excellent Chai tea and the thought that we were probably too tired for it anyway. Jyoti, our teacher, was personable and knowledgeable with excellent English. We were there several hours as she explaind the wonderful spices used in Northern Indian cuisine and made numerous dishes for our enjoyment. We got a booklet of recipes and a full course dinner to boot. Jyoti's assistant was a young Nepalese man named, from what we could tell, Bobby and pronounced Bowbie, as would the Brits. Jyoti spent a lot of time issuing instructions to Bobbie along with the occasional chastisement. Much of this was done to the closed kitchen door behind which Bobby was supposedly toiling. She explained that he was being trained and needed more attention than might be preferred. Bobby seemed to bear it all with an unconcerned shrug. Both he and another younger helper lived in Jyoti's home to handle her class set-up, serving, and clean-up along with the endless chopping required for the various dishes. I want a Bobby! For the actual cooking part of the class, we stepped out into a small stone patio which housed a two-burner gas stove on wheels. Handy when you're frying things not to have that grease in the house. Travelers must be adaptable, yes?, so we went right along when Jyoti dropped a piece of cheese onto the patio, rinsed it off, and popped it into the cooking pot. Waste not want not. Joan and I both favored the cauliflower vegetable with green chillies (their spelling), corriander, tumeric and cumin and we also liked the chicken rogan gosh prepared with mustard oil, anise, ginger, chilli and whole spices like cloves, cinnamon, cardamom and bayleaf. Are you hungry yet? It was a wonderful dinner. Balvander was waiting to drive us back to the hotel and although I noticed no let up in traffic, I fell asleep numerous times, waking only because of the annoying car ride head jerk. Delhi is 4.5 hours ahead of London, so sleeping thought the night may be challenging. We'll give it a go, heartened by the leg up we'll have on our fellow Road Scholar travelers when we start our tour next week.