Clické

The other day, I was telling a friend how sunset silhouettes are so cliché. And then I went out and clicked one.

Oh, the joys of walking into the setting sun.

Me, A Couple Trees, and RB

Delhi's forts are far more fun to explore when you're with (photographer) friends. Come back soon, Bhaumik!

Balance

Studying is about balance, my parents have always told me. And with willing test subjects grandparents, I've been poking about in the kitchen a lot. Yesterday, I made this.

Gaeng Buat Fak Thawng (try saying that out loud), pumpkins in sweetened coconut milk. Simple, natural (I made mine with organic honey) and quintessentially Thai.

And today? Over lunch, my grandfather mentioned how someone had told him to eat rohu, a kind of carp, to cure the morning sneezies. "They sell fresh fish at an evening market five minutes away", he told me offhandedly (or as I prefer to think of it, wishfully), turned back to his meal, and noticed my eyes light up at the thought of frying fish instead of my brain cells. Of course I started to get ideas. "Can-I-cook-it-can-I-cook-it-can-I-cook-it?", I asked, with way too much enthusiasm.

"Uh oh", he said, "I shouldn't have said anything".

But hey, guess who looked like he enjoyed it most?

We feasted on magic-fish for almost an hour, the longest meal I've shared with my grandparents in months. Bony fish is the most flavourful, of course, and I'd forgotten just how satisfying slow eating is. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's start from the beginning.

Buying, the fish, oh god. That's a story. I wish I could show you pictures, but contrary to popular belief, I don't carry my camera everywhere. (Even though I sleep with it next to me often enough.) By the way, vegetarians and faint-of-heart, you can stop reading now, please. Ed: You should have stopped reading a while ago.

Back to the fish, though. I reckoned we were going to a proper evening fish market, but as is with most of the best things in this city, the 'market' turned out to be a single roadside stall. A family of fishmongers with about fifty fish in front of them, and fifty more flip-flapping in a water tank on the side. Can't get fresher than this, I thought to myself.

And did I mention the flies?

They. Were. Everywhere. The last thing you want to see on potential dinner, yes. But I shouldn't have been too surprised. Given that it's summer, given there were fish, and given that the fishmonging family had a mountain with ten years' worth of discarded fish scales and lord-knows-what behind them.

Yeah. Saddest thing ever. I suppose they get used to the smell, and the flies, and the flippy fish and twenty loud customers after a point, though.

Anyway. The woman at the scales was a seasoned profishessional. She was pulling fish out of the water with all the dexterity one can possibly acquire in ten years of selling fish. Tug on tail, slide fish onto forearm while mentally estimating weight, lay mid-section into basket gently, fish's still-glugging face poking out one end, and her tail-fin poking out the other, search customer's face for approving nod, if customer's face starts to wrinkle, lift fish by tail, plop back into the water, and repeat. God, what a tiring job. But boy, she made it look like magic.

We picked our fish and paid up, and I was all ready to go home swinging the bag of live, wriggly fish and all. Coo-whee. But I'd forgotten all about the man with the Nepalese military knife. He'd been sitting there very quietly the entire time, cleaning, scaling, hacking fish into bits. All without drawing very much attention to himself. Clearly, this was a man who didn't mind not being in the spotlight. (Quite a well-complemented couple, them.) Though I probably wouldn't call much attention to myself either if I were covered in scales and unidentifiable fish parts. But I'm diverging. He caught the fish deftly (what did I say about well-complemented?), and sidled it up to his knife. Do I want to watch this?, I wondered.

And before I could think, he'd sawed off one fin and the other, and was halfway through scaling poor, little fishie. Suffice to say, I felt much worse than terrible. For those of you who've ever lived in an Asian country, do you remember the feeling in your stomach the first time you went to a butcher shop? Well, I've been to more than one. And the stomach-tumbling doesn't really ever go away.

Even when you try to convince yourself that it's natural and cyclical and all that. But, what can you do?

Anyway, a couple hours, many mustard seeds and a whole lot of cumin, green chillies and tomatoes later, we had one very happy grandfather, one wary grandmother (she brought out the bananas, just in case someone swallowed a fishbone), and a satisfied amateur chef.

For those of you who are interested, this is how I cooked it: I washed the fish many, many times, rubbed it all over with turmeric (thus cleaning and disinfecting it) and let it sit in the fridge till I was ready to use it, about half an hour later. I wanted to salt it, so the flavour would permeate, but I didn't, since I was supposed to fry it later, and salt-induced osmosis would make it all dry and chewy.

I then put some mustard seeds and cumin into medium-heat oil till they began to pop and fill the kitchen with their gorgeous mustard-seed smell. Then, I added the minced onions (one big one for almost a kilo of cut fish), garlic, split green chillies and red chilli powder for flavour, lowered the heat, and waited forever for the onions to brown.

While I was waiting, I 'fried' the pieces of fish in another pan, with a little bit of oil and a whole lot more steaming, on medium heat. Just till they turned white and fell apart when you prodded them, but not so much that they got chewy. I kept these aside, still covered, when they were done.

Once the onions browned in the other pan, I threw in a whole bunch of finely diced tomatoes with some salt to make it cook faster and taste nicer, covered it, and let them cook till they became much redder and their skins began to peel off. You could use pureed tomatoes if you like.

Finally, I poured a whole bunch of water into the tomato sauce pan. I used about half a litre, because I wanted a lot of curry. (Apparently, the fact that the curry is too hot to eat makes your eyes and nose water so much that it fixes any sneezies you'll ever have. Mine wasn't barely hot enough.) Let it simmer, dunk the fish pieces in, plate up, and serve!

Oh, and don't forget the bananas.

The things we do.

Last night,
we met a friend
at the most exquisite
Chinese restaurant in all
of Delhi, India even, I’m told.

We went there after dinner, but
we had more. Three kinds of dimsum,
shu mai: chicken, pork and prawn. Juicy
servings of ground, seasoned meats, wrapped
in fine sheets, served with peas in their open-topped
centres. Six kinds of dessert: light, fresh mango pudding,
green tea tiramisu, chocolate crème brulée with caramelized
ginger, three scoops of ice cream, all tender, mild, and oriental. Pies
with the flakiest, lightest crust, and wonderfully roundedly sweet filling.
The perfect mango pudding, and fresh, tropical fruit; kiwi, papaya, pineapples
and dragonfruit! Imagine my delight.

There was wine! The kind of well-blended, New World wine that my dad and I both love.
The type that is sweeter and explodes more resoundingly in your mouth when you know you’re home.
Home is the comfort of being with old friends, of course. Where conversation flows as smoothly as wine
and good food, as confidently as your knowledge that the world is right. And while I sat there and chatted the night away
with people I love, my friend across the world crouched in a corner of her room, and killed herself.

I hope you're happier wherever you are, Anne.

Spring in Geneva

Like a true global nomad, my home for the last few years (and a couple more months) is a hop, skip, and a couple flights away. Yes, I'm back in Geneva, where I can see the Alps from my balcony, and in summer, the sun sets at eleven.

Everything I love about Geneva is still the same. Even lovelier because it's spring. Clean air, fresh food, beautiful people. Green fields dotted with daisies, ice cream stands by the lake and children running in the sand. Oh spring, I dedicate my first breakfast here to you. A banana-strawberry-nectarine-yoghurt smoothie with muesli.

I know, I know. I'm a lucky girl. I'm also a little camera-obsessed. My dad was mildly amused to see that my first reaction to this gorgeous bowl of breakfast was to fetch my camera. Oh, well.

After that pink bowl of happiness, we set off to visit the Inventors' Fair, where they had the coolest things ever. (And where an inventor fed my underage sister the tiniest shot of some kind of fizzy apple alcohol.) We were bedazzled by glow-in-the-dark floor chips, electronic menus that serve you according to your preferences, bacteria-grown nanotubes to replace arteries in bypass operations, and magnets for beautiful portable leather desks so your pins and pens don't roll off. So cool.

And after that, my three lenses family members and I went down to soak in the sunshine at the Botanical Gardens, which really sound much better when you say them in French: Les Jardins Botaniques (lay JHAHR-dahn boh-tan-EEK). They are quite possibly my favourite Botanical Gardens in the entire world. I don't remember them ever not being sunny.

They had this awesome wire bee amidst the trees.

And peacocks! More splendid and plentiful than I have ever seen in Delhi, where I used to spend my mornings on the school bus looking out for them near Sujan Singh Park, and where, come dawn, I still hear them calling behind the wall that separates my room from the forest.

This one ventured bravely into the gardens, so he was chased into one of the manicured lawns by a train of children too excited and too young to care that they were running into not-for-public areas.

This one put on a grand show for us, calling to ensure he had an audience before he fanned out his feathers and did a three-sixty for us, eight times over.

And of course, as with any sunny day in a lovely city park, there were children playing everywhere! Here are the three cuties I caught on camera.

This one turned around to fill the pail that was lying in front of him with a cup full of sand, only to find that it had been hauled up! Aww-worthy expression, yes?

This sunned-out kid reminded me too much of Calvin to not share. He was ambling away from his family, hiding a pout and a stuffed tiger beneath his sweatshirt, I'm sure.

And then me and my sister had the loveliest time walking around the old city, where we saw this sign.

And just then, it felt like I had arrived. It felt good to be back in the bylanes I had discovered while running through in close-to minus temperatures. And boy, it felt good to be home.

"Today is Thursday"

This week, I have spent lots of time lying in the shade of the chapel between classes, staring up at blue, blue sky through pokey leaves and scarlet callistemons (not pictured!), with two very fun people.

I love you, Lioness and Megaphone.

(PS: All you fans of generic teenypop, have you seen this song?)

Live. Love. Eat.

My first thought when I woke up this morning was "Must bake today."

I must love cake more than I think.

Spring is here, and because this season lasts for all of two weeks in this city, it's going to be too warm to want to eat or bake anything with dry fruit, nuts or butter pretty soon. That and the fact that my subconscious is obviously craving the rolled up sleeves, flour on my collar and telltale chocolate on my pinkie that go with baking brought me straight to my grandparents' kitchen after class.

(Okay, almost. I paused for lunch. Delectable squash and daal the way only my grandmother can make it.)

Anyway, I've had some gorgeous date and walnut cake lately (mental thank you to the awesome people at Cakeaway), and ever since ASG, their extremely generous main man, told me the cake pictured above is his mother's recipe, I've been subconsciously thinking about it, I guess, because I knew exactly what order and in which quantities to put where, even before I did a brief check with Aunty Google. Yes, my dates were separated and soaked in hot water before I knew what I was doing, and my butter was beautifully (but not quite so successfully) melting on the countertop. Guess it isn't warm enough for it to melt quite just yet.

So I tipped and cracked, mixed and mashed, whipped and ...umm... didn't quite get whiplashed, and devised this recipe to satiate my needs. And boy, that familiar ache from too much stirring in my arms felt good. (There, I've said it. Make of it what you will.)

Click below to read the recipe.

Almost Rainy Sundays

Chippy polish and winter cresting into sun.
A Beatles cover and Sunday morning sleep.
Mama's fruit cake and a book about young love.
Boy, I feel good.