During my final year of architecture I went to Singapore with my dad on the pretext of doing my thesis. It was the Chinese New Year and the hotel we were staying in, seved a buffet of traditional Chinese food every night. Being the conniving person that I am, I convinced my dad that we should go native for a day even though it came with a price tag of 40$ per person. With reluctance, a staunch supporter of maacher jhol and bhaat (fish curry and rice) and the spicy Mughlai cusine, my dad agreed.
The receptionist with whom we completed the transaction, gave us a skeptical look and felt duty bound to inform us that authentic Chinese food usually does not appeal the Indian palette. With nonchalance I dragged my father who was still grieving over the 80$ to the dining area. We took a look around the buffet table and saw it filled with a variety of strange and exotic dishes in a range of colors, shapes and sizes but unfortunately completely unrecognizable.
As we were seated, the server asked us as to what kind of stock we would prefer in our steamboat, of all the options, chicken seemed the safest bet. A big dish filled with chicken stock and a lamp underneath to heat it, was delivered to our table. After waiting a couple of minutes for further developments, we realized that THIS WAS IT! A quick survey told us that apparently all the items displayed at the table were raw and needed to be cooked in the steamboat. My dad, who had sported a somewhat bewildered look, now resembled a thundering cloud. The prospect of eating 80$ worth of steamed food that too ones that he did not recognize and needed to cook himself, threatened to make my journey in this planet a very short one!
Pacifying him yet mentally completely shaken up, I bravely joined the queue and filled our plates with a bit of everything and dumped it all in our now overflowing steamboat. After 30 minutes and the food not having changed in either color or consistency I began to get desperate, the thundering cloud i.e. my dad by now had started spouting threats of retribution. 45 minutes later, the dish still unchanged and our stock rapidly diminishing, we concluded that the food was cooked.
Very gingerly with a sickly smile pasted on my face, I transferred some of the gunk to my plate and bravely put some in my mouth, I swallowed took a sip of water and then repeated the action. My dad took one look at my face, sprang into action and immediately ordered me to stop the insanity. We slipped out of the diner unnoticed with our steamboat groaning under the weight of all the wasted food.
5 comments:
This is hilarious. You and your curiosity, LOL! I read the rediff.com article you linked and it makes reasonable arguments why we desis love our Chinese food the way we do. Even the other day when Manoush and Errolowl went to the Mongolian Grill, I prepared my bowl with more than a generous supply of curry sauce albeit it was a misnomer to have called it Soy Joy. Though we get curry chicken here, it's rather unfortunate that Manchurian dishes are conspicuously absent.
I agree my curiosity has got me into a lot of trouble but then imagine how boring my life would be without it!!I really relished the rediff article some of the statements were classic-
"Have you ever seen wood ears and black fungus being sold in shops here? No"
"In China, all these are highly prized because of their texture. Soft and crunchy (pig's ears), hard and rubbery (abalone), gelatinous and crunchy (duck's feet) -- when a guy can't cook the delicacies of his cuisine, he is reduced to catering to the lowest common denominator"
Did you also read up on the Lin Garden Restaurant serving indian chinese in Canada?
How was your mega dinner with your clan?
A grand success if I may say so myself!! :-)
I was especially happy that I was able to pull of my experimental mango mousse inspite of disasters like the whipping cream stubbornly refusing to get whipped!!!
That's probably the difference between whipping and whipped cream. LOL.
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