Coo-curry

Besides this being a travelling internship for me, it has been a cooking internship under the able mentorship of Abhirup Nath and Yogesh Patil. Never had I expected to get home-like food here had it not been for them. By now I can pretty much fry stuff, and am graduating to make some curries with gravy. But when they are around, I restrict myself to peeling and cutting stuff, or washing dishes.

The menza (mess/canteen) food is very expensive - 6 euros a meal on an average, all the more reason to learn some cooking.

Yogesh and his productions

Yogesh and Abhirup had brought their artillery of spices, turmeric, and masala from India. So, a feast is what I have when they are around in the kitchen, . Realizing that the taste of pretty much everything we have comes from spices and salt, I have been quite liberal on using them. Without these, the potatoes, vegetables taste pretty bland. Anyway, the turmeric turned out to be the source of some major trouble too. I didn't know that it is too strong a chemical for German detergent chemicals to overcome, and so was a bit careless with it initially.

And then the next day I ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. The cleaning lady is rightfully the right-hand (woe)man of Ms Hafner. Firstly she doesn't know English. Only thing she can say in English is that she knows it little. So our communication was limited to hand movements and acting in some cases. (Now I understand the importance of dumb-charades). Next, she liked putting all the blame on me, irrespective of whether I am responsible for it or not, -if there are unwashed dishes, according to her it had to be me who was behind it. And then she uttered one phrase that is still ringing in my ears - pointing to a tiny yellow spot, she said "Aal-iss-curry". I thought of the complications involved in explaining the differences between curry and turmeric, and then decided it easier to nod my head in approval. A terrible mistake in itself. Overjoyed at gaining some ground against me and also at her success to say something in English that I could comprehend, she celebrated it by showing yet another mark, and again claiming "Aal-iss-curry". And this went on for the next 5-10 minutes. All the while she pointed to inexistent spots or spots which under 100X magnification becomes resolvable by the normal human eye. Or marks that have faded beyond recognition. She even showed stains on the scrubber itself. Meanwhile I got bored, and started counting the number of times she's using the phrase. And then when I lost count, I just muttered to myself "All-is-well" everytime she said "Aal-iss-curry."..... Really, if she is so concerned about guests, she should remember that I am a guest too.