65° - 01.09.1967, Blaðsíða 20

Stretching the Kronur
A MAN IN THE KITCHEN
Who? Not the traditional Icelander nor a pro-
fessional chef, but a UN specialist from Ceylon
here on an official mission.
B. Thiagarajan was trained in cooking for two
years during his apprenticeship as a Hindu. To
him cooking is fun and bears no stigma of
“women’s work”. He often cooks for his wife and
five children merely to relax his mind.
Donning an apron, he enters the author’s
kitchen and a brisk examination of materials
ensues.
What? No fresh carrots, cabbage or cauliflower
available? What do you eat? No fresh coconut?
Well, we’ll find substitutes. Good, the peas and
lentils have sprouted nicely in these two days.
Always let your beans sprout before cooking
them; they’re much more digestible. Sprouted
beans contain more protein and less carbohydrate,
too. You got skyr. Good. I hope it’s sour. Do you
have a lemon? Well, we’ll use skyr to clarify the
butter and to mix with the salad. Now the spices
— all in powder form, I see. We’ll try them but
they won’t taste the same as whole spices freshly
ground. No spice grinder? What about a blender?
We’ll try the meat grinder then.
Three times he grinds mustard seeds onto a
newspaper — no need to waste a bowl.
While peas, lentils and rice steam soft, he
checks the spices again, tasting each on a finger-
tip: nutmeg, ginger, caraway and sesame seeds,
coriander, cloves cinnamon, garlic, red pepper,
black pepper, no hot green pepper, no tartaric
acid — we’ll use cream of tarter, no turmeric,
but it’s in the curry powder as you say. All right.
I brought some cashew nuts, white raisins and
some excellent chutney my wife made.
Then we went to work, the author slicing onions,
sweet green pepper, dicing tomatos and grating
cucumber — the last three items to be mixed with
watered skyr for the salad.
Mr. Thiagarajan worked with his hands in-
steads of spoons — a basic and efficient method
for mixing and tasting — combining the peas,
lentils, rice and canned carrots and a cloud of
spices, notably red pepper, which necessitated
opening the windows, and caraway seeds, which
give an unforgettable pungency to Indian food.
While potatos boiled, he melted butter, foamed
it with a lump of skyr, and poured off the clear
liquid (ghee). Onions and mushrooms browned
in ghee, spices, milk and potato cubes comprised
a sauce for the rice dish.
While mixing milk to the glutinous rice and
bean mixture, tasting the while and with much
washing of hands, he managed to wash cooking
utensils as they accumulated and still keep up a
conversation.
Spices, he explained, not only flavor the foods
but do two other things. Even if people take
exercise, there are parts of the body which cannot
be exercised. Spices aid digestion in that way.
Also in hot countries as India, one must sweat
or be liable to heat stroke. Spices make him sweat
and keep him healthy.
Somewhere about this point, the rice was piled
into dishes by hand, and he set about browning
nuts and onions and mixing raisins to be patted
over the rice mounds.
What about dessert? We will use some of the
extra lentils. He mixed several handfuls with
coconut, sugar and cardamon and put them in
the refrigerator to chill.
Dishes? Just dinner plates and cups. We save
dishes. The rice goes on first and the sauce
poured over. Beside it goes the salad, and this
lentil soup, hot and spiced, is drunk in the cups
with the meal. Yes, put water on the table and
bread if you like, but they’re not necessary. You’ll
see.
We did. It was a full and satisfying meal urged
on us lavishly. (In India the host serves the meal
to all, and not a drop spilled on the tablecloth
as one might expect.) Though the foods were
hotly spiced to our tastes, they sat easily on the
stomach.
Cups of hot tea and coffee followed later, but
the pleasantest parts were no pots and pans to
clean at all, eight contented and lively guests, a
satisfied cook, and total cost just under kr. 300
— the price of meat alone for an Icelandic com-
pany dinner.
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