Food, Myself

The Biryani Post

I am a bit of a biryani snob. Oh, all right, I am an awful biryani snob. I am of the opinion that the Only True Biryani is made in Hyderabad, and you find the best biryani in selected joints in the Older parts of the city. Yes, I am so full of it that I consider Paradise – a restaurant that is usually posited as the go-to place for biryani in the city – to be sub-standard. Paradise was good once upon a time, but now it’s gone all mainstream, catering to tourists and skimping on the spices and the chicken.

You could say that I am to biryani what the Jack Black character in High Fidelity is to music.

My friends know about this fine quality of mine, and they usually take it into account when they speak about this dish in my vicinity. The majority of them roll their eyes when I launch into one of my scathing diatribes on it. Some are taken aback. The vegetarians get the worst of it. “I just had some biryani for lunch“, one of them may say. “No, you didn’t”, I respond. “You had pulao. Or maybe spicy rice of some sort.” “You are rude and obnoxious, and you should go jump off a cliff.” “I will, someday. But you did not have biryani for lunch.” And then everyone but me rolls their eyes. Another lady and I were talking about cooking at home, and when she mentioned that she had cooked biryani for her husband a few days ago, I gently corrected her. She not-so-gently asked to something anatomically impossible. We agreed to disagree.

My reaction stems from the fact that it is a devilishly tough food to cook. The spices have to be in the right proportions, and the different layers of the meat-spice-rice have to be carefully added. Even the cooking time matters, and so does the time that you eat it after cooking. A little too less, and the heat messes with the taste. A little too much and you are having oily rice. And if you do not control your water proportions, you have destroyed the dish.

The worst biryani I had was the Bay Area, in 2007. That particular dish got every single thing wrong – the final product did not taste, look or smell anything like biryani. It hurt even more because expectations were high. Not only because the place came highly recommended by local colleagues, but the fucking dish cost $15.99! I shall remember the tonsil-humping, soul-crushing experience to my dying day. I finished every bit of it, though, even though I whimpered inwardly. Just to remind myself to take future recommendations about this specialized dish with a sackful of salt.

To this day, whenever I go to a restaurant and am about to order a biryani, my default mental state of mind is “I just ordered myself a pulao, it will be basmati rice that’s been fried with some spices and meat, and in all likelihood, it will taste and feel like something-that-is-not-biryani”. Having adjusted expectations that way, every dish becomes slightly elevated in quality from that unfortunate Bay Area sample, truly the apogee of the biryani-pulao orbit.

But sometimes I falter. Last year led to another near-catastrophic experience at a Pakistani restaurant. It was called Bilal’s, and that apostrophe in the name should have given it away for me. Authentic sub-continental restaurants have null or low apostrophe usage. A few months of non-indulgence made me order a biryani and be fairly optimistic about the results. When the waiter laid the bowl down in front of me, I did not have to eat any of it to realize the end of my hopes and dreams. A few stabs of the fork confirmed the non-biryaniness of the rice dish. My companions commented on my sigh and the look of dejection. When I explained, they rolled their eyes. I sighed some more.

My friend Sasi is a little more understanding of this fussy nature of mine. Probably because he’s a biryani connoisseur on his own, albeit a more tolerant one. He is more willing to take  biryani of the non-Hyderabadi kind in his stride. Thanks to him and his wife Shilpa, I found a few good places in LA. A great restaurant in Artesia whose name I forget, but where we dropped in for lunch 15 minutes before a screening of The Girl In Yellow Boots. We gobbled up the piping hot rice in 10 minutes flat, not wanting to miss the beginning of the film and also trying to savor every bite, every tiny explosion of flavor. Later on, we figured we should have just finished the biryani in peace – the movie sucked beyond belief. Then there is Zam Zam, a small smoke-filled hole-in-the-wall place on Washington Boulevard. It is open for business only between Friday and Sunday, and biryani is available between 2 and 6. Chances are they will run out if you are not there by 5, or if you do not call in advance to let them know you’re coming. The biryani’s sublime, as are the kababs.

All of last month, Sasi has been tantalizing me about the pulao recipe that he and Shilpa perfected over a few weeks. As I mentioned a few posts ago, I was vegetarian in January, and could not pop over to their place when invited. The kind souls therefore invited me again today, and this time, I had, as they say in Axomiya, one leg braced to jump across. A 30-minute wait at the bus stop did not faze me, and when I got there, sources (my nose and eyes, and Sasi’s hesitant explanations) confirmed what I had suspected – that the pulao was more of a biryani-in-waiting. As in, the only reason they were referring to it as pulao was because of my heightened suspicions/expectations at the definition of the word.

It was biryani. It was awesome biryani. I may have had the first non-Hyderabadi restaurant biryani that tasted like the real thing.

This post came about because this historic experience had to be recorded.

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Books

The Count, in his own words

Yes, Monsieur. I am one of those exceptional beings and I believe that, before today, no man has found himself in a position similar to my own. The kingdoms of kings are confined, either by mountains or rivers, or by a change in customs or by a difference of language; but my kingdom is as great as the world, because I am neither Italian, nor French, nor Hindu, nor American, nor a Spaniard; I am a cosmopolitan. No country can claim to be my birthplace. God alone knows in what region I shall die.

I adopt every custom, I speak every tongue. You think I am French, is that not so? Because I speak French as fluently and as perfectly as you do. Well, now. Ali, my Nubian, thinks me an Arab. Bertuccio, my steward, takes me for a Roman. Haydée, my slave, believes I am Greek. In this way, you see, being of no country, asking for the protection of no government and acknowledging no man as my brother, I am not restrained or hampered by a single one of the scruples that tie the hands of the powerful or the obstacles that block the path of the weak. I have only two enemies: I shall not say two conquerors, because with persistence I can make them bow to my will: they are distance and time. The third and most awful is my condition as a mortal man. Only that can halt me on the path I have chosen before I have reached my appointed goal. Everything else is planned for. I have foreseen all those things that men call the vagaries of fate: ruin, change and chance. If some of them might injure me, none could defeat me. Unless I die, I shall always be what I am. This is why I am telling you things that you have never heard, even from the mouths of kings, because kings need you and other men fear you.

This is what I imagine what Edmond Dantes would look like, if there was any justice in this world.

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Myself

January

It’s been a good month.

New Year Resolutions are trite. If you talk about them, they do not last more than a few weeks. If you do not talk about them, you make excuses and cave in. The solution, for me, was to tell some friends, people who are no-holds-barred with their criticism and liberal with their scorn, and just dive right in. And it worked!

Blogging

Once upon a time, I made a bet. There were six of us at a table, or maybe seven. We were having a South Indian breakfast at Yatri Niwas, Hyderabad, and somehow the topic of blogging came about. The pretty girl sitting next to me commented on how I never updated any more. This was in early 2010, the nadir of my blogging regularity. Foolishly, I claimed that I could, if I put my mind to it. The number ‘two hundred’ came up, I have no idea why. I would write two hundred posts that year, and if I hit that number, the people sitting around the table would take me out for breakfast wherever I wanted to. If I did not, I would take them out instead, and pay for their flight tickets to wherever I was – economy, not first class. The big guy with the glasses chuckled into his filter coffee, the dark guy smiled and continued puffing at his cigarette. The girl and the other couple at the table, the ones a little more used to my deviousness, tried to figure out the loophole in my argument.

“What if you make one-line posts?”

“OK, fine, all of them will be at least 500 words or more.” (I will confess that at that point I was thinking of how a picture is worth a thousand words, and mentally evaluating the inherent mirth in putting up half a picture for a post)

“You’ll just paste your old articles every day, won’t you?”

“Maybe one a month, but only if I have nothing else to talk about.”

The big guy with the glasses laughed out loud. “Are you seriously saying that you will write 100,000 words this year?” Incredulous, and rightfully so. “Of course I will”, I replied. “I can, if I want to.”

I bought breakfast for them the next year. Well, for some of them, the big guy could not join us. And thankfully, the rest of them were all in the same city. I managed twenty posts that year. I skipped the Challenge for 2011. Blogging was dead, after all. Time to move on, and all that.

This year, I am in a country many thousands of miles away, the pretty girl is in another country too, and the rest of the Breakfast Round Table are in different cities in India. If I take up the challenge (and I have, yes) and lose, I will have to pay for flight tickets. But. BUT. Regardless of whether I win or lose, I get to see them again. My deviousness knows no bounds, eh? And just to make things more interesting, I have been trying to update every single day, just to see where I falter. It works well, because I see that if I miss a day, the next post gets even harder to write.

29 posts in 31 days, and no cheating.

Learning Spanish

Yup, that’s the other long-term goal this year. My goal was to finish 10 Pimsleur lessons by end of the month, and I did. I admit that people on the bus may have been a little freaked out at the sight of a brown guy with headphones going “¿dónde está? ¿dónde está el Hotel Colon?” in the back, but they soon got used to it. Possibly because I get profiled as a Mexican anyway. Instead of saying “No habla espanol” when old ladies at bus-stops ask me for the time (how do I know they ask me the time? Because they helpfully point at my watch, smart-ass) (and I learnt that it’s technically hablo and castellano), I now say “perdón, no entiendo”. Which confuses them even more.

And I guarantee you that this initiative won’t turn out this way. Why? Because I need to be in good Castellanic shape in order to go meet Magda again talk to my soccer-mates in Sevilla, the next time I am there.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WckCw_-7e3M[/youtube]

Driving

With all my complaints about cars and driving, I found myself at the DMV this month, getting myself a driving permit and joining a driving school. The main impetus for this is a friend’s visit next month. The non-main impetus is to just get off my lazy ass and get a little more used to driving in the US. I can handle a car, but it’s stupid to not be able to go road-tripping when I feel like it. I will probably sit for the driving license test next week. And then I rent a car and head to Vegas. I am even making myself an On-the-Road Mixtape, hoo ah!

 Vegetarianism

‘Drea the Awesome, Roomie extraordinaire and Ardent Non-Meatarian was talking, one fine day towards the end of December, about her January Jumpstart. For one month, she and a friend avoided alcohol and turned vegan. I had this bright idea of trying to be vegetarian for January too. Part of this was bravado. Some the conscious realization that I had consumed way too much meat this last year, my carnivorous impulses reaching a frenzied peak in November and December, when meat plates laden with chorizo and jamon were set upon with as much enthusiasm as possible. And yes, some part of it was just an experiment to see if I could.

And I totally could. Well, I caved in one day at a party, where I had some shrimp fried rice sans the shrimp, and some eggs at a breakfast because I was starving and that was the only form of nourishment available. The rest of the time, I cooked myself copious amounts of miso soup with tofu and mushrooms, lots of Axomiya vegetarian cuisine for dinner, a great deal of investigation of what ingredients were present in the grilled vegetable tortilla and the falafel sandwiches served next to my office (The answer: pretty fucking tasty ingredients if you were really hungry). I had things I never knew existed, like avocado rolls and fake (shudder) hot dogs. I made myself the awesomest broccoli in the universe which, I swear, would renew your faith in Brocco, the god of tasteless things.

And obviously, the first thing I did on the first of February was to head to Dinah’s, office standup be damned, and order myself a well-deserved helping of huevos y bacon. Applaud, goddamnit!

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Books

Book thoughts

So I read this blog post elsewhere, and it made me think. I suggest you go read it first. If you don’t want to know what I think, you don’t have to come back. It’s a fine article in itself.

Back? OK.

70 books a year is not a bad goal at all, and means that I should read about 6 books a month. Some people would say it’s an ambitious number, but it’s do-able, provided you do not select 900-page tomes all the time. But to quantify something like a to-read list is sobering, in a way. It draws needless attention to your mortality, and snubs all your claims of being “well-read”. I mean, seriously, at this rate, you are going to do a mere 1400 books in 20 years. It shows you how stupid your “best-of” lists are.

The other thing that a number like this fails to take into account is rereads. One of my long-term goals was to read my favorite books all over again. I am rereading The Count of Monte Cristo at the moment. I was planning to begin reading Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Little Women after I finish this, but the heart yearns for more Dumas. Others on the shortlist: His Dark Materials.  Lee Siegel’s Love in a Dead Language. From Balham to Bollywood. Let’s not even talk about comics and manga – there are too many on the reread pile at the moment. Do rereads count in the number put forth in the post? Needless information: the version of the Dumas classic that I am reading shows 1793 pages on the iPad. I am on page 499 at the moment, having spent about 2 days on it.

It’s somewhat coincidental that I came across this relevant quote in Monte Cristo. In the section where Abbe Faria meets Edmond Dantes for the first time and dazzles him with his wisdom, he also has this to say about reading and knowledge:

In Rome, I had nearly five thousand volumes in my library. By reading and re-reading them, I discovered that one hundred and fifty books, carefully chosen, give you, if not a complete summary of human knowledge, at least everything that is useful for a man to know. I devoted three years of my life to reading and rereading those one hundred and fifty volumes. I could recite you the whole of Thucyides, Xenophon, Plutarch, Livy, Tacitus, Strada, Jornades, Dante, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Machiavelli, and Bossuet.  Observe, I merely quote the most important names and writers.

This makes me shudder a little, to think that 150 books are all that matter. That can’t be right. Right?

I am focusing on Step Five right now. Random Web surfing wasted a lot of read-time. You know it, I know it, everyone knows it.

I totally disagree with Step Three. I need to read multiple books at the same time, the more different the better. Often, I find myself switching from one book to the other in a single sitting, and it makes me appreciate both the books better, gives my mind more time to digest whatever I’ve read and be a little more excited about reading. It’s a kind of Attention Deficit Disorder thingie, but it always works for me.

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Quizzing, Weirdness

Dots

In a different time and place, this would be a quiz question. For now, this is a story.

Cesare was among the richest of the land, of his time. And he was a good man, from what little we know of him. Unfortunately, the politics of his time did not allow for much leeway towards a man like Cesare. The principal monarch of the province where he lived was the son of the religious head of the time. Together, father and son had pillaged the nation. They pursued a series of wars that, in name, sought to unite the country but was a convenient means to bulldoze all opposition, real and imaginary, to their vainglorious ambitions. And now, with peace dawning on the horizon, the state’s coffers lay empty. Plans were made to replenish the treasury – not in an orderly and legal manner, but much like their wartime maneuvers, through treachery and death. A scheme that would not only repay the money lost, but reap dividends by adding to their personal wealth.

Cesare sighed to himself when he unfurled the invitation and read through it. He and another nobleman named Roderigo found their stature elevated, they were declared seconds-in-command to the Head of the Church. It was an honor that would have flattered other men in his position. Cesare, on the other hand, read between the lines. The fine print that spoke of relinquishing all personal belongings to the state in return for this new post. The fact that the only two people who were entrusted with this responsibility also happened to be the wealthiest men in the land.

It was the final clause of the invitation that made him squeeze the grip of his armchair to keep from fainting outright. It stated the date and time of a personal dinner with the king and his father. He knew that modus operandi and the inevitable fate that awaited him. Other men would have attempted flight or worked on a plan of retaliation. But Cesare chose to be an optimist – he knew of others being asked to attend similar dinners, where the invitation included every single member of the doomed guest’s extended family, by name. Here, the only casualty was his own self, and probably his fortune. Any sign of desperation, any clue that he had seen through the monarch’s ruse would endanger his family even more. He had but a few days  to settle his affairs, and he began to do so in earnest – by writing a his will . A trusted nephew was to be his beneficiary and the sole keeper of  the vast reserves of the family wealth.

On the appointed day of the dinner, Cesare reached the monarch’s palace and made his way to the vineyard. The first person who caught his eye was his nephew, sitting next to the king. The king gave him a meaningful glance – clearly, this was one last jibe at him, showing him how all eventualities had been considered by these fine statesmen. The bottle of wine from which the king poured glass after glass to Cesare’s nephew was now proffered to him. He mutely accepted, resigning himself to his fate. It took one hour for the poison to kill the two of them, uncle and nephew. Cesare breathed his last at the vineyard, still dining with the king. The nephew begged to be excused so that he could see his wife one last time. He died at the doorstep of his own house, his wish unfulfilled.

The king swooped in after the funeral, claiming the dead nobleman’s inheritance for the treasury. But what was this? Except for the mansion where he lived and the contents within, his wealth was nowhere to be found. His will had a few lines in which he bequeathed his library and his collection of books, specifically his favorite prayer book, to his nephew. Despite the ransacking and assiduous searches that followed, there was no sign of the family fortune. Finally, they gave up their hunt – the landed property in that provincial town was hardly worth the effort, and were left to the nobleman’s family. Some of the other heirs tried looking for the money, but that proved futile as well.

Time passed. The king’s father died, poisoned by a political enemy. The king was driven away from the country, history does not even record the cause, place or time of his eventual death. Cesare’s family continued living in a state of moderate comfort, and as generations passed, the story of the missing inheritance became a topic of dinner-time chatter. His descendants became soldiers, diplomats, bankers and men of the Church. The library, the prayer book included, stayed within the family as a source of much curiosity. Sometimes, an adventurous scholar would try looking for clues among the books, others would laugh at their mad quest.

This is where my story ends.

I did not make this up. This really happened, but it is a story that not many people know, because it gets overshadowed by another tale, one involving a young man from a different country. By a strange turn of events, this young man was to become the sole benefactor of this sordid political maneuver.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to complete my story. Connect the dots, if you will.

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