This morning, Mary
asked if I had measured the ingredients that went into the bread we were
making. I looked at her
quizzically. “Measured?”
I do it the old
fashioned way – in the palm of my hand. I am riding on the information given to
me by Mati Poon. In rural Nepal, your
hand is your fork, your cup, your bowl, your teeth is your knife – that is the
way many people in the world still live.
In the evening when
he cooks, I can smell hot chili flakes – frying upstairs. One-eighth of a cup
of hot chili flakes in some oil -- that is the start of many of his meals. When the smell of the flakes frying wafts
downstairs, I know that the kitchen is truly international. I cough and think,
it is just food, I will soon get used to it. And then I cough again. Kelvin
holds a towel over his nose.
Mati came
downstairs about twenty minutes after he was finished cleaning up and said,
“Wow, the smell of the hot chilies is still down here, but it is gone from the
kitchen upstairs. I heard you coughing,
Arta and wondered if it was the smell of the chilies, but now I see it affects
Kelvin even more,” looking over at Kelvin, the towel still over his nose.
“I am coming
upstairs the next time you cook, for I want to know how to make a meal with
that much heat.”
“No. I didn’t realize it was so bad down
here. I am never going to cook with them
again. I was out, and since I am leaving
soon, I thought I would leave it at that, but then you went and bought two
large containers for the kitchen again.”
I won. I did go up and see how he cooked with them
the next time. Get the oil hot, but not
too hot. Toss in the chilies. Stir them until they are black. While you are stirring, that is when you get
to talk. “Do you know that eating too
many of these can be bad for you unless they are fried until they are
black. Chili pepper seeds and tomato
seeds. They go right through the human
track, and later can sprout.” Now that
is a piece of information I don’t often get.
We chatted for a while about other things. At work he had just learned the phrase, "like trying to sell fridges to the Eskimos". He was laughing about that and said that they have phrases like that in Nepal as well. One of them is about being mad at someone and wanting to torture them. The phase goes something like "wanting to string them upside down and burn chilis under their nose". I have an idea what that would be like.
“Do you want to
drink the tuna juice?”, he said offering me the tin.
“No thanks. Let it hit the drain,” and I nodded in the
direction of the sink.
“No, we won’t waste
anything. Stand back.” He dropped the juice and tuna into the hot
chili oil. Of course I wanted to taste
it and was looking for a bowl. But he
had already given me the lesson about using your teeth or your hands as a
knife. I had gone to get the cutting
board to chop up the cilantro he was adding.
“No. I will break it with my
hands. We don’t want to wash 2 extra
dishes.” These bachelors are great to
live with.
In the mode of
wanting to do less work and still taste the product he had created, I grabbed
the empty tuna can, its lid attached at a 45 degree angle still. I topped the can up with some of his meal,
grabbed my fork and we ate, standing in the kitchen discussing the History of
Medicine Lecture we had both attended that night.
I am big on
presentation. In this case it all
worked. Eat red-peppered tuna a la
cilantro out of a tin. Less time doing
dishes and more time talking about high altitude mountain medicine.
Arta
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