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Published
in Gulf News, July 4, 2006
Beware of biting
vegetable
It
was
the first time I'd seen cactus do anything but stick out of the
ground. There on the vegetable shelf of a supermarket, between the
leeks and the jalapenos, was a small pile of cactus pads, spines
still on. A Mexican lady, tongs in hand, grappled gingerly with
it. One of the pads slipped, and as it fell, she leapt away with
a cry. She turned and grinned at me. Being eternally curious about
anything food, I took that as a cue to ask, "How do you eat
those?"
She
misunderstood the question, and answered defensively. "Well,
I like them".
"No,
no, I meant, how do you cook them?"
She
broke into a smile and a long explanation, proving again that food
questions are perfect ice breakers between cultures. A little earlier,
the stern lady behind the meat counter had softened and given me
a detailed answer when I asked her the best way to cook the Mexican-style
chorizo.
The
cactus lady, however, had limited command over English. Since my
Spanish doesn't go much past Ole, we lost the emphasis on boiling
the cactus somewhere in translation. I got home, made a salad of
raw cactus, and had to deal with a bowlful of gooey muck.
And
that's my eternal luck with vegetables. I love cooking, and my family
says I do it really well. But that's when I'm working with chicken,
meat, fish, eggs, or even mushrooms. Put me anywhere near a vegetable
and I freeze.
Through
all the reading I've done about cooking, the best advice I have
ever been given was by Fergus Henderson, the chef of the famous
St. John restaurant in London. In the foreword of his book Nose
To Tail Eating, he writes, "Do not be afraid of cooking, as
your ingredients will know and misbehave".
And
that is exactly what vegetables do: they smell my fear and get up
to mischief. Slices of brinjal suck up all the oil in the pan and
start charring instead of frying. Ladies' fingers (a cute British
term for okra that lives wisely and well in India) get as if a hundred
people with dreadful colds have sneezed repeatedly onto them. Potatoes
sit mockingly in a pan for hours, refusing to cook. When I turn
up the heat, they burn. When I turn it down, they become raw again.
Then
there's spinach; the greatest pretender of them all. You buy a bushel
of it, put it in a hot pan and it shrinks before your eyes. What
you thought was a meal for six soon becomes nothing more than garnish.
But
don't think I'm fearful in the kitchen. Far from it. I always buy
chickens whole, and lamb in huge pieces because I love jointing
and carving. Blood, gizzards and gristle don't bother me one bit.
Fish guts? No problem.
Vegetables,
on the other hand, often make me want to be sick. No pieces of mutton
feature little green insects running around in their folds. Few
chickens are cut open to reveal a black seething horror in the manner
of pods of peas. And it's an apple not a beef steak that features
in the joke about what is worse than finding a worm. (Half a worm.)
Which
brings us to cactus pads. No piece of meat is likely to drive invisible
spines deep into your fingers as you pick it up at the supermarket.
Later at home, tweezers in hand, I realise I just have to face it:
in India and abroad, right around the world, I get no respect from
vegetables.
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