Big week in the Mogendorff house; Sir's Sir (Andrew's Boss) is in town for meetings and he came over for dinner. This got Stella and Suma very excited, and also very effective. Cleaning was above average, flowers were arranged just so and a rangola was painted outside the front door.
Sir's Sir was born in India, but moved to the US while still in school. He's vegetarian, and so Stella and I planned a suitable meal with some of our favourite dishes:
- lemon rice; a Karnataka special (also our driver, Mahesh's favourite food)
- lots of paratha; the kids go crazy for it
- coconut carrots; just trust us, it is buttery delicious heaven
- india style okra and tomato; my favourite
- veggies cutlets with mint sauce; Stella insisted
- raita
- fruit salad and ginger cookies
After Stella left on Monday I realised that there was no okra dish prepared. I'm pretty good in a kitchen-based crisis and so I got out my Bandly (that's Kannada for a copper bottom balti dish) and decided to fake it. Bit of oil, ginger paste, some onion, chana masala, okra, tomato puree and some actual tomatoes, water and cook it nice and slow till it's thick. Tasted pretty good.
So, mealtime starts and Andrew and S'sS tuck into the dishes at the table. As predicted, they're singing Stella's praises. I casually ask how the okra is before admitting that it was in fact me who prepared that dish. I don't know if there is an optimum amount of surprise here - too much and they are basically saying I can't cook, too little and you'd have to assume the dish was not authentic. Let's record that their surprise registered well into my comfort zone.
Fast forward to Tuesday am when Stella arrives for work mortified that she forgot to do it. No problem, I tell her, I made some... received a concerned look... there's some in the fridge, please try it and tell me what you think. She finally tried it today, Wednesday, while I was out. Here's the verdict:
S: Madam, the Okra
E: yes, how was it?
S: nice madam... but madam... no salt?
E: well only a little
S: needs more salt
So there you go. At lunchtime we decided to give some to Mahesh to go with his lemon rice. No idea what he thought of my recipe as Stella added the extra salt, she said he wouldn't eat it without.
I'm going to claim it as a success as Sir and Sir's Sir both enjoyed it.
The children were especially sweet at welcoming S'sS. Dara put on one of her India outifts and lots of bangles. Toby was more subtle (so subtle we didn't actually notice, we felt bad when we found out) and put on company inspired red and khaki.
Sir's Sir was born in India, but moved to the US while still in school. He's vegetarian, and so Stella and I planned a suitable meal with some of our favourite dishes:
- lemon rice; a Karnataka special (also our driver, Mahesh's favourite food)
- lots of paratha; the kids go crazy for it
- coconut carrots; just trust us, it is buttery delicious heaven
- india style okra and tomato; my favourite
- veggies cutlets with mint sauce; Stella insisted
- raita
- fruit salad and ginger cookies
After Stella left on Monday I realised that there was no okra dish prepared. I'm pretty good in a kitchen-based crisis and so I got out my Bandly (that's Kannada for a copper bottom balti dish) and decided to fake it. Bit of oil, ginger paste, some onion, chana masala, okra, tomato puree and some actual tomatoes, water and cook it nice and slow till it's thick. Tasted pretty good.
So, mealtime starts and Andrew and S'sS tuck into the dishes at the table. As predicted, they're singing Stella's praises. I casually ask how the okra is before admitting that it was in fact me who prepared that dish. I don't know if there is an optimum amount of surprise here - too much and they are basically saying I can't cook, too little and you'd have to assume the dish was not authentic. Let's record that their surprise registered well into my comfort zone.
Fast forward to Tuesday am when Stella arrives for work mortified that she forgot to do it. No problem, I tell her, I made some... received a concerned look... there's some in the fridge, please try it and tell me what you think. She finally tried it today, Wednesday, while I was out. Here's the verdict:
S: Madam, the Okra
E: yes, how was it?
S: nice madam... but madam... no salt?
E: well only a little
S: needs more salt
So there you go. At lunchtime we decided to give some to Mahesh to go with his lemon rice. No idea what he thought of my recipe as Stella added the extra salt, she said he wouldn't eat it without.
I'm going to claim it as a success as Sir and Sir's Sir both enjoyed it.
The children were especially sweet at welcoming S'sS. Dara put on one of her India outifts and lots of bangles. Toby was more subtle (so subtle we didn't actually notice, we felt bad when we found out) and put on company inspired red and khaki.
well if "no salt" was the worst she could level at it then I would say "resounding success!"
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