Wherein I Learn to Boil Water
Two days without coffee meant two days of headaches, and today I resolved to brew a pot. I dragged a French press from LA to Chennai and bought ground coffee on my second day in town. But I was flummoxed by the two-burner tabletop stove in my new apartment. I fiddled with the dials, kicked the red propane tank and gave up.
This morning I asked Sowmiya for help. Sowmiya is my hostess. I hesitate to call her landlady because she doesn’t refer to me as tenant. I am her “guest.”
Sowmiya opened a valve on the propane cylinder, turned and pressed a dial on the stove, pointed a lighter at the burner and -- phwoom! -- a hearty flame. I could almost taste the coffee.
Now, Indians drink coffee. It’s sold in restaurants and from pushcarts on every block. Gaggles of men sip it on sidewalks, spilling into the streets. But South Indian coffee doesn’t satisfy my addiction. It's served in cups no bigger than the rinse-and-spit variety at a dentist's office. They're one-fourth the size of a Starbucks Tall, and I'm a Grande sort of gal. I take my coffee black, which confounds the locals. Their milky concoction is the color of nougat and just as sweet. There are spoonfuls of sugar in every itty-bitty cup, and the last sip reveals a film of granules. In the lingo of my girlfriends back home, it's "Sashatized." (Sasha, you would soooo dig the coffee here.) It’s delicious stuff, but it's not the drug I crave.
The pots in my kitchen don’t have handles, so Sowmiya showed me how to lift them from the stove with pincers. It reminded me of camping. I asked if I should turn off the gas when the stove’s not in use.
“I think you have not too many rats,” she replied. “You close the windows, yes?”
Her response seemed like a non sequitur, so I repeated my question. Again, she brought up rats. It took a full two minutes for me to understand the connection. Rats gnaw on rubber hoses. There’s a rubber hose connecting the tank to the stove.
“If you smell gas, then you turn off, ok?”
Is that before or after I climb on top of the table?
This morning I asked Sowmiya for help. Sowmiya is my hostess. I hesitate to call her landlady because she doesn’t refer to me as tenant. I am her “guest.”
Sowmiya opened a valve on the propane cylinder, turned and pressed a dial on the stove, pointed a lighter at the burner and -- phwoom! -- a hearty flame. I could almost taste the coffee.
Now, Indians drink coffee. It’s sold in restaurants and from pushcarts on every block. Gaggles of men sip it on sidewalks, spilling into the streets. But South Indian coffee doesn’t satisfy my addiction. It's served in cups no bigger than the rinse-and-spit variety at a dentist's office. They're one-fourth the size of a Starbucks Tall, and I'm a Grande sort of gal. I take my coffee black, which confounds the locals. Their milky concoction is the color of nougat and just as sweet. There are spoonfuls of sugar in every itty-bitty cup, and the last sip reveals a film of granules. In the lingo of my girlfriends back home, it's "Sashatized." (Sasha, you would soooo dig the coffee here.) It’s delicious stuff, but it's not the drug I crave.
The pots in my kitchen don’t have handles, so Sowmiya showed me how to lift them from the stove with pincers. It reminded me of camping. I asked if I should turn off the gas when the stove’s not in use.
“I think you have not too many rats,” she replied. “You close the windows, yes?”
Her response seemed like a non sequitur, so I repeated my question. Again, she brought up rats. It took a full two minutes for me to understand the connection. Rats gnaw on rubber hoses. There’s a rubber hose connecting the tank to the stove.
“If you smell gas, then you turn off, ok?”
Is that before or after I climb on top of the table?
posted by Badass at 12:09 PM
3 Comments:
Inspired by you, I've started a food blog. http://drooltime.blogspot.com/
yuzhi
India was not high on my list of places to go before I die, but now I might have to move it up the list, just to taste the coffee.
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