I have always admired Pari and Dharini for their unending zeal for cooking and the food fest at ESADE, called the 'Gastronomic Festival' was the culmination of their efforts. This fest was held on the 24th of November and the MBA students were given an opportunity to display their culinary skills that they inherited from their native lands. Dharini, Lagan(a full time student at ESADE) ,Pari, Rohit and I decided to show-case the Indian ´stuff´ with Tarun and Saurabh being the cheer-leaders. What followed later was simply the Indian magic at work.
The menu we decided was Roti (the quintessencial Indian Bread), Paneer (Cottage Cheese) curry, Chana Masala (Chick-pea) and Rice-Kheer (Rice pudding - the great Indian dessert). Since this was a food-fest, people were expected to taste the food rather than eat it, but the expected tasters were around 80-10; which meant that the proportionate quantity we had to cook was for atleast 25-30 people.
Since all of us are late-to-bed and late-to-rise, we started the marathon effort at around 12-30 in the noon on the day of the fest. Pari and Dharini were out with the shopping list and did most of it as well and we were all set. Rohit has this uncanny knack of making the dough so soft and well-kneaded that any baby can roll it (believe me, am not exaggerating!). So he got into the task of making dough for Rotis and in a short time we had enough dough for around 70 mid-sized rotis. At the same time, Dharini and Pari were busy stewing the curries and making the Kheer. We could all smell the aroma that emanated from the kitchen as things were being doled out. You might be wondering as to where did I fit into all of these. Well, my contribution was cutting the vegetables and aiding the main chefs in ancillary works and baking some Rotis as well.
At 6-30 in the evening, with half-an-hour left for the fest, we were still baking the Rotis, taking turns. Nevertheless, we reached the venue of the fest a trifle late and laid out the great Indian table. Lagan had ordered some Samosas as well, which added to the spice and we slowly had the visitors coming down.
There were tables laid out to represent good lot of countries. Central America, Columbia, Mexico, Spain, USA, Australia et al were serving their native delicacies and some exotic drinks. As people started to come down to our table, we explained them the dishes they were about to eat, its ingredients and its spice content. It was good fun explaining what goes into these different dishes and reminding folks to come back for the Indian dessert after they are done with all the other tables. We also roamed around the hall, tasting the food from other tables. A mocktail/cocktail was brewing in all our stomachs.
We had proof that our food was well-accepted. All of it being consumed in less than 2 hours was a testimonial to this. (Economists argue that artificial scarcity also leads to the same result..but we ignore it for now!) More concrete proofs were to follow.
At the end of the fest, we had the poll for the best food being served. Guess what, we made it to the third place! Mexico (second place) and Holland (first place) were the teams ahead of us. Nonetheless, it was a very ´satiating´ experience. Some of these memories go a long way with us!
For those few memorable ones, click here. ¶ Monday, November 27, 2006 3 Comments
After the excursion to Paris and the ultimate urbane experience, I had a strong desire to visit countryside Europe and its scenic wonders colored by autumn. Having had almost a week off from classes, Dharini, Rohit and I started our 10-day exploration on 19-Oct and headed first to Belgium. The town we zeroed in on was Brugge and we passed thru Paris and Brussels before reaching Brugge. This is a beautiful town with fairy-tale kind of homes and avenues. We visited a couple of churches and walked around the town munching some home-made Belgium chochs. The best part of this visit was the canal ride across the town and it was a wonderful experience as the guide/driver led us thru the relics of this laid-back town. To quote the guide "People here are very religious. We have 17 churches in Brugge. People here are also fun-mongers. We have 420 pubs". Brugge is aptly called the 'Small Venice'.
Starting in the evening, we came to Lueven, another wonderful town where we met my under-grad classmate, Kaps and stayed put at his place. Roaming around, we discovered that this is an exclusive student town with a student population of 30,000. More interesting statistics reveal that 20,000 of them are GIRLS!
Early morning, next day, we left to Amsterdam. Madame-Tussad's museum was our first point of stopover. This museum hosts the wax statues of eminent personas across the globe. Those statues look next to real stuff and it was fun flashing cameras as we rubbed shoulders with some all-time greats. Then on, we went to the Van-Gogh museum before taking another canal ride across the city. Finally we roamed around the streets of Amsterdam before leaving to Germany.
Taking an overnight train to Berlin, we reached Berlin in the early hours of the morning. Unfortunately for me, I sprained my ankle on the way and so I decided to keep low in Berlin. So I just restricted myself to a site, which had a remnant of the Berlin wall, and a museum that outlined its history. It is literally a hair-raising tale in history. The next stop in Germany was Oestrich-Winkel, a serene village close to Frankfurt. This village has acres of vineyards and is adjunct to the Rhine River, a sight to savor. Two other exchange students, Hemant and Sohail, stay here and we joined them as we decided to go on together. We took the Rhine river cruise that cut across the forested hills. With the weather keeping good, this ride was an absolute bliss. Reaching Cologne, we took a train to Vienna.
Vienna is a city of museums. This has more than 70 museums, all hosted in exotic buildings. More than the monuments, we found the walk across the city very refreshing and it culminated with our visit to the royal palace of Vienna. The palace is an overwhelming structure with an equally beautiful garden in its backyard. We spent more than two hours in this place and it was time to bid good-bye to Vienna as we headed towards Stuttgart.
The visit to Stuttgart was dedicated to the Mercedes-Benz museum. This museum walks us thru the origins of the most revered car brand on earth and exhibits of both the relic and modern Merc's. Now on, started the most interesting part of our outing.
We decided to hire a car to roam around the rest of places and starting from Stuttgart we headed to Tittisi, a town amidst the Black-forest and famous for the cuckoo-clocks. With Sohail at the steering wheel, we hit the auto-bahn, the only road on earth where there are no speed limits. After about an hour of travel, during which we had covered 80+ kms, we started to feel that we are not moving right as the legends on the map we referred to were never in sight. We cruised into a near-by village and knocked on the doors of a garage. The person there had a smart laptop with a canon printer and was kind enough to get a detailed version of the route map. We realized we had come in the opposite direction.
Since daylight is limited in autumn, by the time we reached Tittisi, it was around 8 in the night and the whole town was shutdown. We could not roam around the black-forests and had to stay in our car for the night. We woke up to a misty and chilled morning and to see daylight we had to wait till around 9-00. So decided against visiting Black-forest and headed to Salzburg. Cutting thru the small towns and villages in Europe, the drive to Salzburg along the country side and patches of auto-bahn was an amazing feel.
Salzburg is known for its ice-caves that open only for a few days in the year and we were lucky to visit it. This cave is at the top of a steep hill and is covered with ice inside. Some fancy structures are made out ice naturally and are as old as a couple of thousand of years, although this cave was discovered some 200 years ago.
After about 8 days of uninterrupted travel, I was feeling a little unsettled and decided to cut down on more travel and relax a bit. While Dharini and Rohit retained the enthu to carry on to Florence in Italy, I decided to visit my bro-in-law (actually would-be, better known as one of my close friends), Kata in Hildesheim near Hannover. He had a spacious apartment and cooked some great Indian food for me. Just lazing around the city, we played pool, bowling and had a ball of a time. On the last day, we visited a theme park along with his Bosch colleagues. This park has the world's steepest wood-roll-coaster, rightly called the "Colossal".
Sunday, Oct 26th, marked the end of this outing for me and I was all set to get back to studies at Barca.
For those frozen moments of fun, click here.
