Pig-Tales II: Initiation

Pig (noun): An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it balks at pig.

Edible (adjective): Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.  

from Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary (1906)

The pig has remained a curious creature, wallowing in the no man's land between the sacred and profane. On the one hand the pig and the swineherd have St. Anthony as their patron saint. The same religious canon declared the pig as unfit for consumption in Book of Deuteronomy which laid down acceptable food habits for the people of Israel. Confusing contradictions seem to have coloured this animal's often tragic and bloody history. 

Early Chinese dragons had faces resembling those of wild boars. Pigs were symbols of the fertility in Celtic mythology with the sow goddess Henwen. Pigs were associated with the worship of Demeter and ritually sacrificed at her altar. The Egyptians feared the pig as a creature of the underworld. The chosen sacrifice for Thoth, God of Wisdom and the Moon and Osiris, God of the Afterlife, this animal became associated with the gods on whose altars its blood was spilled. Nuit, Goddess of Night was often represented as a sow.

Why did the sacrificial lamb become the greater icon? Why did 'scaping' the goat become the practice rather than the pig? After all the pig did carry the greater burden of the sin of human gluttony since the beginning of time.

As a religious icon and the favourite sacrificial animal,  the history of the pig remains one that has bloodied the annals of time. 

However, like all transitions from the sacred to the profane, the pig as a lesser deity vaulted its way through the multi-hued warps of time and space and fell from the skies right on to cold steel tables of "Porkopolis" Cincinnati around the early 19th century. 

Demystified and far away from the inner precincts of any temple, the pig now appeared on labels stuck on cans of luncheon meat and cocktail sausages.    

Meanwhile, my own history with pork was yet to be written.

On a hot summer day in Delhi circa 2004, I visited a shop that would help heal my tapeworm-ringed nightmares forever. 

It was a particularly lazy and aimless afternoons just after classes had ended. Impending boredom made me accompany my environmentally conscious, vegetarian, conservationist friend on his jaunt around the city running errands for his mum. It was slightly ironic that his chores included buying the family's weekly supply of meat. The journey through the city wound its way through my friend's shopping list, with stops for dog food, laundry and other sundry domestic items. 

Finally, we reached a little shop tucked away in a quiet, leafy neighbourhood in Jorbagh. This was an elegant neighborhood, home to little blue-eyed American babies on their tricycles; tall German sophisticates with little dogs in their handbags; grey-haired Indian writers taking an occasional walk in the neighborhood park, chewing on the end of their cigars.

It was a charming market selling carpets, books, cheese and pork. Lots and lots of pork. One could miss the little shop altogether if you didnt stop to actually peer in. The door swung open and I was inside Pigpo. 
I remember thinking that "Po" seemed the perfect oriental suffix to be tacked on to the pig. 

This is the shop that brought the western concept of a charcuterie and a deli into the culinary vocabulary of this city. No butcher shop I knew was this inviting. All the whispers of "dirty animal" in my head got left outside Pigpo's door. All the fears of tapeworm somehow got exorcised the moment I entered. 
The clear glass shop windows overlooked a pretty children's park with animal shaped swings and slides. Nestled in between a eclectic stationary store and a quaint furniture shop, Pigpo like its grand old neighbours reeked of character. 
The room inside had gigantic freezers, cool marble table tops and warm woodwork on the walls. Woodwork in a meat shop! The only wood I had ever seen a meat shop before this, was the roughly hewn stump of a tree that was used as the butcher's chopping block.

While my friend buried his nose in the shopping list and tried to avoid making any kind of eye or body contact with anything in the shop, I simply soaked it all in. My pork-starved self was suddenly in pork paradise. Every imaginable cut of the meat, sausages of various shapes, sizes and flavour, salami, ham, frankfurters, pepperoni, was laid out in all its nude glory.

 

Always overcome by a slight wave of nausea upon entering a meat shop with its cloying odour, its flies and my proximity to the chopping board, this was the first shop that didn't overpower me with its raw smell of death. A big framed picture on the wall had a fat porker drawn on it with arrows pointing to the different parts of its body and the corresponding cuts it would yield. It was a big picture chart designed to catch your attention. I stared at it with all the wonder of a ten year old entering the science lab and viewing the human skeleton for the first time.

This was the first time a meat shop made me feel hungry. I wanted big bagfuls of all the goodies.
I felt like a child in a sweet shop where I was only allowed to look and smell. I remember leaving
empty handed that day but Pigpo remained a firmly embedded memory. 

It was a cold and bright winter day in Delhi circa 2008, when I returned to the shop. Christmas was around the corner and I wanted to replicate just a little bit of mother's grand Christmas lunch that had been an enduring family tradition back in Calcutta. Armed with a good old-fashioned recipes from Julia Child and other stalwarts and dreaming about honey glazed ham and sausage stuffing, I entered Pigpo.

However, I braced myself for the now familiar disappointment that I had faced upon returning to this city since my college days. I had seen the slow death of favourite corner stores, standalone bookshops, age-old restaurants and movie theaters as the malls overran Delhi. We had become a generation of mall rats scurrying through bright glass and chrome corridors. 

Nothing had changed. The shop stood frozen in time gathering its unique character and serving dilliwallahs quality fresh pork that completely surpassed its frozen cling-film wrapped counterparts in swanky department stores. These icy cuts of tenderloin and pork chops looked like alien body parts that had lain frozen for centuries in deep underground vaults in secret locations in the middle of a desert. Or, they could be a potential murder weapon for a neurotic wife. They were so far removed from Pigpo's  fresh and tender pork that they disappeared from my horizon of fresh meat altogether.

   

Pigpo's display made my eyes light up with joy. The prospect of those fat and fresh sausages, chunky cuts of healthy pink meat edged by layers of snow-white fat, succulent bits of tenderloin, elegant strips of lean pork, gigantic pork chops, peppered salami, twice cured salami, incredibly plump bacon wrapped sausages, honey-glazed ham during Christmas and much much more made my brain go into overdrive. I did a mental flip across the pages of my cookbooks skimming over the the vindaloos, the brandied pork chops, the pork roast, and other exotic half remembered names and leaving a dribble of spit on my imagined flight across the glossy delectable photographs accompanying the recipes. 
I felt like a star chef in a Corsican village market waxing eloquent about the freshness and quality of the meat. This time I did leave with an armful of goodies. 

Since then I have returned to this shop many a time.

The men behind the counter are fast with their blades. They handle the meat lovingly carving the fatty layers into gourmet cuts with a few deft motions and occasional flashes of steel. They are quick with advice and even quicker at closing a an exceptionally large order, especially one that you did not plan to buy.

There is one particular man behind the counter who is a permanent fixture here. He is a nondescript man of indeterminable age. He offers advice about the best cuts for a curry or roast. Shares trivia. Sometimes scoffs at you if your purchase doesn't meet his rather exacting standards. 

He claims that he is as old as the shop. Since I can never quite guess his age, I don't know exactly how old Pigpo is. What I do know is that it has survived the turning tides of time.

  

  

Pig-Tales I: introduction

5000 years before Christ there was the pig.
The pig was domesticated before paper was invented.
And the Chinese have a hand in both.

8 porkers also travelled to the New World with Christopher Columbus. Whether they survived the great crossing is another question. They were on that ship. And that is important enough for me.

13 pigs came with Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto to America. The man with a taste for roast pork discovered the Mississippi river while looking for a route to China (the Sleeping Dragon does have a finger in every pie) and also eventually died of a fever on the banks of the selfsame Mississippi. His 13 pigs on the other hand went forth and multiplied under the hot sun, when the great American dream was still stewing somewhere under the swamps.

While the beginnings of the pork industry remain a mere footnote on the pages of America's brutal and bloody history of colonisation, war and genocide, the blood that was spilt in this case is perhaps no less in quantity.
The meat packers became millionaires. The pig became charcuterie. There was the year of the pig. There were the three little pigs. There was the one perfectly groomed Hollywood pig with a name.
And far far away across many seas I was discovering the pig unburdened by its historical and cultural connotations. A tad confused, but, mostly unburdened.

Deriving from the rather musical sound of Latin 'porcus' to the stylishly chic French 'porcus', English 'pork' entered my consciousness as a dirty word. The name represented a creature of dirt rather than the scatological or sexual expletives learnt through hushed whispers during lunch breaks in school.
Childhood is a confusing time. The thing that baffled me the most was the disconnect between the squeaky clean, baby pink, hairless, and rather cute creatures out of the picture books and cartoons on Doordarshan (yes, i grew up in a pre cable-tv era) to a nomadic population of ugly, hairy, black garbage-eating monsters that were seen rummaging around the large piles of rubbish with their miniature ugly, hairy, black, garbage-eating family in tow.
I understood why it was a dirty word.
I often wondered if the black hairy exterior was a body wig waiting to be discarded in a moment of swan-like surprise.

My earliest memories of the pig apart from the two that got eaten by a wolf was the pig I ate myself.
The distinct aroma of the perfectly fried, succulent and spicy pork sausage still sets up a veritable orchestra on my taste buds. It was a grown ups party, far back in time and space and most of the other specific details grow brittle and fall away around the edges like the brown edges of burnt paper.
What remains... is a memory of a smell and the corresponding flavour.
It entered my nostrils as an alien creature. A rich, warm, and incredibly appetizing smell wafting all the way from under the closed doors of the kitchen, riding on the air-conditioned draft of air and finally colliding with my olfactory senses in a hundred peppery, spicy, and meaty notes. I remember the drool collecting at the bottom of my mouth threatening to dribble out from the corner of my mouth. I remember the look of that tiny, perfectly browned, parcel of meat bursting with flavour and heat. I remember wanting to take the whole plate and running away into a dark corner and indulging in sinful gluttony.
This was my first pork cocktail sausage. Since then I have eaten many many kilos of pork sausages. Of all sizes and with all kinds of spices. I have eaten them in the city, eaten them in arid dry towns, and  have gorged on them in the hills.  And each time has been as pleasurable as that first forkful.

Well, the intestines are a hardly the best introduction to any animal, with this particular one it is as good as a Miltonian prologue.
An exercise in grammar, the sausage is a synecdoche for the pig. A feminist nightmare, the pig is a case study in objectification which is cut, dried and quartered in terms of its nether parts.
Raw materials for a culinary artist, the various parts of the pig have been sculpted into a veritable masterpiece in charcuterie.
A cook's dream, the pig is smoked, boiled, dried, roasted, baked, broiled, fried, steamed, chargrilled, and pickled into perfection.

So eating one pork sausage ( I was allowed only one) was as precious as a bite of the forbidden fruit. The pig was much worse than a dirty word in my house. It was a monster from a medical nightmare in my hypochondriac family. It was a creature of disease, The harbinger of the deadly tapeworm and ringworm. Till date, every time I share a pork recipe with my mum, recount a particularly excellent meal where pork figures in the menu, or talk about a fantastic neighbourhood deli selling excellent ham and salami,  I inevitably have to listen to the oft repeated warning against tapeworm along with the oft repeated horror story which i shall now share with you. However it comes with a warning. And those with a weak stomach should stop reading now!

So this is the legendary tale of caution in our family. Embellished over time but true in its essence. It is about a distant cousin. A carnivore with a penchant for the pig, he travelled far and wide sampling some of the best pig in the country. And one fine day, he vanished. Rumours came flying out of different parts of the country. Some said his hair had grown till his knees, some said he moved around with a harem of tribal women and some said he was afflicted by some strange disease that gave him the power of foresight. However, it was a terrible gift they said, every time he had a vision, little white snakes/worms would burst forth from under his skin and medusa like crawl over his body to that of the supplicant (yes he supposedly had supplicants now).

Six months later I saw him. He was bald and thinner and had a scar across his temple. And well,  no sign of the rest.
The white snake/worm bit was true. the tapeworm travelled through the pork into his bloodstream and right to his brain. Whether they broke through the skin and hurtled through a short distance before landing with a gooey splat on his wife's dinner plate during a particular romantic dinner (another rumour), or created a medley of activity in his brain and gave him the gift of vision: that will remain a mystery forever. Meanwhile it was good enough to be the grande dame of old wives' tales in our house.

Thus, we never ate pork in my family. Never entered a meat shop selling pork.
I longingly eyed sausages on distant plates.
I occasionally tasted an unfamiliar,  elusive taste in the Chinese food we often consumed while eating out. Drowned in virulent red or brown gravies that destroyed the flavours or textures of any of the individual ingredients, pork was sometimes unknowingly slipped in to the melee of meats in the seafood or mixed meat soup/noodle/broths.
Plagued by the fear of the omnipresent tapeworm, the piggie remained dirty and forbidden.
And just like adolescent teens lusting after the lamest porn, even this sliver of pork disguised in its Indian-Chinese avatar was the stuff of drool-worthy dreams.

Eight Decades in a Flurry

One more cup of coffee for the road

One more cup of coffee 'fore I go

To the valley below

This is the place that always made me  linger over my cup and I often found it amusing that the most common mispronunciation of the name would be "Flurry". Rarely, very rarely, would anything come in through the doors of Flury's in a flurry.

Bedecked in her tafetta pink splendour, Flury's is a confection of the times past and present. The gigantic Iron, an award from MTV for being the most stylish place in Calcutta is prominently displayed amid the towering model cakes. For a pastry shop that opened in 1927, it has been a rather remarkable  journey from neighborhood confectionary to a decrepit colonial coffeehouse to a stylish cafe/restaurant/bakery after the fashion of a turn-of-the-century European tea room.

Growing up in this city, my earliest memories of Flury's were its delightful pastries. This was still the pre-liberalization era. There were no coffee chains, no shops selling brownies, crepes, or gelatos. hell, we didn't even know what gelato was and the only ice cream around was the sort served in virulent orange cones.

This was also prior to the fresh fruit purees, whipped cream extravaganzas, and professionally designed cakes that looked as good as their airbrushed counterparts in the glossies.
I grew up during the era of marzipan. And the old Flury's made the most delightful marzipan concoctions. There was a marzipan treat for just about every occasion. There were the multi-hued marzipan coated easter eggs and bunnies. There was the legendary strawberry cube with the bright pink marzipan icing.

And then there were the cakes. the stuff of imagination, these cakes could bring just about every childhood fantasy to the table.
Birthday parties in Calcutta often saw wide-eyed kids waiting with bated breath for the magical moment when the box would open and unveil a fantastic creation that could range from the grand – a miniature Noah's Ark, to the scary - a black Gothic castle complete with towers and turrets to the cute – a little Tom and Jerry moment crafted out of Marzipan and decorating the creamy chocolate below.

My earliest memories of Flury's were these memories of marzipan.

This was the middle phase of Flury's before its 21st century facelift. It was a dingy, cavernous room with air conditioning that would chill you to the bone. The chairs were too heavy to maneuver and I always remember being at a rather uncomfortable distance from the table. I remember the waiters who looked as old as the place.
I remember one particular day. One particular waiter. A small bug crawled up the table on to the jug that he lifted to pour water into my glass. It then crawled up his arm and on to his collar and was about to inch its way into the hairy tufts in his ears when I screamed, half in horror and half in awe. He flicked it off with one single dextrous move. I remember being impressed at his composure.

I remember the old men with their newspapers. I remember watching the steaming cups of coffee till they stopped steaming.
This was the time when Flury's sold delicious cream rolls with thick, snow-white cream piled into the pastry shells. These were special treats for picnics and special holidays. This was also the time when the Viennese Coffee was not served in the delicate white china cups, but piled high with cream and slopping over the sides as the rather heavy, functional and ugly cup was plonked before you. The servings used to be larger and the coffee used to be more milky.

I was a child when Flury's  and Park Street in general seemed to be groaning under its colonial past. The buildings looked shabby. The restaurants seemed to have lost their music and joie de vivre and Flury's itself seemed a straggler confused by the coming of the new millennium.

The first few years of the 21st century saw the economy open up. The malls arrived along with the fast food chains, the coffee chains, the ice cream chains, the noodle chains, the dosa chains. Soft-serve ice creams, colas in cans and mass produced burger patties began to appear.
I began to worry about my own future and Flury's nearly at the same time, wondering where we were headed and venting my trepidation over the nth cuppa. I left the city soon after. Flury's was left far behind as well. It became a space of nostalgia and memory on gloomy days in the big bad capital city when I absolutely craved familiarity and comfort food.

I saw the downed shutters on a holiday one summer.  I was about to begin the process of mourning when I heard the whispers. The air around Stephen Court was thick with it. The word "renovation" was murmured by all who passed the mysteriously shrouded corner.

And one fine day it reopened. Flury's reentered the city's consciousness like a giantess...grabbing eyeballs and standing a mile taller than the nearest cafe with its orange walls and ambient electronic music. The new Flury's straddled history and a modern chic. It was just like your favourite 50 paise candy had been wrapped in delicate gold paper and handed to you on a silver plate. You unwrapped it and popped it in your mouth...and it tasted just the same.

A European tea room in the mornings, late afternoons, an eraly evenings.  A restaurant by noon.  A dining room by night.  Flury's juggled many roles, served many foods, and tickled many a taste bud.
While the pink and chocolate theme could make a first timer blush or blanch, it was easy to get used to. The colours were redolent of the trademark Flury's, the strawberry cubes and the chocolate pastries; the fruitcakes and the cheesy patties. While the glass display now holds fresh and strawberry tarts, decadent chocolate mousse and puddings, they remain carefully stacked against the strawberry cubes, the rich rum balls and the old fashioned fruit slices, the age-old favourites, made according to the same secret recipe since the beginning of Flury's time. One of my favourite additions to the old menu is the All Day Breakfast with the creamy, melt-in-your-mouth scrambled eggs or the perfect sunny side up eggs or the fluffy omelettes with hash browns, tomatoes,  freshly toasted bread and as many side orders of crisp bacon, fat and succulent sausages or generous portions of fragrant as you wish. Then there are cups of freshly brewed coffee or aromatic Darjeeling tea. It is truly a meal that makes me feel happy at any hour of the day.

I returned to the city. I returned to Flury's taking to the pink with all the enthusiasm of an adolescent teen.
It became a place for endless conversations, bitter reminiscing, good-natured camaraderie, sweet romance, and maddening love. I lived out all my separate selves here – as a poor masters student scraping together just enough for that Viennese coffee and a rum ball; as a struggling lifestyle journalist covering the launch of new menus, new books, and new chefs; as a true blue romantic indulging in snatched cups of coffee through a busy workaday week; as a tourist introducing the newcomers to the delights I had known; and as a lover, falling in love over cups of coffee, sharing intense moments over cups of coffee, professing love over cups of coffee, fighting over cups of coffee and existing in comfortable silence as we drank our coffee.

The sweet smell of freshly baked cakes and just brewed coffee has the warm familiarity of a place you'd call home. Walk in through the huge glass doors, sit by the large window, and watch the world go by in a flurry. Outside Flury's

(This is Part II of my tribute to an old favourite housed in the ground floor of Stephen Court)

Pictures courtesy www.flurysindia.com

A Cat called Peter

The reason I write this piece is because of the recent horrifying fire in the grand old Stephen Court. decrepit and a death trap in making, it still was an icon and the grande dame of Park Street. in the wake of the fire, the numerous deaths and the general pall of gloom, all one can do is draw what they hold nearer to them in a protective hug. This is part I of my tribute to two of my favourite spots in the city housed in that building. These are the two spaces I grew up in, of my individual memories that go into the pool of the collective past shared by the city.

 The original Peter was a cat who lived in the Lord’s cricket ground and actually got himself a place in history as the only animal whose obituary was printed in Wisden, the famous sports journal. In a continent away, nestled in the heart of the cricket-crazy city of Kolkata, there is an iconic restaurant that has do with either a Peter or a cat.Peter Cat is a mecca for foodies from within and without the city. It is a place for making memories. A dimly-lit space that is ideal for a secret rendezvous, it is that perfect place for that romantic first date where the cramped interiors and overhanging lamps create a sense of intimacy. It is an institution for a number of reasons and food is often not the most significant of them.
Nostalgia is often the most overpowering emotion evoked here.
The prices come from another decade as do the uniformed “bearers”. The names on the menu roll around your tongue with the familiarity of an old Cliff Richards song. Yes, they all seem to come from the same place.
The peculiarities of this place lie in the lovingly polished German silver receptacles used to serve Prawn Cocktail and the spotless white napkins carefully folded in the shape of the cat’s head.
This cat’s head, reminiscent of a child’s doodle, is omnipresent in the mats and the menus.
Peter Cat is where you will never get a table unless you were willing to sweat it out outside the restaurant with the ballonwallahs and the magazine sellers. The place takes no reservations and need never worry about empty tables, for someone in some part of the city always has a craving for a Peter Cat meal.
The restaurant has its own mythology with little anecdotes and fictional characters who have lent their names and stories to the food and drinks.
Then there are the lamps that remind one of a torture chamber spotlight and are perfectly placed at a height best suited for a midget.
Ironically, they are also among the best things about the place. This is the original multi-cuisine restaurant with faded roses on the carpet, a low hum of voices, pickled pink onions in stainless steel bowls and a constant flow of people and waiters.
The waiters can ignore you or give you their undivided attention, depending upon their personal whims.
You can escape to Peter Cat for a quick lunch from work, you can escape to Peter Cat for a quick drink or many...
to escape the world. You can come here as a raucous gang of girls on a night out on town.
And you can come here when you are older to simply relive all that is past and marvel at how the food and the prices have remained unchanged.
And then there are the chelo kebabs...While I could write an ode to the buttery rice, sing a paean to the succulent kebabs, still remember the flavour of the slightly charred fresh vegetables and the freshly fried egg oozing its delicious yolk over my plate...I shall restrain myself...
I could tell you Peter Cat is where I went for my first date like many young girls with stars in their eyes.
Peter Cat is where I returned to as a married woman indulging in my favourite foods on a sunny winter afternoon.
Peter Cat is where I came with my mum and granddad to enjoy a leisurely meal and compared notes on the chicken cutlets and caramel custard.
My list could extend like a never-ending roll of toilet paper...
A devastating fire nearly gutted the top floors of the historic Stephen’s Court, an old building from the Raj at the corner of Park Street. The selfsame building that is home to both Peter Cat and the legendary Flury’s Tea Room. Thankfully these establishments remained untouched and even bounced back to life soon after.
They say a cat has nine lives and Peter Cat has barely lived out one.

Cooking by the Book

The frayed, oil-stained, food-encrusted pages of the book are testament to the first baby steps.

Rohini Singh's The Foolproof Cookbook: For Brides Bachelors & Those Who Hate Cooking is an old trusty companion, the proverbial bible for me and a million other novices. It is perhaps one of those rare books whose little red sticker which proclaims "over a million copies sold" is entirely believable. This was a gift from my mother when I left home for college. She told me to use it well and I did. The book taught me how to adjust the flame, boil, blanch, chop,  grind, garnish, steam, deep fry, pressure cook. It taught me 
more about the metric/imperial system than the math classes in school. It it has lined the bottom of my suitcases wherever I have travelled. It has occupied the prime position on my kitchen shelf. Always within reach. Always within sight.

My initiation rites into the kitchen were completed with  some minor tragedies, a few drops of blood, plenty of spillage and smoke, and one dog-eared, turmeric-stained page with the recipe for a punjabi chicken curry or Surkh Kukkad.
The book became a permanent fixture in the lovely little kitchen of our rather lavish rooftop college pad. We (me and my flat mates) never had enough utensils, we never had enough raw materials and we never had that much food. But we had the book. We had enthusiasm. We had hungry boys living in hostels who would always land up with a couple of headless birds and we would cook. Like old women in a community kitchen, we would gossip, chop onions, shed tears, share stories, smoke, drink, chat, and bond over the open pages of this book. We would dream about our futures balanced precariously on the rim of the gas cylinder, inhaling the aroma of the spices. We ate many birds over those three summers. 
The book would automatically flip open to that page made heavy by all the grease embedded into the paper. In those days the recipe was an adversary to be cajoled, forced and attacked till it yielded something that could be consumed and in those days we would pretty much consume anything. Every dish cooked was a battle won. Every food-stained page was my victorious pennant fluttering over the bones of the birds eaten, and a little tribute to the ghosts of the dead chickens. May they all rest in peace.