Kochi Day 4

インドスパイス魔女修行その5
帰国報告
その1 India! India!
その2 Kochi Day 1
その3 Kochi Day 2
その4 Kochi Day 3

まだまだ続くインドスパイス魔女修行記です。
残すところあと3回となりました。

イースターが空けて月曜日。
お祭りだったので一晩中花火だの、大音量の音楽が近くの教会や隣家から聴こえていました。天井にファンがあるものの、暑いので窓を開けて眠るものですから音は避けられません。私は意外と平気で眠っていたのですが、Acoはよく眠れなかったと辛そうでした。

Puttu steamer.

Pushing out puttu from the steamer.

Puttu. Steaming hot!

Dal curry.

この日はココナツのプットゥとダルカレーを朝ご飯に習いました。
昨夜のホテルで買ったプットゥは時間が経っていたものなので、これぞ出来立てのプットゥというのを食べることができました。

プットゥはケララ地方ではオーソドックスな朝ご飯メニュー。専用の調理器具を使って作ります。米粉とおろしたてのココナツを細長い筒状の蒸し器に入れて蒸したら、ぐいっと押し出す。するりとプットゥが出てきます。プットゥのみだとぼそぼそして味も素朴そのもの。これに汁気のあるカレーやバナナとお砂糖などを合わせて食べると味わい深いのです。
今回はダルのカレー。私はお豆のカレーが大好きなので嬉しかったです。

朝食後、メヘンディを描いてもらうことに。
じつはAyamiはメヘンディ・アートができるのですが、本場のヘナで現地の人に描いてもらいたいということで、数日前から二人でお願いしていました。
ホストマザーの妹さんがやってきてくれました。
私は両足の前面に、Ayamiは左足と左腕に描いてもらっていました。本当は指先まで全部描いてもらいたかったけど、帰国後の仕事のことを考えて、服で隠すことのできる部分に留めることに。
するする～っと描いていく様は、何気ないようで経験の賜物。ヘナをコーンから均一の太さで搾りだしながら細かい模様をくるくると描いていくことは見た目と違って難しいのです。

暑い国ではヘナはすぐに乾くので、ちょっとの間だけ洋服がヘナをこすらないように気を付けておけば、後はそれほど神経質にならなくても大丈夫でした。

I was so happy!

今日の大仕事は、調理器具の買い付け。
AyamiとAcoはビリヤニ・ポットを買いたいとずっと言っていました。私はお皿やコップ、ダッバーまたはティファンと呼ばれるインドのお弁当箱、スパイスのテンパリングに便利なタルカパンと呼ばれる小さなフライパンなどがお目当て。
リキシャを頼んで、地元の人が行くお店に連れて行ってもらいました。
ムスリム教の人も多い地区のようで、異国感のむんむん漂う通りを、熱風と砂に吹かれながらリキシャは走ります。ドライバーのおじさんは、買い物が終わるころに迎えに来てあげるよと言ってききません。恐らく、ここで私たちを放して、その後だらだらと観光客の少ない場所で流しているより、私たちにくっついている方が儲かるのでしょうか？『時間が掛かるよ？』と念押しをしましたが、気にしていないようで『チャイでも飲んで来るから大丈夫さ』とさっさと行ってしまいました。

さて、調理器具屋さん。はじめはちょっと大きめのお店で見ていたのですが、なんとなく商品の揃いが悪い。欲しいなと思って同じものを探すとそれが最後の一個だったりして、セット買いができない。うう～むと思い、斜め向かいの小さな調理器具屋さんへ移動。これが大正解。
狭い店内にぎっしり詰め込まれた皿、コップ、鍋、水差し…。
ステンレスのお皿をあれこれ見ているうちにビニールのカバーに付いた埃で手は真っ黒に。汗もかきつつ目ぼしいものを引っ張り出しては、積み上げていきます。
そのうちにリキシャのおじさんが予定の時間より早く戻ってきて、私たちの買い物を眺めていました。いつ終わるとも知れない買い物に、なんだか呆れ顔…。
ようやく会計が済んで、山のような買い物をリキシャに積み込みます。
更に薬局にも行きたいんだけど…と立ち寄ってもらいます。

薬局にて。アーユルヴェーダのドクターが出てきてくれます。トリートメント施設が併設なのですが、トリートメントを受ける時間は無いので、オイルだけ買いたいのだけど、と説明してそれぞれの目的に合ったオイルにハーブを調合したというものを受け取ります。リキシャのおじさんが待ってると思うと、心は焦りました。
その後はいったんB&Bへ戻ることにしたのですが、リキシャのおじさんが息子のやっている布地屋さんに連れて行くと言ってきかず、寄り道することになりました。そんな時間ないんだけど…と思いつつ、これでおじさんが満足するなら、とお店を見せてもらいました。きれいで大きなお店でした。でも、何も買うものがなく挨拶だけしてリキシャに戻りました。なんだかおじさんには申し訳なかったです。
買い物を部屋に置いて、お昼を食べたかった場所までまたリキシャで送ってもらうことにしました。
やれやれ、これでひと段落。目的地に着いてお金を払おうとしたら、したたかなおじさんはB&Bで最初に決めた料金よりも少し高く請求したのです。さすがだね。もちろんきちんと決めた料金を払うだけにしました。私たちを甘く見るで、ない。

At a pharmacy.

さて、この日のお昼はホテルにて。
一度観光客向けの高級インド料理がどんな風に出されているのかを経験しておくということで、これも勉強のうちでした。
海沿いのホテル。門の外はリキシャやバスが轟音を立てて走り回り、チャイや軽食の屋台が立ち並ぶけれど、ホテルの敷地内に入ると急に溢れ出す静寂と高級感。こんなに違うのか…。
レストランは室内のテーブル席と、海が見える庭のテラス席があり、私たちは庭の方を選びました。

メニューは英語のものがありました。
せっかくなので前菜、メイン、そしてお茶とデザートまで頼むことにしました。
前菜は野菜のグリルとチャバッタ、かぼちゃとホーリーバジルのスープを。茄子のトマト、ピーナッツ、スパイス煮込みとレモンライス。玉ねぎのソテーとトマト、スパイスで煮込んだケララローストチキンカレーのドーサ添えをメインに。チャイとピスタチオとサフラン（ケサール）クルフィをデザートに頼みました。クルフィはインドではおなじみの冷菓です。

Appetizer.

This looked so Western.

Main dishes.

A white pancake is Thattu Dosa.

Kulfi tower!

  

お料理は、もちろん美味しかったですが、やはり観光客、特にヨーロッパ向けにスパイスのトーンを落としてあるな、という印象でした。盛り付けや演出はもちろん西洋風。チャイも、やっぱり屋台のチャイの方が美味しいと思ってしまいました。
実はこのレストランで、インドに来て以来初めてペットボトル以外の水を注文したのですが、そのキンッキンに冷えた水の美味しさが一番印象的でした。このホテルでの食事で一番美味しかったのは、実際のところこの水かも知れません。冷やしたグラスに注がれたお水。『氷山から削り出してきた氷から取り出したのですよ』と言われても疑わないほどの高貴な印象のお水（ただの冷やした水なんですがね…）あまりにも冷えていて美味しかったので、ジンかと思ってしまったほどでした。インドに来て以来、冷蔵庫で冷えた物を口にするのが初めてだったので、大げさではなく本当にびっくりしました。

Kochi sea side.

A girl with a long hair.

A chai stall.

B&Bへ戻り、AyamiとAcoはマンゴーピクルスづくりに精を出しました。
私は少し荷物やノートの整理をしたかったので、しばし一人の時間を楽しませてもらうことにしました。しばらくして様子を見に行くと、Ayamiがサリーを着せてもらっていました。

 

I love her mehndi goes well with the sari.

夕方、私たちが夕ご飯までのひと時を部屋でまったりと過ごしていると、ものすごい勢いの夕立がありました。そのまま大雨になって、停電になったのです。
私はノートを書けなくなり、AyamiはAcoの腕にメヘンディを描いていたのを中断しなくてはならなくなりました。ホストファザーがロウソクを持ってきてくれました。Acoが携帯電話で照らすなか、メヘンディアートは続行。やっぱり停電しなきゃインドじゃないよね、などと2人は笑っていました。2人とも数年前にインドとスリランカを旅していたので、今よりももっと大変な旅立ったようでした。
そのうちに明かりが戻りました。
なんだか、田舎のお家に来た時のよう。
暗くなると、虫の声や風の音、雨の音がよく聞こえて、心地よかったです。

今夜のお料理教室は海老のカレー、海老のフライ、ギーライス、そしてサラダ。新鮮な海老をたくさん食べました。
今夜はホストファザーのアフザルが、キッチンにやってきて海老料理を手伝っていました。『アフザル・スペシャルだよ。』と笑いながら手早くお料理をしていました。
後で知りましたが、ホストマザーのジェズナは海老を触るとかゆみが出るようで、カレーもフライも食べていませんでした。アフザルのやさしさに、微笑んでしまいました。

残すことろ、ケララではあと一日。
翌日は最後の買い付け。やり残したことが無いようにと念入りに計画を練ってから眠りにつきました。

つづく。

Spice Witch Training in India Part5
Coming home
Part1 India! India!
Part2 Kochi Day 1

Part3 Kochi Day 2
Part4 Kochi Day 3

Still have more to write about Spice Witch training days in India.
There are three more days to go.

Puttu with coconuts.

Yum yum...

Easter Monday.

Through the Easter Sunday night, we were hearing fireworks, music, and sermons from churches. There was a fan on the ceiling, but we had to open the window to make the room cooler, we couldn't avoid noise. To my little surprise, I was okay about that, but Aco had trouble sleeping and she looked tired.

We learnt coconut puttu and dal curry for breakfast.

The puttu we had for supper the night before was cold, so I could finally eat "the puttu".

Puttu is very common breakfast in Kerala. There is a special cookware for puttu. Put rice flour and freshly grated coconuts in a cylinder shape puttu steamer and steam it, push the contents out of the steamer. Then you have a long puttu. Puttu itself has not much taste and it's very crumbly. Having soupy curry or banana and sugar, its taste becomes nicer.

This time we had dal curry. I love curry with dal or beans, so it made me happy.

She was so quick!

After breakfast, we had our mehndi art drawn.

Actually Ayami can do mehndi art by herself, but she wanted to experience local henna and artist. So she and I had asked our host to arrange this few days ago.

Our host mother's sister came to do our mehndi.

I had them both of my ankle fronts, and Ayami had them on her left leg and arm. She wanted to have them from tips of her fingers to shoulders and knees, but she considered about her works after she got back to Japan, so she asked the places where she could hide with her clothes.

Henna lines were smoothly making patterns on our skins. It looked quite easy, but that is the result of her hard practice. Just squeezing out henna line in the constantly same thickness is difficult enough. And drawing a fine lines are a lot more difficult than it looks.

In a hot country, henna dries up quicker, so we only had to watch out our clothes scratch off the henna for a while, and after that, we needed not to be so nervous about it.

The driver guy.

This day's big job was buying cookwares.

Ayami and Aco had been saying they wanted to buy biryani pots. I wanted to buy plates and cups, a dabba (or tiffin), and a tarka pan which is very useful for spice tempering and etc.

We asked our host father to call a rickshaw guy to take us to a local market.

It was an area where many Muslims were, so the streets atmosphere was full of exoticism. Our rickshaw drove in hot wind and sand. The driver insisted that he would come back to pick us up again around the time we finished our shopping. Maybe it's better to stick to us than driving around to catch a new customer in the area where no sightseeing foreigners were around. We said to him we were going to take a long time for this shopping. He never seemed to care and he said he'd have some chai and while he waited for us and he drove away just like that.  

A cookware shop.

My pile...

The cookware store. We were looking around in a sort of big shop first, but they had a little pour stock management. For example I liked something and tried to find some more of the same thing, and I won't find any as it was the last one they had. Humm, we thought that we'd better moved to another one across the road. It was a lot tinier shop, but that was the place.

There were plates, cups, pans, and water-jugs in a small space...

After picking up this stainless and that, dust on plastic covers made our hands black. We all sweated and picked up something we liked and made a pile of stainless.

In the meanwhile, our rickshaw driver came back a little earlier than our schedule and he started to hang about while we were still shopping. He looked stunned by our piles and endless shopping.

After we finally paid for cookwares, we loaded mountains of our goods in the rickshaw.

We asked the driver to drop us off at a nearest pharmacy...

At the pharmacy, an Ayurveda doctor came out for us. There was a treatment place at the back of the pharmacy, but we had no time to get treatments. So we asked him if we could just buy some oils. He concocted oil for each of us to match with our purposes. We felt hurried as the rickshaw guy had been waiting for us.

After our big shopping, we asked him to take us back to our B&B, but he insisted to take us to a fabric shop that his son was running. So we had to call it on the way back. We really had no time for that, but it was okay if that made him happy. We looked around the shop briefly. It was a big, clean shop, but we had nothing to buy there, so we said thank you and went back to the rickshaw. We felt sorry for the driver.

We dropped our shopping in our room and decided to ask the same driver to take us to the place we were planning to get lunch on that day. We've done the major thing of the day, so we felt relieved. When we got to the place and about to pay him, a shrewd driver as he was, he asked us a little higher price than the one we first agreed with at the B&B. Well, of course he did. But we paid the price we originally made a deal with. So he shouldn't have underestimated us.

We had lunch at a hotel on this day.
We decided to experience how the expensive Indian food are served for the foreign tourists.
It was a hotel by the sea. Outside of the gate wall was noisy with rickshaws, buses driving with thunderous roars and there were chai and snack stalls, but inside of the wall, suddenly it becomes quiet and we were filled with air of high-quality. We were surprised by the difference inside and outside of the wall....
The restaurant had tables inside and also in the terrace where you could get a view of the sea. We chose the terrace in the garden.

They had both English and Hindi menu.
We decided to have full course from appetizer, main dish, and tea and dessert.
We had roasted vegetables, Ciabatta and pumpkin and holy basil soup as appetizer. Eggplant cooked in tomato & peanut gravy flavours with spices, served with lemon rice, and Kerala roast chicken, cooked in sauteed onion, tomato & spices, served with with Thattu Dosa, pancakes made of lentil & rice. For dessert, we ordered chai and Pista and Kesar Kulfi.
Kulfi is a popular Indian frozen dessert. The one we ordered were flavored with pistachio and kesar, or saffron.

Roasted vege.

Pumpkin and holy basil soup.

Lemon rice.

Eggplant in tomato gravy.

Kerala chicken.

 

A fancy dessert!

Their meals were of course delicious, but I had and impression that they were controlling the amount of spice usage for tourists, especially Western people. The way of arranging dishes and how they served were of course in a Western style. Even chai, I love the one I had in a chai stall. It's so much better than the one in the hotel.
Actually we ordered a bottle of water and that was the first time we bought a bottled water except the one in a plastic bottle since we came to India. And the water was iced cold. How delicious it was! We were so surprised and maybe that water was the best thing we had in that hotel restaurant to be honest. In a cold glass just came out of the fridge, we could have believed even if they told us the water was from the ice they shaved off from an iceberg. In fact, it was just some normal water after all... It was so cold that I thought it was gin, not water. I'm not exaggerating anything here, but we hadn't had anything cold out of the fridge since we came to India, so it was a huge surprise.

Back to our B&B, Ayami and Aco worked hard on mango pickles making.

I wanted to sort out my stuffs and notes, so I asked to spend little time alone for a while. When I went down to see how they were doing later, Ayami was dressed in a sari.

Mangoooooo!

Cute Afzal and Aco.

In the early evening, while we were spending nice and relaxed time before dinner in our room, there was a sudden evening shower. It became a big rain and we had a blackout.
I couldn't continue writing my note and Ayami had to stop drawing mehundi on Aco's arm. Our host father brought us a candle. While Aco was holding her smartphone light, Ayami restated drawing mehndi. So finally we had a blackout, now we felt like we were in India, both Ayami and Aco laughed. They traveled in India and Sri Lanka together some years ago, so it had been more difficult backpacking experience than we had this time I imagine.
After a while, we had our electricity back again.
It was like I came to a house in a countryside.
I could hear chirping of insects and sound of wind and rain better in the dark, so I felt nice.

Crispy fried prawns "Afzal Special"

Our cooking lesson for dinner time was prawn curry, fried prawn, ghee rice, and salad. We had lots of fresh prawns.

This time, our host father Afzal came into the kitchen and helped us a lot. "It's Afzal special!" He said and smiled while he was swiftly using a skillet and spatula.
We learnt later on, but our host mother Jezna was allergic to prawns. She gets itchy when she touches prawns. So she wasn't eating prawn curry or fried prawns. We just thought how sweet Afzal was.

We had one more day left in Kerala.
The next day was planned for our last big buying. We made sure we hadn't missed anything in Kerala and made plans for the next day. And we went to bed.

To be continued...