The Adventures of Brian & Julia

We were sorry to leave Ranakpur, but had heard great stuff about the blue city of Udaipur and its lake palace, so off we went again.  I had heard this was a great place to take a cooking class, so we mentioned it to our driver and he took us to a hotel that offered them (and no doubt provided him with a hefty kickback for bringing us). It smelled delicious, and was the cleanest place we’d seen, but it seemed too commercial, so we decided to wander around the bazaar in town for the afternoon.

This was our first “unsupervised” time in India, and sure enough, there were 3 guys waiting by the door of the car to start hassling us for business, which would have been more reasonable if they were selling something besides transportation.  still, I guess you can’t blame them for being enterprising.  Within a few minutes of walking around, I saw a sign for a cooking class I had read about in our guidebook painted on the side of a wall.  We followed the arrow, and found ourselves in a tiny alley with another arrow.  This one pointed upstairs into a residential building painted in the city’s trademark chalky periwinkle color.  On the second floor, we found Swati, the proprietor of the cooking class, and also a professional nutritionist.  Instead of a traditional hourly lesson, she allowed us to look over a menu and select which items we wanted to learn.

The vegetarian menu was vast, and even better, divided into sections by cooking style.  Choosing was difficult, but in the end, I end up with the following menu:
Paratha (layered whole wheat bread) stuffed with chiles & garlic
Aloo Gobi (Potatoes and cauliflower dry cooked with loads of spices)
Malai Kofta (Fried dumplings in a thick creamy sauce.. I’ve eaten this before and loved it, but never quite knew what was in it)
Samosas (Pastry dough pockets filled with spicy vegetables and deep fried.  Awesome but hard to make!)
Coconut Ladoo (little balls of coconut and cream, sort of like the inside of a mounds bar, and spiced with cardamom)

Swati asked us to give her an hour or so to buy the necessary ingredients, so we went back into town for a bit.  A courtyard with a giant hole in the ground caught our eye, and turned out to be the site of a daily monkey feeding.  I have to say, handing a piece of greasy chapati (simple bread sort of like a tortilla) to a monkey was one of the more exhilarating things I’ve done lately (see the video).

Afterwards, we went back to Swati’s for the class, and had a fantastic time.  Brian got a little bored of the kitchen and made friends with the children who were running around giggling. They sang and danced with him, played drums, and posed for pictures.  Later on, as we were finishing up in the kitchen, the married women in the household began pooja (prayers) for a Hindu festival that honors their husbands.  They fast all day, then apply henna and pray under the full moon.  Afterwords they eat and dance and celebrate family happiness, so it was a great night to be in a private home and get a front seat to all the action (see pictures).

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
This was one of our favorite nights in India, and the food was awesome (credit to Swati more than me).  I took some killer notes though, so when we get back, I’ll make everything again