In the last few days, I’ve been thinking about some of the many amazing meals P and I have managed to whip up since arriving in Saigon.
I could just be a navel-gazer and say we had it in us all along, but. I’ve never been a navel-gazer after all, have I.. that title is reserved for my wonderful friend Bharti.
And here’s a wonderful moment for an aside. You see, I received an email from this wonderful navel-gazing friend of mine today. A one-liner – not to express her how much she misses me, but to ask whether I was pissed with her over something. Of course not, it was just so wonderful to hear from her, and however much I begrudge her for sending me a one-liner (you see, she’s a gifted writer), I sent her one myself, for which I should be duly ashamed.. a longer email is long overdue. Gosh, it’s been over a year since we met, which doesn’t seem really long, but it is. I long for the days when we spent endless hours in the sun (in Dilli winters) and endless hours under the Nescafe umbrella shade (in Dilli summer) yapping in parallel streams of conversations that only ‘us’ understood.
(Pulling myself away from the nostalgia)
Anyway, so the success of our cooking must lie in the flavors in vegetables and meat in Saigon. And perhaps, practice. After all, we have been cooking so much more than we used to. And enjoying it too. Just today, Pratik made guacamole, and I made my first attempt at an involtini.
Nothing close to the Italian gourmet dish with its fluid meat slices, crusted with bread crumbs and filled with expensive cheese, but it was involtini nonetheless. And since I’m such a bhulakkad, I think it might be useful for me to have the recipe written down somewhere, just so I don’t forget it, along with everything else I did on this absolutely gorgeous Saigon day.
Another ‘aside’ moment. I had a lazy morning in bed after two long days of teaching. We were out of brown bread and frozen parathas, so we got dressed first thing to go out and get some. The walk to the bakery, for the bread, and the supermarket, for the paratha, is just about a km or two, but it was such a beautiful day – the sun wasn’t even peeking through the clouds, the clouds weren’t even menacing and threatening to burst, and there was a very un-Saigonly breeze in the air – we decided to enjoy the morning and walk on. For four hours, we walked aimlessly, through downtown, exploring new-found alleyways and narrow streets. I bought a beautiful, if too loose on my much-thinner-than-2009 frame, blouse that I can’t wait to wear (shhh.. planning to wear it on our anniversary dinner night). Discovered a great banh mi seller – new favorite in this part of the town.. her bread was about an inch shorter than regular banh mis but the pate and meat floss and veges more than made up for it. When we got back home at half-two, both of us just flopped on the bed and almost dozed off.
And then when hunger struck again, P made me the guacamole, which we had with toasted dark rye bread. Very nice it was too (f-ed up Indian English syntax I louuu.. he he). In the meantime, I had been browsing the internet looking for new ways to use the lone eggplant in the fridge. I found some very interesting involtini recipes. Now, I didn’t have half the ingredients called for in the classic recipes but I do have an imagination, as some would say.
So here’s the involtini I made:
I took my lone, lean, mean eggplant.. not the stout ones I would’ve loved to have, this one one long and thin.. and sliced in diagonally in thin slices (not too thin, they’d break when being rolled). I smeared each slice with a mixture of fresh-ground pepper, jeera powder, and a little bit of oil. Now, I arranged all the slices in my spanking new Teflon pan and let them brown on both sides. Take them off the heat to cool.
I had two sausages wallowing in the freezer. While I was playing around with the browned eggplant, P grated the sausages and browned them nicely too. Now, I took the browned meat and added a triangle of cheap Vina cheese and mashed it through, forming a sticky, lumpy mixture. I took a few pinches of the mixture and patted it down in the middle of each eggplant, then rolling it and placing it seam-side down on a plate.
Voila! Instant Involtini.
Took about 15 mins. YUM.
