Culinary Arts and Impossibilities

While I was writing my post yesterday, I just couldn't really think of anything exciting that was happening to me, so I was having trouble writing. Now I am feeling my life is more adventerous and that I could share some stories about food in Lucknow. . . .

Pizza Hut: So I ate at Pizza Hut. I haven't eaten at any other American restaurant that I can recall, but I went to Pizza Hut with a friend from Lucknow who took me there and claimed that he thought it was the best restaurant in the world. I do think the pizza was significanly better than the pizza in Pizza Huts in the States, you can get a pizza spicey and full of fun veggies (most of the veggies I can't even identify). It was expensive (for India) but good. However, as everyone knows, I'm not so big on the cheese and asked the waiter (in my funny Urdu) if there could be no cheese on the pizza. He was immediately taken aback and insisted that this was "impossible" (using the English word impossible to add stress I think to the inconcievability of the request). As I continued to insist, more and more waiters arrived at the table to find out about this strange lady who wanted a pizza that was not a real pizza. "How can a person eat pizza without the cheese, the vegetables will tumble!" Finally, they were kind enough to accomodate my strange-ness and the waiters agreed to ask the cooks if they could make a pizza without cheese. All 5 of the waiters went to the kitchen and returned less than a minute later to inform me (in English) "Madame, it is possible." When my personal spicey veggie pizza minus cheese was delivered to the table, the whole staff and some restaurant patrons arrived to watch me take my first bite and ask how it was. I must say, it was quite delicious.

In addition to my pizza foray, mangos are in season in Lucknow. This means that you can buy 1 kg of mangos for about 40 cents. Not bad, although I am eating a ton of mangos. I never knew that there were so many types of mangos, some sweeter than candy and others so juicy that you just cut a little hole and suck on them. Amazing and wonderful. When I go to the vegetable market (called Sadar Bazaar - literally translated to President Market), I visit tons of vendors and always return to my home with some combination of mangos, guava, papaya, and bananas. The only fruit I remotely miss are berries, but the fun of the other fruits seems to keep this small lack managable. The vegetables are also fantastic and I buy the vegetables I eat daily. However, most of the vegetables I am unfamiliar with and occassionally I return home with a mystery vegetable that I need to ask others how to prepare. So far, though, everything has been great. The wife of one of my fellow students also lives in my home and she is teaching me to cook Indian food as well as helping me with the language associated with cooking. Maybe by the end of the year I will be a halfway decent Indian chef?