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Part Eight: Santiago, Chile
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Day Thirty-three
 By
the third day of the cooking classes, my students were completely
at ease with the mis en place procedures and showed
a high level of cookery excellence. The unusual salad of finely
sliced cabbage with a spicy, sour peanut dressing was remarkably
good - a sort of a north-Indian-flavoured coleslaw. The creamed
spinach with fresh panir cheese (Palak Panir) was
literally the best I had ever tasted.
| Rice
Pulao with Peas and Cashews
Sweet and Sour Chana Dal with Pumpkin
North-Indian Cabbage & Peanut Salad
Gujarati Vegetables in Karhi Sauce
Fresh Panir with Creamed Spinach (Palak Panir)
Bengali Potato and Cauliflower Curry
Hot & Spicy Tomato Chutney
Saffron and Pistachio Shrikhand Dessert
Homemade Minted Lemonade |
 On
the first night we had had hung 6 kilos of yogurt in a bag to drain
off the whey, and refrigerated it. It had now reduced to half the
volume, and become a thick yogurt cheese, called dehin
in Indian cuisine. We ground some saffron threads with pure rosewater
and cardamom, folded them through the thickened concentrated yogurt,
added sugar, and piped it out with a piping bag into little bowls,
finally garnished with chopped pistachios (left). This was the famous
Shrikhand. What a dessert! Everyone agreed this was the best
tasting dinner we have cooked so far.
Day Thirty-four
This morning we had decided on a little respite from the cookery.
The plan: a leisurely drive to the snow. Chile's climate is decribed
as temperate, with the dry Atacama Desert in the north, Mediterranean
climate in the central region, and cool and damp in the south. The
foothills of the Andes are in easy drive of the downtown, so after
breakfast we (myself, Adi and his wife, and our driver) set off
in an easterly direction. Santiago is cursed with a common
big-city problem: air pollution from industrial and vehicle emissions.
The thick smog haze above the city was noticable as soon as we start
our ascent.
 As
we drove, the air became thinner, cleaner and colder, the sky more
overcast, and the Andean mountain peaks got closer and closer with
each treacherous bend in the road. The mountains were adorned with
white, and the ground on the side of the road started to show traces
of snow. We arrived at our destination, Farellones, elevation
3,333 metres, or for those metrically impaired, 10,932 feet above
sea level.
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