Food Discovery Friday – Pink Grapefruit!

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All right so I have to concede. I am finding it incredibly exciting discovering the new and exotic variety of produce in Cambridge. It has to be one of the highlights in the initial phase of expat life. I can say with certainty, because I am enjoying it to the fullest!  

I love roaming around supermarkets and farmer’s markets like an Alice in wonderland. These places hold endless surprises for me, and I can happily spend hours browsing through fruit and vegetables and herbs and greens. It is hard to believe how much there is to see, and eat!

I have to say it’s a pleasant surprise for me, I did not expect to find anything exotic in the food department here. Unlike countries such as Italy or France, Britain is not exactly known for its cuisine. However, being a former colonial power, it has always been a melting pot of culture and food. Foodstuffs from all it’s colonies reached Britain’s shores and were readily adopted by the people - tea from China, spices and herbs from India and bananas from Bermuda which arrived as late as 1633. The country today is home to diverse ethnic groups and the huge variety of produce available, is a reflection of this multi-cultural society.

Also being a small island country it’s impossible to grow everything here so most of the food is imported. The supermarket shelves are stacked full of thousands of different ingredients from all corners of the world and I am having a wonderful time discovering all of them. One Friday at a time!

Each Friday I will write about one ingredient that is completely new to me – something I never ate, cooked with, or even saw before in my life. As far as possible I will try to keep it seasonal.

The Discovery for this Friday is a Pink Grapefruit! A fruit, which looks like an orange from outside, but inside, it conceals the most loveliest surprise - deep pink colored flesh. A color that will make you gasp – it is so gorgeous! I find myself cutting it open eagerly just to look at the color inside. Almost like opening a specially wrapped gift.

But for all it’s beauty the taste is a bit of a letdown, you would expect such a richly colored fruit to be extremely sweet, but it’s usually quite sour and takes some getting used to. The sourness does go away with cooking though, so many consider it the perfect fruit for baking. I decided to give that a go today morning. It was beautiful and sunny outside, after almost a week and I just had to match that with an equally bright breakfast. Yes, you can have it for breakfast on a weekday! It's one of the quickest breakfast recipes.I Promise.

The recipe is adapted from Sarai’s recipe for baked Grapefruit on her blog “Sweet Sassafras” that I really enjoy reading. I cut the Grapefruit in half, sprinkled some brown sugar, dusted a little cinnamon, chopped a few walnuts over the flesh and popped it into the oven. It was beautiful when it came out of the oven, better than I imagined. The earthy cinnamon tones add depth to the grapefruit while the brown sugar lightens the sourness. All the flavors complement each other perfectly. I am hooked is all I can say. In addition, It’s a gluten-free-feel-good start to the day, what can be more perfect than that?



Like a piece of the Sun on my plate.



Baked Spiced Grapefruit (Adapted from Sarai's recipe on Sweet Sassafras)

Ingredients

1 Grapefruit

½ tsp brown sugar

Sprinkle of Cinnamon powder

1 Walnut – chopped into small pieces

Method

Preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF/Gas Mark 6. Cut the Grapefruit in half then cut around each section so that it will be easier to scoop out later. Sprinkle with the brown sugar, cinnamon and chopped walnuts. Put it on the top shelf in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes.

A spring morning at the Orchard in Grantchester

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Friday: It’s a cold rainy evening and we are having dinner with some friends. Recenty back from a backpacking trip across China they are full of stories. As the waiter starts serving green tea, John tells us about tea gardens in China. Sitting for hours in a garden sipping tea, as your cup is topped with hot water. He considers these gardens the epitome of civilization. Poles apart from the drink and dash culture in the western coffee shops. There people have the sense to sit and reflect, laugh and talk with each other. You won’t find such a thing here, he says. Here people only like to show off the Starbucks logo on their coffee cup, who is interested in actual conversation.

Well actually we have a tea garden in Cambridge too, Jamie says – The Orchard at Grantchester! Everybody laughs, but I am intrigued. Let’s go to the Orchard I say to H as we drive home. No, let’s wait for summer! It is much more beautiful then, he replies.

Sunday: It is the second last day of February and the chill is refusing to go away. Little daffodils are valiantly trying to stand up straighter against the cold wind. Then one morning the sun decides to listen to the daffodils, and shine! In the morning we wake up earlier than usual, rubbing our sleep filled eyes in surprise. The entire room is awash with sunlight – bright, sharp and cheerful.

It is simply not a day for breakfast in bed! H and I scamper into our wellies and out of the house. It is a nice day to go to the Orchard he says, as we get on our bikes. I just raise my head to the sun and smile. Grantchester has decided to call me to itself!

So off we go, cycling along the river and across the meadows. I cannot honestly say that it was at its most beautiful. Two days of continuous rain had made the path muddy and slippery. The fields looked worn and tired but there were signs of spring everywhere - swatches of purple and orange daffodils and flashes of forsythia brightened the way for us.

The orchard itself is ideally located at the end of the cycle track, providing a perfect spot to rest after cycling all the way to Grantchester. And what a grand resting point it is! They have a collection of mouthwatering pastries, cakes and the famous scones baked fresh every day and served with an assortment of jams or honey. I decided to sample a fruit scone with Morello cherry jam.

Then of course there is tea, for which the orchard is famous in the first place. Taking tea is an old tradition at the orchard, started in 1897 when a group of Cambridge students made the excursion to Grantchester and asked Mrs. Stevenson to serve them tea under the blossoming apple trees. Unknowingly on that spring morning, they had started a great Cambridge tradition. It might have looked exactly like the picture below.

But the actual credit of making the orchard famous has to go the poet Rupert Brooke. He took up lodging at the Orchard House in 1909, wanting to escape his hectic social life in Cambridge. However, Brooke was so good-looking and popular that he attracted a regular stream of visitors. Adding further appeal to the orchard was its mention in his poem “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester” which he wrote in a homesick mood in Berlin while remembering his idyllic time in Grantchester.

Contents: One Brown Memsahib

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Why do I call myself a Brown Memsahib?

I can struggle for ages and never be able to find the perfect words to explain my state of mind. Or I can just show you one image and you will know exactly how I feel. Like that in a split second!

Looking at photographer Gavin Fernandes’ work is as if somebody took a photograph inside my mind. Born in Kenya and originating from Goa in India, Gavin studied graphic design and photography in London and so the mixing of cultures is clearly visible in his work, specially his series – the Empire Line.

In Empire Line Gavin explores the powerful language of clothes and their ability to make political and cultural statements. He uses clothing to emphasize the conflict between class and caste in 19th century India ruled by the British Raj. And in the process successfully weaves the universal story of colonization into his images.

The images show women dressed in hybrid outfits with elements borrowed from both Victorian and native Indian styles. Conflict between the two sides is stark, with one style fighting to dominate the other. However, at another level, the styles blend and bleed into each other and you start looking beyond the clothing, and see the woman.

For more images from the collection visit www.gavinfernandes.com

Mrs. Beeton vs. Mrs. Balbir

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English women going out to colonial India packed a number of cookbooks and household guides in their trunks. Chief among the choices available was the classic Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. It not only had over 900 pages packed with recipes, but also contained chapters on hospitality and conversation, fashion, medical advice, preparing banquets, managing servants and animal husbandry among others. It was an all round guide for the nineteenth century housewives. More so, for the newly-married women, setting up homes in a new country, it must have been an indispensible companion.

I carried a cookbook with me too. Mrs. Balbir Singh’s Indian Cookery. Not in my suitcase though because I was terrified that my luggage will get lost in transit and I will, horror of horror reach England without it. So I kept it in my handbag, where it’s reassuring weight comforted me through my journey.  


I am sure you will not find me paranoid when I tell you that it is an heirloom cookbook, belonging to my mother. A book that she used as a young bride too, it had been her guide through the tremulous time when as a nineteen year old girl, she found herself in charge of her own kitchen, cooking for a large extended family. This book must have seemed like a lifeline to her. And when it came to guiding me through my trial, she knew that she could not be there physically for me, so she gave me this book instead. Hence the paranoia!

During the early years of her marriage, Mrs. Balbir Singh travelled to England with her husband too and the family spent several years in London while Mr. Singh attended Medical School.

In London, she began to teach Indian cooking and to help her students she decided to break down the recipes in clear steps and quantities. A difficult task as Indian cookery is all about approximations and finding your own style. It’s practically a verbal legacy, passed on from one generation to the next, as daughters spend many hours at their mothers side, helping, observing and learning their mothers secrets. With time, they adapt and add their special touches, so that every woman boasts of her own personal recipe for each basic dish.

Mrs. Singh’s book like Mrs. Beeton’s was one of the first cookbooks written by an Indian woman for Indian women in a practical manner about good home cooked food.  First published in 1961 the book quickly became a bible for newly-wed women in the country and abroad. It was awarded a silver medal by the Gastronomische Akademie Deutschlands in 1964 

The book and I are sharing a kitchen together since I arrived and slowly we are becoming good friends. It gives me great ideas for dinner and reveals delicious secrets to me while I cook. Small keepsakes kept and forgotten in its pages - two recipes written on yellowing bits of paper in my mother’s hand, one for mango pickle and the other for pineapple squash. One evening, I find a photograph of my brother dressed as a maharaja! So the recipe on that page becomes our dinner that night.

It is a fabulous recipe for “Tandoori Machchi”, or fish baked in a clay oven. A delicacy made popular by the cooks who migrated from Peshawar in Pakistan to Delhi. It is one of my favorite street foods and walking down the streets in Delhi, it is very easy to locate your nearest fish shop. You just have to follow your nose! These shops are tiny one-man establishments with their fronts carefully arranged to entice the passerby. Adorned with rows of skewers threaded with marinated fish.

You choose a skewer and it is baked there and then, while you wait, mouth watering in anticipation. The baked fish comes on a palm leaf, served on a bed of mint leaves and green chilies with lemon wedges if you prefer your fish extra tangy. I certainly do!

Mrs. Singh’s Tandoori Machchi

(Adapted from her book Indian Cookery)

The fish can be cooked equally well on a bar-be-que as well as under the grill.  Use three whole medium size haddock (approx. 350 g each)

For rubbing over the fish:

1 Tbsp fresh lime juice

1 Tsp salt

For the marinade:

1 Tsp coriander powder

1 Tbsp vinegar

1 Tsp red pepper

6 cloves of garlic

1 Tsp ginger

½ Tsp Cumin powder

3 Tbsp lime juice

1 Tsp butter per fish

Make deep cuts on one side of each fish, rub in the lime juice and salt and set aside till you prepare the marinade.

For the marinade: grind garlic and ginger finely, mix with coriander powder, cumin powder, red pepper, lime juice, vinegar and butter. Rub well over the surface and cavities. Leave in the marinade for one hour.

For grilling: Pass a pointed skewer lengthwise through the fish and grill for five minutes per 1 - 1.5 cm thickness, turning once. Most fish will take 5 – 7 minutes. Haddock turns white when cooked and will flake when tested with a fork.

Serve hot, with a salad of mint leaves, parsley and red onions tossed in lime juice and honey.

A stunning Black and White space: Logomo Cafe, Turku

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Turku as the official European City of Culture for 2011 recently inaugurated a new grand cultural arena. The arena is will host a variety of exhibitions and shows ranging in themes from flames and football to photo and video art. But despite all the exciting exhibits, everybody’s attention and admiration has been fixated on the stunning café.

German artist Tobias Rehberger is the designer behind the gorgeous Logomo café. He has used Artek furniture as a base to create an interior space, which combines painting, sculpture, architecture and design. At first glance, it looks like the handiwork of children with black marker pens gone wild in a white room. However, the moment you notice the details you realize that it is clearly the result of a very clever and precise mind. 

The space stuns and confuses and at times it is hard to make out the difference between the floor and chairs or walls. To create this effect, Tobias drew from camouflage technique developed by the Brits in World War I, which makes the perception of the space optically difficult. 

Blurring the boundaries between interior space and art installation, Logomo café allows the public to practically step into an artwork and experience it while having fresh brewed coffee and pumpernickel. Have a look at the amazing space and see for yourself.

All images courtesy Artek. 

Brown mem·sa·hib

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The inspiration for this blog comes from the book “Women Writing Home, 1700-1920: Female Correspondence across the British Empire”.  

“Women Writing Home assembles a wide range of women’s letters from the former British Empire and two major sections in this book are devoted to ‘colonial women’ in India.   

Transferred to India along with their husbands, these women were instrumental in constituting what could be called a ‘home away from home’, exporting as much as they could of their accustomed way of life in Britain and reinstituting it as far as possible in India, adapting to and accommodating the new and often ‘alien’ cultural contexts as they went along.

The letters reveal the many different ways in which these women perceived colonial society. Sometimes the new context offered opportunities unavailable at home but often these letter-writing women pined for what they had left behind.”

The book struck a deep chord and soon I was spending hours researching letters written by colonial women living in India. Reading their letters was like a soothing balm for my homesickness. I could relate to these women, for although our situation was the complete opposite the same mix of emotions twisted my heart into knots too. I could feel their heartache at parting with their family and leaving home to recreate life in a strange and alien land.

Some of these women were newly married like me and setting up home on their own, they felt deeply devoid of a supportive female network - mothers, sisters, cousins and girlfriends. Like them, I realised that a mother’s advice never feels as precious as when a woman is trying to set up home without it.

The only way they could fill that void was to write home extensively with detailed descriptions of all that they saw around them. These women were prolific; they maintained journals and diaries, wrote letters home, authored novels, cookbooks and penned their memoirs. These letters were to them the equivalent of a chat over a cup of coffee with their sister or best friend. It was the one vent for their loneliness and sadness at being far from home and their circle of friends.   

So, I decided to write home too, with details from my life in England as a reverse memsahib – an Indian woman living in England, wearing English clothes, eating English food and speaking English - I'm afraid I am living the life of a brown memsahib!