Mushrooms

Mushrooms are by far my favourite foods. It is a pleasure to trawl the wet markets here in Shanghai and get all manners of mushrooms. Some regular button ones, Enokis, wood, none of which I recognize.

The best way to eat mushrooms is to add minimal spices.

I like to saute them in olive oil at high heat, toss freshly ground (mortal and pestled pepper corns are great; green pepper corn is even tastier, some salt, that's it. Occasionally, I would add some scallions.

I have yet to learn the myriad soups made with mushrooms in the Shanghainese cuisine. But there are some wonderful soups with Enokis.

There are several fan clubs of this humble not quite vegetarian yet not an animal fungus, and I found this website as great read when you know you just have to let life slip by http://forums.mycotopia.net/

Xinjiang Food and Human Spirit

Every day to work, right off the subway on Maotai Lu, I see the hubbub of activity in a small Xinjiang Muslim restaurant called Xinjiang Flavour. The tandoor or coal oven has just been lit and large masses of dough are being made into a foot diameter Nan bread and poked by metal skewers inside the tandoor. The cooks and waiters in this restaurant are distinctly exotic looking, quite unlike the incredible Han homogeneity you see all over China. High cheek bones, a pale pink complexion, eyes drawn straight out of a Marco Polo history book and a language absolutely unknown outside of Urumqi. On my way back, I always stop for 2 nans for dinner (Cost: 6 RMB or less than a dollar). These are delicious, coated with sesame seeds and I have to tear off pieces and eat even before I have hit the subway. Frequently, I have lunch there. The star of the place is undoubtedly Achmet. He is the sunshine of the place, full of bonhomie, chattering away in a language a mish mash of Shanghainese, Uighur, Mandarin and some English thrown in for good measure. He is acutely aware of me, and my rare looks (very few Indians in this part of town). He greets one with a smile broader than his face, clapping his hands, with words tumbling like a waterfall. He takes orders while nearly forcing you to choose the ones he recommends and of course you do because he is still smiling and talking non stop, while barking orders in between tiny pauses between sentences. The food is simply delicious if you are a carnivore and quite good even for a vegetarian. chunks of lamb skewered to perfection in a single spice mix of salt and cumin. Eggplant stewed in another singular flavour of lime and cardamom. In between, he never fails to hold forth from a corner to the entire restaurant audience, for audience it surely is, on some subject or other. Yesterday, he kept pointing to me and I guessed he was spinning some yarns about me: I recognized words like Yinduren (Indians), pinguo (friend) and many minutes later, it was translated to me that he spoke about the extraordinary closeness between Indians and Uighur people, historically, through travel by Central Asians. I was dumbfounded. How does a simple chef and waiter at a Xinjiang restaurant have such an understanding...but this is how Achmet is. Everyday, he calls out to me from across the street with his ever present grin , waving his towel and nan. Such a simple joy to be Achmet.

Stuff White People and Environmentalists Like

Incredible hilarious cover issue of Plenty Magazine, find it at http://www.plentymag.com/ - needless to say, they have friends in high places - the writers of http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/, about, well, Stuff White People Like.

This is another site I follow occasionally - with 60 million blog hits, and Chinese IP like mine, it rolls on my screen only after I have finished dinner. But, it is ruthlessly self-deprecating, and if it was called Stuff Black/Jewish/Asian/Cabo Verdean People Like, the humour would be lost on you, or it would border on a litigation on an allegation of racism.

But, it is exactly about the very things white people like which confound most of us. The last posting is on the famed Moleskine notebooks - expensive , made-to-look-classic-ancient that have a near-cult following amongst journos and writers and hence, followed by Whites. What is not mentioned is that it is a special White demographic , not all white. i.e no trailer trash, Polish White, Zimbabwean Whites, etc. But, that is carping. This is a great , readable site. I wish I could start one called Stuff Ghati People Like: on my ethnicity of Maharashtrian. Poha and those annoying scarves and woolen sari blouses and literature by women writers all suspiciously called Manda Kulkarni would be part of that....but I digress.

Living Brightly In The Dark

Susheela Jadhav was 94 when she passed away of cancer on March 2 2009.

I never knew much about her, my Grand Aunt except that she was different. The word "different" was not that well regarded in the Matungan middle class Maharshtrian morality. In her fifties in 1970's, she was a picture of firmness combined with a wry sense of humour and correctness. But, above all "correctness" defined her - everything had to be in line, correct and must be completed. She was the last generation not grafted genetically into the internet and indeed the modern media. She had no Facebook, she did not blog or declare something to be del.i.cious or digg anything nor did she flickr. Yet , being the I_Am-Standing_Erect_And_Correct , she managed to live life beautifully, traveled far, and spent time and pleasured in the company of family and friends, what we call "hanging out". She loved travel, she carried her masale ande and tikhat puri, added Indian Railways to her Favourites list as she criss crossed India. Her mutton biryani was something of a family treasure and if she was better humoured, she could be the Julia Child of Matunga. Her end was a time warp, a sudden silence , save for a flickering eyelash and a deep breath of the mountains. This she could not have sent on a twitter.