My mother-in-law still makes attempts to let
the utensils dry in the sun to make them spotless after they are more than
scrubbed clean. My mother is a little more reluctant that she does not let them
dry in the sun like the clothes, but cannot imagine some pot or utensil is not
scrubbed with the hardest of the soaps.
During our hostel days the food we used to get
were so healthy that excepting some turmeric and dried chilies, all the other
spices and ingredients were just next to absurdities. Yes, we could trace oil when,
on rare occasions, we were provided with dipped and fried fish chicken or mutton. Excepting those fatty proteinised days, we used to clean our
utensils with plain water, without soap. And the stainless-steel plates were
our mirrors to comb our hairs. We never tried to put a scratch on them.
On the other side, despite my crude male inclinations towards the Italian ladies, like Monica Bellucci, I finally preferred to fall in love with a Bengali girl during my university days, perhaps because of two reasons: Firstly, communication was a problem, as I hardly understood any Italian word. There was no ready google translator those days and I did not have the guts of Michael Corleone to love the lady more than the language she spoke.….and secondly, with obvious reasons, what God could foresee and thus resisted me from choosing a life partner like Camila Girogi (who feels that the tennis balls are just seeds to hit over the top), was that the Italians never wash their most common classical utensil, a moka (that’s how it is spelt instead of ‘mocha’) pot.
Rana-da, alias Sanjib Mitra, has been a constant inspiration to me that he keeps on sharing fantastic bits of information that has been lying in front of every one’s eye but others cannot not see them but him, as they lack that vision and the exuberant skill to fashion a fantastic lively story clubbed with socio-cultural aspect. A simple slice of sandwich turns tastier than it looks like; an undone piece of bar-be-cued chicken suddenly gets something to crave more for than a done one when he gives a bit of authentic rustic touch of brush up to the apparently, not happening thing, so far. A bite on that undone, half-burnt raw chicken under the moonlit sky seems to tell us:
“It is better to reign in hell than serve in
heaven…”
Last day, he brought me a 'moka pot' with authentic Italian origin and told me
the stories about this simple pot. Simple yet how rare! A simple pot devised
with the theory of a pressure cooker having a safety valve. Its entire body is of
solid aluminum mould which is even rare in Italy itself. Any guest who is given
a shot of this cappuccino will fall for stealing it when he would come to know
through his experiences that most of the online availabilities are fake -- fake
in the way that they do not function properly. With such wonders, a bit of
coffee domesticized through this classical Italian device turns out to be the
finest shot I have ever had even at any of the finest coffee bars in my life.
The flavour gets richer if the pot remains unwashed and the Italians do not
wash them generally, until they are forced to or driven by some odd situations.
Only two shots of sixty milliliters of cappuccino
(Café Italiano)can be steamed out of this device in five minutes on a simple
burner of a gas oven. This can be converted into two cups of espresso with 1:3
proportions of warm water added to it. Everyone reading this are cordially
invited at my place.
Let me be
reticent about the rest of the stories on these…and you know as it is said, ‘many
things can happen over a cup of coffee’.
For that you need to see this:
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