anniver­saries

My friends and fam­i­ly will tell you that I’m tire­some­ly addict­ed to anniver­saries. Many of my sen­tences begin, “Just think, it was only a year ago that…” or “Just think, this time last week we were…” So it is no sur­prise that I’m think­ing today about arriv­ing a month ago at an obscure train sta­tion in the wilds of Devon in a spit­ting driz­zle, div­ing into the unknown for a week of what was billed some­what dul­ly as “food writ­ing,” but what was ulti­mate­ly rather a life-chang­ing few days. I wrote, yes, but more impor­tant­ly I spent a few days learn­ing to give up a cer­tain self-impor­tance about my writ­ing, self-preser­va­tion, self-con­scious­ness. It may have been only the group that we were, but we formed an atmos­phere where self-expres­sion was de rigeur, dragged out of you rather unwill­ing­ly some­times like a forced con­fes­sion in a police sta­tion, oth­er times explod­ing almost with­out will in a sto­ry of unex­pect­ed sig­nif­i­cance, but always into a space where that expres­sion was pro­tect­ed and val­ued. The words were ana­lyzed and val­ued (or not) for what they were. There was no pre­tense and very few bar­ri­ers between us and our work.

It’s intrigu­ing what hap­pens when you find your­self sur­round­ed by oth­er writ­ers. You lose the sort of dis­tance and anonymi­ty you take for grant­ed in oth­er groups of peo­ple, peo­ple who go through life just liv­ing. Writ­ers, even bud­ding writ­ers, go through life observ­ing oth­er peo­ple, find­ing hypo­thet­i­cal rela­tion­ships among them, hypo­thet­i­cal words to describe them, imag­i­nary sit­u­a­tions to put them into. Writ­ers live every­thing at least twice: once in the liv­ing and once in the imag­in­ing what sort of sto­ry the liv­ing would make. It makes no dif­fer­ence that we were all osten­si­bly writ­ing about food, because as became abun­dant­ly clear dur­ing the week, to write about food is to write about life. As the great radio pre­sen­ter and writer Simon Parkes said to us out loud (we had all been think­ing it as the days went by), “You can ask peo­ple about their pol­i­tics, about their fam­i­lies, about their lives and they will tell you noth­ing, but if you ask them about food, you get their obser­va­tions on all the above.” It’s true. There is an inti­ma­cy, an inher­ent warmth to speak­ing about food, a con­ver­sa­tion­al trick that sneaks up on you and before you know it, you’ve laid bare your most trea­sured and, until then, unspo­ken thoughts and memories.

I sup­pose if we’d been in Devon writ­ing about crime fic­tion or screen­plays or chil­dren’s sto­ries we’d have forged some sort of bond. It’s inevitable when you have no oth­er means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion: no phone, no tele­vi­sion, no news­pa­pers, no com­put­er. You have to bond with some­one about some­thing, for *&^%‘s sake (we swore a lot that week). But we weren’t there writ­ing about crime fic­tion. We were there writ­ing about food, and that meant we wrote about our child­hoods, our par­ents, our trav­els, our mar­riages, our chil­dren, our lovers. And then to com­pound the inten­si­ty, we read it all out loud to each oth­er and sur­vived the process of reac­tion: indi­vid­ual words ana­lyzed, reject­ed, replaced with oth­er words, the whole inti­mate project on pub­lic display.

I miss it. Tomor­row is my once-month­ly Lon­don writ­ing sem­i­nar, a four-hour ses­sion with six peo­ple I’ve got to know fair­ly well over the past year or so. It’s at my house and I’m cook­ing a biryani for lunch. We’ll accom­plish some­thing. I’m read­ing out some­thing I wrote in Devon, and I know there will be a silent dia­logue in my head run­ning some­thing like this: “Just think, a month ago…” Thank you, every­one, for an unfor­get­table experience.

Chick­en Biryani
(serves 8)

2 cups bas­mati rice
5 car­damom pods
5 whole cloves
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 bay leaf
1 stick cin­na­mon, snapped in half
1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup oil (not olive, bet­ter sunflower)
3 onions, fine­ly sliced
1/2 cup yogurt
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 1/2 tsps grat­ed fresh ginger
4 green chill­ies, fine­ly chopped

2 lb diced chicken
1/4 cup chopped tomatoes
5 car­damom pods, slight­ly split
1 tbsp ground cumin
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp ground cloves
dash fresh­ly ground pepper
2 bay leaves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsps corian­der powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

3 tbsps lemon juice
hand­ful chopped coriander
large pinch saf­fron, soaked in 4 tbsps warm milk
but­ter for dotting

Now. I know that looks like a lot. But I’ve divid­ed the ingre­di­ents up into the cat­e­gories in which they’re cooked togeth­er. Pic­ture the rice and spices as the pota­toes in a mous­sa­ka, or the pas­ta in a lasagne. Then then onions and chick­en and such are the meat sauce. And the last bits are the parme­san cheese top­ping. Trust me.

So steam the rice with all the spices in it, wrapped in cheese­cloth or a lit­tle emp­ty teabag like they sell at Japan­ese tea mar­kets. Stop the rice cook­ing just before it’s fin­ished as it will cook more in the oven. Remove the spices and set the rice aside.

Now brown the onions in a large skil­let until quite, quite brown. Save about 2 tbsps on a dish, and put the rest in a large bowl. Com­bine with the yogurt, gar­lic, gin­ger and chillies.

Brown the diced chick­en in the onion skil­let for about five min­utes, and then add the yogurt mix­ture. Mix well, add all the oth­er ingre­di­ents down to the cin­na­mon and cook VERY VERY low for 30 min­utes. The oil will begin to sep­a­rate. This is good. Remove the bay leaves.

Now you’re ready to lay­er. Start with a chick­en lay­er, then a rice lay­er, then chick­en, then fin­ish with a rice lay­er. Spread with the remain­ing sliced browned onions, then sprin­kle the lemon juice over, the corian­der, then the saf­fron-milk mix­ture. Dot with but­ter, cov­er tight­ly with foil, and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.