Cooking in the Kitchen

The kitchen was stocked with standard Indian spices: fresh chillies, fresh ginger root, whole cumin seeds, turmeric, and asafoetida.  Keith mastered the basic cooking techniques and passed them on to Chuck, who became his assistant.  Some of the other boys would stand at the doorway of the narrow kitchenette to watch Keith, as one thick, pancakelike capātī after another blew up like an inflated football over the open flame and then took its place in the steaming rack.

While the fine basmati rice boiled to a moist, fluffy-white finish and the sabji simmered, the noon cooking would climax with “the chaunce.”  Keith prepared the chaunce exactly as Swamiji had shown him.  Over the flame he set a small metal cup, half-filled with clarified butter, and then put in cumin seeds.  When the seeds turned almost black, he added chillies, and as the chillies blackened, a choking smoke would begin to pour from the cup.  Now the chaunce was ready.  With his cook’s tongs, Keith lifted the cup, its boiling, crackling mixture fuming like a sorcerer’s kettle, and brought it to the edge of the pot of boiling dal.  He opened the tight cover slightly, dumped the boiling chaunce into the dal with a flick of his wrist, and immediately replaced the lid . . . POW!  The meeting of the chaunce and dal created an explosion, which was then greeted by cheers from the doorway, signifying that the cooking was now complete.  This final operation was so volatile that it once blew the top of the pot to the ceiling with a loud smash, causing minor burns to Keith’s hand.  Some of the neighbors complained of acrid, penetrating fumes.  But the devotees loved it.