pesto bombs and manage to wrestle them back from his over-zealous hands. Arzooman returns and chastises the sous before sending him off with them to the oven.
The breasts spend a few minutes luxuriating in the heat of the oven. I spend the time watching my stock, willing it to reduce. Because that really works: pot watching. Stovies would have been so much easier. They would have had no expectations of stovies. I could have added a handful of chopped green chillies, a soupçon of ginger and a smattering of garlic, and convinced them that it was traditional Scottish fare. When it comes to a stuffed and pan-fried chicken breast with a white wine sauce, there is nowhere to hide.
Plating up time. In a proper kitchen there is a certain presentational pressure. Food has to look good. I gently place my perfectly cooked chicken breast, even if I say so myself, on the centre of the plate. The white wine and chicken stock reduction has been enriched with wonderfully sumptuous Indian butter which surrounds and elevates the chicken. I serve the chicken up to Arzooman and his chefs, not confident to send it out to paying customers. I watch them tuck in with grunts. Since it is nigh-on impossible to distinguish between grunts of approval and grunts of derision I err on the side of optimism: they are grunts of approval. As they eat my chicken stuffed with Indian pesto I ponder what their reaction might have been to a plate of mashed potatoes and mince.
That night I lay in bed worrying about whether this whole trip was a good idea. I had managed to pan-fry a chicken breast and reduce a white wine sauce in a state of the art commercial kitchen with an entire team of chefs on hand and the finest ingredients one could fly into India. These guys ate and cooked, cooked and ate European food every day. And what I had cooked could never really be described as British; it was the bastard child of French and Italian cuisine with a misplaced Indian influence. This was no sort of challenge. I felt indulged by Arzooman, a nice man and a talented chef. I had thought my dish would impress him, I had hoped my quest would inspire him. But he really didn’t get the idea of me bringing my food to India. Maybe this trip was much less about what I was taking to India and much more about the impact India would have on me. That night I can’t say that I didn’t consider packing my bags and going home, the words of my father ringing in my ears: ‘Son, if British food was all that good, then there would be no Indian restaurants in Britain.’
The fact that there are more Indian restaurants than almost any other in the UK did not mean anything as I faced the next stage of my journey. I was leaving the cosseted comfort of Kovalam and heading for the antithesis of five-star India.
The next morning I took my wheely bag and my desire to cook up towards the north-east, to Madras on the way to a small fishing town and a fisherman.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
