They say a man likes to do things alone. Being alone, they say, can make you lonely. I was alone, but not lonely. At least not quite yet. I had my choicest poison for company, and enough dope to last many weeks.
That stuff can drive you crazy though, especially when you're alone. It can also give you epileptic cravings for anything sweet. So there I was, wanting to have a nice sweet dessert but feeling cantankerous, because that's how a scruffy man would ideally feel. Or so I thought. I skimmed through my options. I didn't want to bake a cake. Baking is for the weak. I'd rather go for frozen dessert. Frozen stiff, and a barrel of alcohol to wash it down with.
When you're a man, you don't go shopping for ingredients. The correct word to use is hunt. For obvious reasons. But hunting for dessert ingredients? Oh no, too emasculating. I altered my plans a little. I needed to make some OTHER thing that would be a great excuse to go foraging for dessert ingredients. Pretty cool right? I was putting on the mask in masculinity :B
So I went hunting for some meat, a rather adventurous thing at this hour, considering I had very little moolah and only a cubbyhole butcher shop to buy it from. But I like hunting for meat this way. And for today's efforts, it gives a rough edge to the whole deal.
Butcher shops are ideal places to make you feel manly. Although I'm pretty sure I'd faint if I ever saw a pig being slaughtered. But for our current performance, let's go with the thought. In the deepest drawl I could muster, I asked for an under-cut piece of pork. If you're in Delhi, you'll soon realise this is a highly coveted piece. Most of the stock gets over because crony floozies from restaurants across town will flock here to handpick the best cuts early in the morning, even before the swine has bled its last drop. Luckily for me today, though, they had a piece left.
Normally I like conversing with the butcher. Man to man you know. As if. About how fresh the meat is and what different kind of cuts there are. Yada yada. Today though, he seemed amnesiac; a puzzled face that pretended to not know what he was doing. I heard him tell his assistant to not wear that shirt to work. This annoyed the life out of me. This butcher, with the enormous shoulders and beefy arms wielding a gigantic meat cleaver, was beginning to seem very soft. Not at all going with the script. I like my butchers hard-faced and stone-hearted; how else would they do justice to their jobs? Tenderness in a butcher is anathema to his profession.
I grunted at him to quickly carve me some pieces of chops. I think he got the hint. In a ruthless-but-deft stroke, he hacked the chops out, much to my heart's content. I handed him the money, in exchange for the meat. I walked out. There was a fish market up ahead. I like fish, but only the ones I've caught. Only true men catch blue fin tuna. So I gave the market a pass. Next to the fish market were these vegetable shacks. They sell fruits out there as well. I bought some peppers to go with the steak. Also some mushrooms, beans, leeks, courgettes, cherry tomatoes and chillies. Also an avocado for a side salad.
Finally, I was en route to buying the ingredients for the dessert, when it hit me. The smell, the aroma, odour? It was so real that I lost my bearings for a second. I'll tell you why. For in this very INA market, is a place, somewhere six feet in the air, where the smells of the fruit, vegetable, meat, and fish markets mingle, and combine to form a most potent, and rather-too-familiar scent. It was so strong it stopped me in my tracks, that musty fragrance drove me mad as I kept hovering at the stop, valiantly trying to draw in deep breaths. Passers-by must think I'd found nirvana, or a new zen breathing technique. If only they knew this was something more base and carnal. For that deep whiff was redolent of nothing but a sweet, invigorating...pussy. Exactly that. And I'm not talking about the ones playing near the fish market.
As I stood there, nostrils aflare, for what felt like an eternity, I could discern the congerie of melodies within this master symphony: the delicate fruity citrus notes jostling with balmy fish drafts, fresh vegetable aromas wafting behind, and acrid notes of rancid meat, all of them somehow combining to create the most heady and intoxicating miasma known to man. If you've read or watched Perfume, you'll know that the most potent and alluring scents are those in which one has infused the good with the bad. Like life itself. How would you know joy without suffering, pleasure without pain, grace without guilt?
I made a mental note of the spot, planning to bring B over and make her smell the same thing.
Back home, I marinated the pork cuts in soya sauce for half an hour. Before adding a dash of rosemary, I rubbed crushed garlic on the meat. Then proceeded to pan-sear the meat first and then the vegetables. They say when garlic and butter come together, a chef is born somewhere. I'd say when you add rosemary to the mix, all the sins a chef has committed in his lifetime are forgiven. Once the meat is seared and sizzled golden on both sides, take it out and add chopped vegetables. That's it. Stir fry and it's done.
It was awesome, to say the least. Now the excuse for a male chauvinistic dessert over, I proceeded to make the real thing. Crushed some hobnob cookies to a crumble, and after adding a lavish portion of melted butter, set it in the dessert tray. Put it in the fridge, to make the base firm, and now focused on the condensed milk to make toffee out of. My Yoda diction, please pardon. Boiled it for hours, and after layering the cookie crust (now out of the fridge) with split bananas, ran the toffee solution over it. Added whipped cream and shaved chocolate flakes on top and we're ready.
Now if you wish, you can pour the vodka on top of it. It'll taste like shit, but you can have dessert like a man.
