This morning I finally remembered to get downstairs with my camera while breakfast was being made. This morning, Suweta was cooking. She is a midwife and works in a village several hours by bus and foot from Kathmandu. She and two Mountain Fund volunteers have been away working on a medical project there, but they returned Monday so now she is helping out at the house until they head back out on Friday. (It looks like I may be going with them . . . updates to follow.)
Breakfast started around 7 when Asa, who does most of the cooking and housework at Scott and Sunita's house, got the rice going in the rice cooker. Unlike rice we get in the US, there's lots of chaff so she spends about 5 minutes picking through the grains to be sure it's clean.
Around 7:30, potatoes and dried beans went into the pressure cooker with some oil, loads of spices, and a few chopped tomatoes:
Around 7:45, the beans were fully cooked. Note to self: get a pressure cooker.
Then Suweta began making "pickles," which turns out in this instance to be nearly identical to Mexican salsa and made exactly the same way. First she chopped a bunch of those green chiles from the first photo and ground them with garlic and salt. She is using something that is virtually identical to a Mexican comal. Here, the base is called a silauda, and the grinding stone a lohora.
Then she roasted tomatoes in a hot, dry pan until some of them turned black.
Then she ground the tomatoes and added them to the chiles and garlic along with chopped cilantro:
mmmm. I vote for this as a Sea Ranch breakfast !
ReplyDelete