Banglitalian Food

As only a handful of the international students are on campus this weekend, we thought it might be fun to try a little cooking of our own (ordinarily our meals are provided by the campus chefs). I volunteered to make a little pasta. I wasn't feeling especially ambitious, so when I was in Dhaka I bought some linguine and tomato puree so that I could make a quick marinara.

I arranged to make lunch today, and was escorted to the kitchen by one of our extremely friendly cooks, and found myself in the middle of a VERY large space full of Bangladeshi men who spoke very limited English. So that in and of itself was an adventure. I managed to explain that I needed onions, garlic, salt, pepper, and herbs if they had them (they didn't). In the end, everyone was so excited to assist that I didn't really do anything but stir the pasta and taste-test. The end result was a sort of Bangladeshi-Italian fusion dish, with a sauce made of the above ingredients, some soybean oil, and the local variety of squash (very large green "pumpkins").

It's very hard to re-create a recipe you're used to in an environment that's so foreign--the only similarities between my kitchen at home and the kitchen here were the knife and cutting board, which made for a very different cooking experience. It was also extremely fun to watch all of the chefs come and examine the pasta (imported from Italy) and the tomato puree--clearly neither ingredient had ever been seen in that kitchen before. They were passed around, and pieces of dry pasta were sampled (as I feebly tried to explain that it's only good when cooked). Almost everyone was convinced that my sauce was going to turn into some kind of curry, and I was offered soy sauce, fish sauce, turmeric, eggs, and chicken as possible ingredients, all of which I had to turn down (the squash was my compromise).

Quite fun, all in all. And I got pasta for lunch, which was another nice break from the rice routine.