Fox trotting in the desert

Went camping out in the desert this past weekend along the North shore of Lake Qarun in the Fayoum on a trip that included both  Egyptological and natural history sites. My ideal for a weekend getaway from Cairo! Sandwiched between visits to the ruins of a Graeco-Roman village with a temple dedicated to Sobek (most temples from this period and in this region especially are dedicated to some incarnation of Sobek which is why Mr. Hoath could get away with telling me about Crocodopolis )and the Valley of the Whales aka Wadi-al-Hitan, I had a delightful encounter.

Armed with a friend’s head lamp I was finishing up a bit of business and when I looked up into the dark void I thought I saw the glint of a pair of golden lights trained straight at me. Then they disappeared. I was ready to dismiss my ’sighting’ of whatever it was as combination of imagination and wishful thinking but then those glints reappeared. I was convinced that they belonged to something live. For a few minutes we flirted with each other, these lights and I, with creature doing sort of doing a dance from behind the rocks, curious about me but cautious, and me, holding still as I could and trying to convince Katharine that I was not on anything and was seeing something real. She didn’t believe me. And I don’t blame her because unless you are looking straight at them and them at you those eyes don’t reflect any light at all. And the moon (a beautiful waxing crescent during our trip a week before the Eid) and stars were of no help whatsoever.

By the time we returned to the campfire, I had half-persuaded myself that the animal was an imaginary friend. But there was a lurking hope that it might be real and so I mentioned it to Richard, who is a naturalist  in the best English tradition. The the kind that I’d read about as a kid and had become a Girl Guide (Scout to Americans) just in order to emulate (though that plan amounted to naught). The kind of naturalist who would track various creatures when he was young and make plaster casts of paw-prints … And being that kind of naturalist he didn’t dismiss my story but came back with me and Kathy to investigate.

Whoo hoo! I was right. We not only saw it again (Kathy too since she had her headlamp on and so got the same glimpse of the golden eyes) but tracked it’s movements for several minutes (maintaining a respectful distance) as it scampered around the dunes attracted by us (maybe our scent held out the temptation of something to eat?) but too wary to come too close. At one point it seemed to do a sand slide and before picking itself up and trotting off.  I will admit that other than it’s eyes I could only discern – and very briefly at that – a slight and shadowy figure moving about in the dark, but Richard has more experience in these matters and could make out more details, estimate size etc. Back en route to the campfire, he consulted his field guide – his by possession and authorship, I should add – and figured that what we’d seen was likely to have been a Rüppell’s sand fox.

There are a few species of fox native to the Egyptian desert. They are nocturnal animals who emerge at dusk in search of food, and it’s natural that when a large entourage of people set up camp (we must have numbered some 25-30 all told) the fox comes to investigate the intruders, albeit well hidden in the shadows and the dark.

Good scientific thinkers that we are, we went the next morning to gather evidence of our sighting. And sure enough there they were, paw prints tracking across the sands, bearing witness not only to our sighting but to the episode of the sand-slide. Let the photograph bear witness then, not just to the fox trot but to the midnight, electric slide!

 

Bananas about slugs

A sudden impulse led me to go web surfing in search of my fellow banana slugs from the halcyon days (for me at least) of ‘92/’93 and wow did I hit a gold mine! For those reader who may not know this, the banana slug is the mascot of the University of California, Santa Cruz (See logo on top). I became a slug because I went through a graduate certificate program in science writing there, which not only turned me into a writer but also gave me such a taste for the graduate school experience that I proceeded to become a tenure-track grad student for about a decade and a half after that. Even now with Ph.D. in hand I have embarked on yet another Masters – this time a distance learning one in museum studies, which also has its roots in slug land, since I’m doing it to extend my repertoire as a science writer. But that’s a tangent I’ll take off in a separate post – back to the slugs…

Virtually every one of my classmates from that batch has gone on to impressive achievements, and I can’t say I’m surprised, though am proud as Punch (to borrow a phrase I haven’t used since my Enid Blyton-reading days, er.. think teen, rather pre-teen years!) of the bunch of us. I am also somewhat lighter in the pocket but richer immeasurably in what I can safely believe will be good if not great reads.

In no particular order of favoritism, here’s where we are now…

Rusten Hogness – The guy to whom I owe the title of my blog. Peregrines are obviously not the only birds on Rusten’s brain as you can see from his website. He runs a cool radio station out of Santa Cruz where you can listen to all manner of birdsong among other things. Rusten is also the person who planted the first seeds of interest about the history of medicine/science in my brain.

Lisa Seachrist – Lisa’s background coming into the program was the one closest to my own and we were of an age besides. So I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised to find out that of all our cohort, it was the two of us wrote books on genes and such – and coincidentally within a year of each other – although her’s is  likely to be a more accessible and fun read than mine. Certainly it hooks you in by its very title: When a gene makes you smell like a fish… (ha ha bad pun, fully intended). And it is illustrated to boot.

Lisa Strong-Aufhauser – Go figure in a class of 10, we had two Lisas. Not there was the slightest chance of ever confusing them with each other! Each was too individual in her own right.  A tall red-head with cascades of hair the color of autumn and a personality as just as vibrant, this Lisa was the most animated and energetic of us all. She was a natural history photographer who had lived in Yosemite before moving to the Santa Cruz hills just before embarking on this course. She and her husband Kim (an honorary member of our class) were the hosts to many a party (Hallowe’en, Thanksgiving etc) at the Schloss Stronghauser where the whole lot of us would converge for a riotous time. In her quieter moments, Lisa loved to photograph oak trees. She makes movies now besides doing work for the Exploratorium and has traveled

 

Science and the pyramids

Ever heard about the science of pyramidology? About wild theories concerning the pyramids? Such as their mystic properties, their hidden purposes and meaning. or why they were really built (alien launching pads or rather receiving posts- like airports, no really!!! they’re there)? Just google the word pyramid and you’re as likely to land up on wildly imaginative websites making all sorts of tall claims as you are on to legitimate ones about their history etc. Being in Egypt, literally at their feet, I invoke the pyramids often in my classes.

Quick detour – for those of you who don’t know and who may care, my day job when I’m not blogging or grading papers (sorry the latter is part of my day job) is that of a university teacher. Here in Egypt I work at the American University in Cairo, where I teach a course called Scientific Thinking. It is one of those core courses, a requirement for all and considered a nuisance by most who seem to confuse the meaning of an education with that of getting a degree. I’ll rant on that attitude later, but back to this detour. Aah yes, scientific thinking… it’s a course intended to give all students some idea of what science is and why its important. Something I’m convinced is of fundamental importance even if I’m weary of teaching this course and only this course at AUC. It’s an uphill battle sometimes, faced with the why-am-I-here-? attitude of most students most of the time, not to mention certain others but one that has it’s worthwhile moments.

Which brings me back to the pyramids. As I said, here in Egypt I call on them, their images etc in classes to drive various points I’m trying to make home for the students, who like me, have these structure literally at their doorstep on a daily basis. Still, I suppose,  it is legitimate to ask what they have to do with science and critical thinking (which is another way to explain what my course is about). Nobody, can give a better answer to this question than my sort-of boss Dr. John Swanson and so as a public service, for as long as the link remains active, I’m uploading his introductory lecture for our course. It’s wonderfully informative, hilarious and gives a better idea than almost anything else I can think of how people can get sucked into believing the absurd. So let me invite you along for the ride. Click on the pyramid below and sit back and enjoy.

 

Emulating Amelia

Fair’s fair. And having spent the last post whining on about what’s wrong with life in Cairo, I should hasten to write about times when things go well. As they did last weekend. Now, what’s the first word that comes to mind when Egypt is thrown at you? In a game of free association, the first and obvious choice, at least for me, is still and I suspect, will always be, Pyramid.

I’ve been here for just over 2 years now, and for one of those years have been making that tedious commute to the middle of the clone-do complex at the edge of the desert that houses our new campus. But riding home in the evening, every day I can see the hazy silhouette of the great structures at Giza from the bus as we approach our turnoff from the Ring Road, and it still restores the sense of awe and hence a measure of calm, and recompense. I am in Egypt still, those structures remind me. And I get to gaze on these structures that were already on Earth nearly 5000 years ago.

But it wasn’t these pyramids that helped restore my equanimity this time. It was a much odder pyramid that we had briefly passed by on a trip to the Fayoum with John Swanson 2 years ago but had not gotten a chance to go into. This past Saturday my friend Salima Ikram, Egyptologist at AUC was taking her class on a field trip there and so I got to tag along. The site is called the Meidum (pronounced my-doom) pyramid, and may perhaps be better known to some people as the Broken or Collapsed Pyramid.

Meidum is not a common tourist site, at least not as common as either Giza or Saqqara, but all the more interesting for that reason. Chronologically it dates to a period sometime between the aforementioned two – which is to say after Djoser’s step pyramid in Saqqara but before the tombs of Khufu or any of the others that came after in Giza. Which means it’s still old kingdom, but then again so are all the pyramids. Later folks went for beautiful tombs no doubt, but the pyramids stopped after the oldies. The goldies continued though – note Tutankhamun’s stash, and he was only a minor king. The pharaoh or king who built the pyramid at Meidoom was called Sneferu or Senefru and it is situated father south of even Dashour (home to the Bent and Red pyramids) closer to the Fayoum than any of the others (which might be the reason why we even tried to go there on that trip 2 years ago). Aidan Dodson, a visiting Egyptologist, who gave us a talk about the site at Salima’s behest,  mentioned that there is speculation within the profession of a possible pharaonic palace site not far from these tombs (but closer to the river naturally) but thus far we have no physical evidence (aka empirical evidence for my scientific thinking students) for such a site. No matter really. Whatever the reason this pyramid was indeed built, though not used as a tomb since Senefru went to build another tomb that apparently satisfied him more.

It’s fascinating for any number of reasons. For one it gives us a hint for the intermediate stages of the evolution of a classic or “true”  (smooth almost icosahedral) pyramid structure from its predecessor the step pyramid. The Meidum pyramid represents a hybrid really, with an inner layer of steps and an other shell with the  smooth (and to my eyes, steep) slope incline of the true pyramid. This was created by filling in the steps with the building material smoothing out the shape. The reason we know this is because of what happened to it in the years (centuries?)  following its construction. Maybe because it hadn’t been used as tomb – although its entirely possible that even a mummy inside would not have deterred the scavengers – people in later generations began to scavenge this structure for stuff such as its limestone blocks from the lower part. Consequently, the stability of the structure was disturbed and its upper parts collapsed into rubble exposing its step-like interior to the outside and giving it it’s distinctive hat-like appearance (well okay, St. Exupery’s petite prince and Salima Ikram may claim it looks more like a snake that’s swallowed an elephant).

This being a field trip for budding Egyptologists, we made out way into the shaft of the pyramid, and descended deep into the earth before staring a small ascent into the chamber that would have been a the pharaohs final resting place had he wished.

The chamber seemed somewhat more spacious than others I’ve seen (in the Red pyramid in Dashour for example) in part, as our Egyptologists explained, because of the structure of the ceiling. Here’s a photograph and FYI, the piece of wood used to lend support to the stones and preventing them from caving in is as old as the pyramid itself! Fancy that.

Mydoom ceiling with original cross beam

The pyramid was cool (surprisingly even temperature-wise which validates my arguments for putting  pyramid visits off until fall) but even more exciting were the mastabas and funerary temple sites surrounding the pyramids. First there was a mastaba for an unknown nobleman (designated as #17 I believe) which we entered via a robber’s tunnel, giving me my thrilling Amelia Peabody experience. We crawled in rather scooted down a narrow tunnel  using butt and hands since the sand and gravel made it hard for me to gain proper footholds, and besides it was hard to keep stooping. To give you an idea of the dimensions, here’s photo of one of the students on his way out – Down the tunnel and a ladder in a narrow shaft we went in single file, till we reached the burial chamber where the granite sarcophagus was still in place though emptied of its noble contents. Here are some pictures

Back in the open air again there were some more fascinating bits of human history awaiting us, including two striking temple sites that were surely the prototypes for the grand monuments built several centuries later at Abu Simbel and Luxor (Hatshepsut’s temple specifically). One each for a king and queen, whose names escape my memory (Sorry Salima and Aidan). We also learned about the archeological practice of capping ancient mud brick structures with a layer of new bricks in order to preserve the old. Covered in dust from head to toe, bone tired from the heat, I was one happy girl as I descended the bus and made my way home that afternoon. And taking the good Hakim Sitt’s advice, ended the day with a couple of aspirin and a a warm shower – so that the next day brough no more than the soreness and stiffness of muscles unusually used. Three cheers for Salima and her chickadees. Thanks to them I got to see first hand what the thrills are all about.

 

Waterless woes

I don’t especially like to engage in long rants and  fist-shaking on the blog although I’ve succumbed to pressure on a few occasions. In fact the whole reason for creating the Horrors of Horus category on the blog was to vent on the bad experiences in Egypt – in my defense though I haven’t indulged there too often. And on the whole the troubles I encounter are no worse than in any other place, just more unique. But I think I’m entitled today. It’s been building up and the pressure cooker needs to let off its steam!!!

It’s ironic and co-incidental (tho maybe not completely so as there may be some Freudian slip relationship going on)  that I’m writing this rant during my least favorite part of the week; the weekly shout-off that stands in for what should be the most peaceful part of the week in an Islamic country – Friday around noon. My apartment in Garden City is flanked, though not immediately by mosques. So Every Friday, come time for the Gomah (or Jumma) prayers, I am subjected to an hour’s worth of 2 imams on loudspeakers belting out their sermons at top volume over loudspeakers, in seeming competition with one another. With due apologies to the more devout of my friends, this public enforcement of prayer does not anything to endear religion to me. I’m reminded of the worst part of growing up in Punjab when a similar loud-speaker war was waged virtually everyday in that case among clashing religious cultures – mostly Sikhs and Hindus – chanting or singing off-key and later threatening the others for disturbing their  respective prayers. Seemed then to hurl any benefits of said prayers far into the outfield. Is it worse or better here? Don’t know. At least because they’re all on the same side of the God fence no threats are ensued, but still, I wish they’d be quieter about their devotions. Aahh well, I suppose as an outsider to this culture and this religion, if  I don’t like it I should grin and bear it. Mostly I do, but like I said today is my day for opening valves and letting things spill…

There’s a reason for my having switched metaphor right then. Spill. rather I should say spit, hissing and gushing like the sound of the water that’s finally at long last after a hiatus of TWENTY FOUR HOURS has graced my apartment with its presence again. Water shortage should not be either a surprise (after all I live in a desert?) or something I’m unable to deal with (I grew up in India – water cuts were par for the course but with regularity) but I figure if they’re cutting off supply I should be warned. So I can plan ahead. Collect some in bottles for using in toilets and bathrooms and simple hand-washing. None of which was possible in my apartment for the past 24 hours. The odd thing was that it was only in my floor as far as I could tell. The lower floors had water (and I have a disgruntled sidebar about that – where I got chastised for trying to be considerate – which I may or may not talk about in more detail later) but neither my across the hall neighbor nor I had any.Suddenly yesterday morning it had stopped spontaneously. I had a sink overflowing onto the counters and dining table with dishes from the previous night’s dinner party, carefully timed so that Fawzeya would handle the bulk of the cleaning but she couldn’t work her usual magic. There was no water (or barely any at that time) and I think she may have used bottled water (GASP!) for the last of the cleaning. Anyway… even before she’s gotten here, I’d gotten some warning of the trouble and took the precaution of calling the University housing office but they came, checked, said the storage tank was nearly empty but that we’d be fine once it was filled – which apparently was happening – and that insh’allah [How I hate to hear that invocation - usually it means "I'm not doing anything about it"]  we’d have it running again sometime during the day.

Stupid fool for believing them. Until this morning there was not a drop to be dripped anywhere. Even the toilets were unusable – thank goodness I’m anosmic! I swear,  when the plumber finally came this morning – and only in response to a frantic phone call from yours truly to the University emergency number – and opened the tank (apparently the damn thing had been full for heaven knows how long but no one had seen fit to release the water to our flats) the sound of the flushes was as music to my ears!

So things were salvaged after a fashion, but really, if one is going to cut water supplies off shouldn’t they at least warn the residents? I think I know the culprits, it’s the same damn people who have been tearing down the apartment on the 7th floor and disturbing our Saturday mornings while at it for the past few weeks. But try getting an admission or explanation. The best is – “Now everything is okay doctor, il-hum-du-allah.” No point is asking for warnings in the future either. A shrug is the best answer I’m likely to get. ARRRRGH.

This water episode was just the final straw I think in a series of incidents big and small that have been pushing me inexorably to the I-can’t-wait -to-get-outa-here mode, even though I’ve not been here for two weeks in a row since June! The swine flu paranoia — killing all pigs (by pumping them full of pesticide) and then herding all of us in airports to take temperatures thereby ensuring that if any of us hadn’t been exposed by then we surely would be! That reached it’s zenith at the airports over Eid. Getting back in the dead of the night last Saturday, the place looked like an Indian railway station – people with bori-bistras (and here of course many women in their own personal boris) – camped out in every spare inch of space. And I’m not sure if this was my sleepy eyes imagining things or not, but I could have sworn that I saw a couple of guys on the luggage  conveyor belts the better to get their bags!

The black boogers, pollution etc are ever present. I won’t say more. But despite everything there are little things that redeem the place – after all one can’t be relentlessly unhappy when good mangoes are to be had. nd despite October having begun, I’m still getting really nice ones. The weather is improving and I get to see my friends (who grow more precious as my time with them is getting more limited) on a semi-regular basis. And the feluccas beckon round the bend. And a visitor will visit in a week. But God! what I wouldn’t give for a couple of more weeks of the halcyon days of the last of summer – on the beaches of Crete. Stay tuned for a full account, maybe. While I go take advantage of my newly restored gift of the Nile, that made 5000 years of Egyptian history possible -wet and wonderful, water.

 

Never need six…

Writing about Mylène and Sartre reminded me of my own brush with celebrity a few years ago, and I decided I’d indulge in a little first-hand name-dropping. Now, my friends often joke that whereas most people of the world are supposed to be connected  by no more than six degrees of separation, I am connected by just three! Of course that’s an exaggeration, but sometimes things do happen to me in such a way that I often seem to have more than my fair share of coincidences and links to unexpected people. Here’ what transpired in the particular event I’m thinking about.

I was visiting my parents over ‘06-Christmas/’07 New Year break since I had a more than a month off and Hawaii, where Dad had his visiting appointment  (quick segue – those of you who think I’m the globe-trotting peregrine, know this – I come by the tendency very honestly,having inherited it  directly from my father), seemed a darn sight more attractive than Eau Claire – rhymes with Oh Where? – at that time of the year. Anyway, as they always do, my parents by then had made a lot of new friends. My mother had wanted me to meet one of them in particular and so she invited her over one evening for tea.

Maya came over with her little daughter warning us ahead of time that she could spend very little time, so we wouldn’t be offended if she had to leave early. But once she got there, 1 hour slipped away into two and then three as we chatted away merrily about all manner of things. Every half an hour or so, she would make a genuine if reluctant effort to leave, but then we’d begin talking again and she wouldn’t. Tea graduated into dinner and it was quite dark by the time she said something like I really need to go now. My brothers’ friends are in town and I need to meet them. We have to talk strategy…

I didn’t see the next sentence coming, not in a million years:  He’s thinking of running for President.

“President of what?” you may well ask. Guess what folks, two years later, this past January, said brother was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States.

 

Of schools in summer time…

School and Summer? Not the happiest of pairings. Or so most might think. But for me, summer schools have become synonymous with a whole bunch of the nice things in life. Besides the obvious (intellectual) gains, there is the opportunity to further my peregrinations. Last year it was Vienna. A two-week summer school on the philosophy and history of medicine, which became the hook on which I hung my entire summer . That I was able to do that at all, i.e. spend the entire summer in Vienna rather than just the two weeks, was thanks to Vittoria and Sebastien, themselves friends of mine from yet another previous summer school (Bologna in 2004 on historiography of science).

This year, the summer school is one on medical ethics at the Brocher Institute by the shores of Lake Leman in Geneva. (It’s the last bit of icing on the cake that has been my globe-trotting summer of 2009). This one came to my attention because of Rachel, who was one of the instructors at Vienna (and has since become a dear friend) though not in attendance here. This brings me to the second thing on my list of nice things about summer school – the opportunity to meet people. Perhaps it’s because of the special conditions of these meetings – after all they attract people with like interests – but I’ve always ended these gatherings a few friends richer than at the outset. And then there are the stories…

My favorite episode in Geneva happened over morning coffee today, the last full day of the meeting. I happened in on a discussion about  Simone Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. Okay, maybe it’s a heavy topic for morning coffee, but hey after all,we  were among philosophers and the like after all, and one of them happened to be reading a book about these famous figures(I caught the title – A Dangerous Liaison). Suddenly he leaned over to ask this other lady, Mylène (someone with whom I’d hung out a bit this week) – Did you know Sartre?

Oookay, that was unexpected. I was rubbing shoulders with  people who hobnobbed with the legendary Sartre?

As always the story only gets better! Mylène hadn’t just met him, she’d evidently known him late in his life, by which time he was (her description not mine) – “Going blind and nasty.” And, she added,  I had to cut up his steak for him and he stabbed me in the hand with his fork …”

Stabbed by Sartre. Wow!  Could someone more versed in philosophy than I tell me please, would that count as an existential moment?

 

Swan Lake – back blog

I am such a lucky girl. If someone had told me back in July after my birthday that the best and most magnificent show of my summer was yet to come or at least a show to match my birthday present to myself, I would have laughed in their faces. After all, I’d just seen Aida performed in the Sydney Opera House no less. But I would have been wrong to laugh, because waiting in the wings – thanks to Renu and Shomik – was … (Orchestral crash rather than the usual drum-roll here please although the title of my post has given it away)…

Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. By the Russian Imperial Ballet no less.

For someone who has always been starry-eyed about ballet dancers since childhood, this in itself would be a major thrill  especially since despite said starry eyes the closest I’d ever gotten to a real performance was a kiddies performance of the Nutcracker. But this revelation was only the tip of the iceberg.

The next bonus was the venue for the show. Olympic enthusiasts would certainly be familiar with this picture from last year’s games in Beijing. It’s called the Water Cube and was the structure within which all the water sports – swimming diving etc were held. China has made a rather determined effort to not let their Olympian edifices turn into white elephants, and have been using them for all sorts of activities (including opening the pools for public use). Good on them. Anyway so without any active planning on my part I wound watching a show in an Olympic swim stadium.

Okay, so I got to see a famous ballet by a world-class troupe in a world-famous auditorium. But believe it or not, the piece de resistance is yet to come! Or to imitate those dreadful infomercials on TV for various products – “But wait ! There’s more...”

Still more? you may wonder. She’s just going into hyperbole. Well maybe but hold on just a little longer? And you’ll see why I’m indulging in such an orgy of ecstasy. You see, this was no ordinary ballet but a water ballet, making full use of not only the stage but the pools, there were synchronized swimmers and divers entering at key dramatic points of the story. Absolutely gorgeous. I was completely enchanted. As I said earlier, I really am a lucky girl!

P.S. Here’s a link to an article with pictures from the show here:

 

Books that have made me cry

I just read The Book Thief. (The author is Markus Zusak) And even though I knew how it was all going to turn out (anything set in Nazi Germany can only end in one way right?) I couldn’t help it! There was a lump the size of Gibraltar in my throat as I was came to the end. It wasn’t the story itself  – as I said it was mostly predictable – though the take on it was different. First it was about the experience of the ordinary German citizens in Germany. But mostly it was about the power of books and words (a theme that is also running through another recent favorite called Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, though that one was not a tearjerker) . What got me most about The Book Thief was the writing style. There was an odd, almost deliberate dissonance to the narrative and while normally such gimmicks annoy me, it really worked for some reason in this book. Also the fact that the narrator was “Death” was an interesting device both from the narrative and plot perspective.

Strangely enough though this book had been published 2005 I only just came across it now. But maybe that’s because Zusak is an Australian. Then again, it isn’t as if I found it in a bookstore there, no it was while browsing for Kindle books on Amazon. Which I could have been doing anywhere. But coincidences happen. And worlds collide. And my world was shaken as result in a way that I’m profoundly grateful for. Words really are tremendously powerful.

On the subject of the title of the post, I should also mention The Kite Runner, which is another book I could not help sobbing over. That one had a very different kind of power – the kind I feel every time I pick up To Kill a Mocking Bird. Like the person captured a time and place and experience so perfectly that all one can do really is move on. Khalas! There’s nothing more that can be said on the subject. And to suit action to word, I shall make my exit here.

 

A Recipe for Renu

Not to have two food items in a row, but… I promised Renu to forward her the recipe for this salad we had the other evening at her home in Beijing thrown together with ingredients in their fridge and pantry, so here it is, all my other visitors to the blog can read it too. And though it was in Beijing there is nothing even remotely Chinese about the salad. Rather the inspiring ingredient was Norwegian if I’m not mistaken, a half-empty bottle of pickled herring…

Cucumber & Herring Salad

Peel (only if necessary) and cut 1-2 cucumbers into relatively chunky bits depending on your choice (I chose wedges but half moons or even complete rounds will work depending on diameter) nd place into a glass bowl that has been rubbed with a cut clove of raw garlic. Mince the garlic and add to cucumbers also. Roughly chop pickled herring (the Mehndiratta fridge had a version pickled in a brine along with slices of onion) and other contents of the pickle if present. If the herring does not have onions, you may want to chop a small red onion and add to the mix. Season with salt and pepper and the juice of fresh lime or lemon. To finish, add a few tablespoons of raw mustard oil, and toss well. Allow to rest for a while in the ‘fridge  for flavors to marry and voila! Simplicity itself.

P.S.  Cucumbers tend to give off water in the presence of salt and so you may end up with rather more dressing that you started with. Depending on the intensity of the flavor you favor, you may add some more mustard oil to the remaining juices, and use the dressing for preparing a ceviche (if you are in an area where you can get good quality raw fish) or simply tossing it with some pre-steamed, peeled shrimp for an interesting alternative to shrimp cocktail.