by Dawn Drzal
The round white dining table, which looked as if it had never seen a meal, was scattered with manuscript pages, and I thought it was in her interest as well as mine to get them out of her hands. We had just started to go through the few remaining queries when Josefina began to complain of leg cramps and went to lie down on the sofa. I was wondering what to do when I heard groans from the living room. Clearly in agony, she wouldn’t allow me to call her doctor (she said she didn’t have one) or her son (she didn’t want to bother him). Finally, over her strenuous objections, I dialed 911. As the paramedics lifted her onto a stretcher, I surreptitiously stuffed the loose pages into my satchel. Maybe her baby could wait to come into the world, but mine couldn’t.
On the way to the emergency room, I called my doctor to see if she could recommend a colleague at the hospital. Although Josefina’s condition was not diagnosed that evening, the pains in her legs were caused by blood clots, one of which would break off four months later and lodge in her brain, causing a massive stroke. She would live for six more years, but she would never speak again.
Josefina’s stroke occurred while I was on maternity leave, and I didn’t learn of it until I returned to work several months later. I kept telling myself that I should go visit her, but I didn’t. I thought it was because I had a new baby and a demanding job, but I realize now that on some level I felt guilty for pushing her to finish the book and partly responsible for what happened to her. Intellectually, I don’t believe she would have lived longer if I had allowed her to leave those pages on the dining table as the weeks turned into months or even years, but the heart believes what it believes. It is an ironic consolation that her book was published three months after she was robbed of the ability to tell her story. Sometimes I imagine her, in her long silence, handing the glossy volume to visitors, having at least the satisfaction that it will tell them exactly what she wants them to know of her life and no more.
Crepes Filled with Huitlacoche, Gratinéed with Mascarpone and Manchego Cheese
(from Rosa Mexicano: A Culinary Autobiography with
60 Recipes by Josefina Howard)
On the page before this recipe appears, Josefina appends the following footnote to the “All-Huitlacoche Dinner” she prepared for the James Beard Foundation: “Cuitlacoche can also be spelled huitlacoche.” Since huitlacoche is the preferred spelling, I took the liberty of changing it in this recipe.
Crepes:
2 cups milk
5 large eggs
1 pinch each of sugar and salt
2 ounces flour
2 ounces butter, melted
¼ pound butter, clarified
1. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk the milk, eggs, sugar, and salt. Sift the flour into another bowl, add a little of the liquid, and stir to make a paste. Incorporate the rest of the liquid and the melted butter, and mix just enough to combine. If there are lumps of flour, strain through a fine sieve. Allow the batter to sit for ½ hour before using or, for best results, overnight.
2. In a nonstick pan or 6-inch sauté pan, melt ½ tablespoon of the clarified butter over low to medium heat. Tilt the pan to coat the surface with the butter and pour out any excess. Ladle approximately 2 tablespoons of the crepe mixture into the pan. Quickly rotate the pan so the mixture evenly covers the bottom. Cook for 1 to 1½ minutes and gently flip with a spatula, being careful not to tear the crepe. Cook for 30 to 45 seconds and remove from the pan. Repeat the process until the batter is finished. Stack the crepes on a plate and cover with a kitchen towel.
Huitlacoche filling:
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons butter
½ medium white onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 serrano chile, seeded and very finely chopped
1½ pound huitlacoche, frozen or canned
¾ cup small kernels of corn, fresh or frozen
salt to taste
2 tablespoons chopped epazote
Garnish:
4½ ounces mascarpone cheese
4½ ounces manchego cheese, grated
small leaves of epazote, for garnish
1. Heat the vegetable oil and butter in a 10-inch sauté pan. Sauté the onion for 4 to 5 minutes, add the garlic, and cook over medium heat until the onions are translucent. Add the chile, huitlacoche, corn, and salt, and cook until most of the liquid has evaporated. Stir in the chopped epazote; set aside to cool.
2. Place 2 to 3 tablespoons of the huitlacoche filling across the center of the crepes. Roll the crepes and place 3 on each plate, seam side down.
3. Place approximately 1½ tablespoons mascarpone cheese on top of each plate of crepes and sprinkle with 1½ tablespoons manchego cheese.
4. Place under the salamander or broiler to heat and melt the cheese. Garnish with the epazote leaves.
Serves: 6
Note: Mascarpone cheese is substituted for the clotted cream or triple cream found in Mexico.
is for
Indian Breakfast
Our trip to Rajasthan was born promisingly enough, with a tipsy bid at a silent auction on a package called “Stay at the Taj Mahal.” The description read like an opium dream, the cities themselves an incantation: Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur. Half-believing the minimum bid to be missing a zero and certain the competition would be fierce, we gave only a pro forma glance at the sheet as we were leaving. Our name was the only one there. We were thrilled until we actually began planning the trip, when the gap between fantasy and reality threatened to swallow us whole. By the time we left on separate airlines—to ensure that our seven-year-old would not be left an orphan in case of a plane crash—we were barely speaking.
How to explain, then, the almost queasy joy I felt on spotting my husband’s face across a sea of heads in the fluorescent chaos of baggage claim in Delhi? Somehow, an improbable confluence of delays on behalf of both airlines had resulted in our arriving within moments instead of hours of each other. I was so weak-kneed with relief at not having to pretend to be brave about making my way to a hotel on my own in the middle of the night that I stepped effortlessly into an alternate dimension where it was easy to remember having swapped traveler’s tales a decade ago with the attractive man across the carousel. What exactly had I found so irritating about him the day before? It was like trying to locate a word I couldn’t quite remember. I felt as if the universe itself had colluded in our reconciliation, and the spell did not wear off during a glorious week and a half.
Now, the night before our departure, the pièce de résistance: we were about to have drinks with the maharana of Udaipur. When we stepped off the little launch from the Lake Palace Hotel, the driveway was empty, although the palace had said it would send a car. My husband informed the brocaded dock attendants, who exchanged a quizzical look before the senior one made a hurried phone call, and a few moments later a venerable black Ambassador rolled up, emblazoned with the royal Mewar coat of arms. Humiliating as it was to arrive at the door a mere fifty yards away, I was grateful to have been spared the larger embarrassment of wandering around looking for the entrance—rather modest as palace entrances go. I still hadn’t recovered from the only other time I’d been invited to visit the aristocracy, when I drove up to the rear of a Loire chateau and mistook my host for the gardener, watching his amused expression curdle into horrified disbelief as my French deteriorated into complete gibberish.
We were greeted by Jyoti Jasol, who was to the maharana of Udaipur what Condoleezza Rice had been to George W. Bush—a sort of official “wife.” Gorgeous and statuesque, she resembled the court ladies in Indian miniature paintings. Her sari was made of an exquisite silk chiffon edged in silver, of a turquoise so intensely saturated it seemed impossible that a fabric could possibly hold that much color. In all the riotous panoply of color I saw in the saris of Rajasthan, hers was the only blue one. Looking at her elegant silhouette and graceful head wrap, I was suddenly, painfully conscious of my bare knees. The day we arrived, our guide had told us tha
t in India only Muslim women wear black, thus rendering most of my evening clothes unsuitable. Luckily, at the last moment I had remembered the great Diana Vreeland’s dictum, “Pink is the navy blue of India,” and had decided to throw a short floral shift into my suitcase. As a few other guests drifted in wearing khaki and linen, I wished I had trusted the “smart casual” on the invitation. Feeling at once overdressed and overexposed, I envied my husband his impeccable suit.
Jyoti led us down a brightly lit gallery with tantalizing rooms opening out on either side—too fast to peek—onto a moonlit terrace, saying that the maharana used it as a sort of outdoor office. Tapestried chairs were arranged in an oval on an exquisite carpet in the center of a lawn, truly a luxury in desert Rajasthan. Five of the other six guests were connected with a factory recently established in Udaipur by Odegard, a high-end carpet manufacturer. The sixth was a French journalist. There was an awkward silence as we stood waiting for the maharana, whom we were told to call by the affectionate honorific “Shri Ji.” Although we were on the lookout for him, he managed somehow to materialize unobserved from a hidden door. A stout gray-bearded man in his early sixties with deep pouches under his eyes, wearing sandals and a short-sleeved shirt with many pockets, he gave an impression of power and congestion, like the late Orson Welles playing a nineteenth-century English explorer. He muttered a vague general greeting and waved me to a chair on his left. Forty years of Western woman autopilot kicked in, and only the lightning-quick hand of my husband prevented my derriere from performing the enormous gaffe of landing on its chair before His Highness’s reached his. I owe you one, I thought gratefully. Servants emerged from the shadows bearing silver trays. His Highness sat down heavily. “There’s wine and fruit juice for those of you who don’t want spirits,” he said, pronouncing it “spidits” like a character in a British drawing room comedy. I thought I caught a note of wistfulness in his voice as he said it, so when the first tray came my way I asked if any of the glasses held Scotch. “Any of the four in the center,” he said with his first show of enthusiasm. “At last, I’ve found someone to drink Scotch with me!” I felt sorry for throwing the servant into a tizzy, though, by taking it with only water, not ice and soda as the maharana did. Another gaffe.
While drinks were served and he chatted with the head designer of Odegard, a smooth dude from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, obviously a favorite, I got an opportunity to observe him. I saw no trace of the disciplined polo player he had been, although I already liked him well enough to be glad he had escaped the tragic toll that sport had taken on so many Rajput princes. Just days before, we had seen the young maharana of neighboring Jodhpur, crippled in a match the previous year, haunting the Trophy Bar of the monstrously overgrown and nearly deserted Umaid Bhawan Palace. The impression of heaviness Shri Ji conveyed seemed to be spiritual as much as physical. We had heard during our tour of the City Palace earlier that day that his father had become a “king without a kingdom” in 1970 when Indira Gandhi cut off his privy purse. When Shri Ji became the seventy-sixth scion of a Rajput dynasty founded in 734 AD, he found himself in the unenviable position of trying to provide for the people of Udaipur without the means to do so.
The wind kicked up, and Jyoti shielded her face prettily with her orhni, a long swath of the same turquoise silk as her sari. She and the maharana briefly discussed and dismissed moving inside. The company’s limited store of small talk was beginning to sputter, and she looked at me expectantly. Seated at the left hand of the maharana, I was clearly expected to sing for my Scotch, but my mind obdurately refused to produce. I surreptitiously slid my notebook out of my evening bag, but to my horror I found everyone staring at me in silence to see what jewel it would produce. The questions I had hastily scribbled in the hotel room now seemed embarrassingly banal. Why hadn’t I listened to my husband and done more homework? I felt my face turn scarlet and hoped it was too dark for anyone to notice. Jyoti darted me a reproachful glance. The maharana gave up and turned back to Mr. Williamsburg.
He was certainly a powerful personality. Was it boredom he was emanating? Impatience? Loneliness? No, that wasn’t quite it. He seemed utterly, unimaginably alone in a way that was impervious to human companionship. Like Ishi stumbling out of the forest, he was the last of his breed, the end of the line. Even if there were a few maharanas left in name, he was the only real thing, trying to hold on to some measure of power and wealth through the exercise of sheer will and wits, as a canny hotelier, among other things, which was why I was here. And I couldn’t even think of a single intelligent question to ask him.
My shame-filled musings were interrupted by my husband’s voice. “Your Highness,” he began, “I’ve been reading about your policy of self-reliance and self-respect….” I was so flooded with relief that I stopped hearing his voice. My eyes mindlessly followed the bats circling and dipping overhead in their disconcertingly sudden way until my attention was jerked back to the conversation by the welcome sound of the maharana’s laughter. “What have you been reading?” he boomed. “You’re an encyclopedia!”
In addition to devouring several guidebooks and paying better attention than I that afternoon to our marvelously overeducated guide, my husband had been reading the New York Times front to back for the past thirty years. By now he and the maharana were deep into a discussion of solar energy, one of His Highness’s passions and one of my husband’s former professions. Diplomatically suggesting that solar energy might not be the solution to India’s energy problems, my husband explained why he had turned to wind energy, and our gathering suddenly ceased to be a cocktail party. Shri Ji waved his hand majestically for him to continue, transformed into Yul Brynner in The King and I. If not for the two cell phones on the table, we could easily have time-traveled back a millennium. My husband clearly had the king’s ear. To his credit, he rose to the occasion, delivering a brilliant soliloquy that began with Apple Computer’s hammer and sickle ad at the Super Bowl in 1984—“an important year for you, Your Highness” (how had he remembered his coronation year?)—and somehow segued into Udaipur as a potential role model for India’s energy future. Jyoti beamed; the group seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief. I decided it was safe to have another Scotch (when the poor servant put ice in it by mistake, I saw the evening’s only flash of royal anger, as if a tiger had leapt from the shadows). As we were leaving, Shri Ji invited us to his birthday celebration in December, and I felt a rush of gratitude and admiration for my husband, who must have been a courtier in a former life.
I opened my eyes the next morning pleasantly disoriented and as well-rested as a child. It was not that I didn’t recall where I was—our exquisite little room at the Lake Palace Hotel was unmistakable in the delicate predawn light. It was myself that felt unfamiliar. The anxiety and dread that had greeted me every morning for as long as I could remember were absent. I was like a convalescent who suddenly awakens without pain. I briefly recalled the previous evening, a nightmare that had morphed into a good dream because of the man who, like a spouse in a post-code Hollywood movie, was lying in the other twin bed. But I felt too energetic to stay in bed and ruminate. Determined not to wake him, I dressed silently and slipped out into the corridor, at the end of which a door opened onto a white marble courtyard terrace.
The lake in the moments just before sunrise was as nacreous as the inside of a huge oyster shell. Flocks of pigeons wheeled gustily around my head, and I ducked beneath a carved lintel to escape the fate of the marble putti dotting the terrace. From my sheltered vantage point, I looked out over the water toward the City Palace and the Shiv Niwas, where we had had drinks the night before. Taking my first deep breath in more than a week, I realized that this was my first moment alone since I had left New York ten days earlier. At every doorway, around every corner, lurked a silent factotum in a snowy kurta and fabulous turban for whom my every wish was a command—to the point where I had to be careful what I wished for. For the tourist in India, privacy—not service—is the great luxury.
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As the sun inched over the horizon, its glow warmed the domes of the Jag Mandir across the water and revealed it to be of yellow sandstone rather than marble, transforming it so completely that I had to blink to convince myself it was the same building. Graceful chalk-white terns and stiff-winged sandpipers skimmed across the lake, and something that looked like an enormous black butterfly flittered bare inches above the surface, buffeted by invisible currents in the motionless air. From the shore rose the barking, crowing, and raucous mewling of the ubiquitous wild peacock (India’s national bird), whose call, like an alley cat in heat, is as ugly as its plumage is beautiful. As the wind freshened, my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since a delicious lunch the day before, a palace burger made of lamb and cilantro with mango pickle.
Since I was the first customer in the restaurant, I was seated at a corner table with a double view of the lake. As I spread my napkin over my lap, the waiter courteously pointed out the English breakfast buffet, typical of a good hotel anywhere in the world. When I asked if there was a local breakfast available, he smiled and pointed to a single item at the bottom of the enormous leather menu. Poori bhaji was not exactly a local specialty, he explained. Although it was now found all over the country, the deep-fried puffy bread served with a potato curry was of Southern origin. It was close enough for me. From the moment I dunked a croissant into a real café au lait in a Paris hotel room at seventeen, I realized that eating the native breakfast is one of the few foolproof ways to communicate to your body that you have actually left home. Nothing calls up Mexico for me like the memory of chilaquiles, Germany like vast platters of cold meats, Venezuela like silky passion fruit juice …
