Actually the title to this piece is a misnomer; one can’t possibly, in human memory, put down to paper one’s best meal. What if you had another best meal after the Original Best Meal? Then what would happen to the Original Best Meal-would you still call it the Original Best Meal or would you call the Previous Original Best Meal? And what would the Second Best Meal be called? Just the Second Best Meal or Now The Best Meal After the Original Best Meal? And so forth. One can only mention a great meal in the context of ,’One Of’, as in ‘One of The Best Meals I’ve Ever Had. So, ‘One of the Best Meals I Ever Had ‘ was;
In a charming, low-slung cottage in an English style,(stone, ivy, suckling rose climbing the walls, gabled uneven roof, low doors) high above the Wang Chuu River- a river that’s cuts a foaming, sparkling swathe through the Thimpu Valley in Bhutan, I once sat down to a memorable meal. The rainbow trout in the Wang Chuu is legendary. It is plump, fleshy and unencumbered by random fishing and poaching as this river belongs to the King of Bhutan and nothing can thus be removed from it without his permission. To fish in the Wang Chuu, one has to get permission from the King’s office, no less. Thus armed ,we-my family and I-spent the entire morning fishing for trout. We started at 10 AM casting with rod, reel and lots of colourful artificial bait. By 12PM, we had fourteen fat, juicy, glistening trout lined up on parchment cloth by the river bed. They looked as glorious as a bunch of well-fed, Louis Vuitton bagged ladies at 360 at a Saturday brunch air-kissing each other. The Latin name, by the way, for rainbow trout is Oncorhynchus mykiss. I didn’t make that up. Fish caught, we wended our way back to the cottage.
The trout was cleaned and placed in a marinade of bashed garlic, and lemon and then lightly dusted with flour and then set aside. In the meanwhile, the gardener,( a not very bright guy) was despatched to the extensive kitchen garden to pluck, variously, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, salad leaves and cucumber. This was ripped, chopped and mixed up with vinegar, salt, sugar, a drop of honey and some good quality olive oil. The cook meanwhile had just returned from the Thimpu market with an unexpected surprise-extraordinarily large, crunchy asparagus. The asparagus from the hills is not like the sickly, weak sticks that are an apology of asparagus that one gets in the plains. These are confident stalks waiting to be dunked in salted water and parboiled, which they were. Now the fish has been lightly fried, the salad had been tossed and the asparagus had a freshly-made Hollandaise sauce for dreamy dipping all set up on a round table with a blue and white chequered table cloth under a White Pine tree in the terraced garden.
Daisies crunch under foot, drongos call from close by hills. The wine- a chilled Chablis has been poured. The savant gardener has, this time cleverly, plucked a basket of fat, wet strawberries from the strawberry patch below the house. The local cow, no pun, has given the milk which has been turned to cream. The cream rests in a pale blue Spode jug on the next table. The river is below you, clear skies above, there’s a rustle of wind in the pines, the Chablis is causing a slight scene, the trout is exploding in the mouth. The salad is crunchier than you thought and the asparagus even more so. The Chablis is still causing a scene. The strawberries follow, cascades of cream avalanche its way over those glorious red mountains. This is truly One of The Best Meals I ever Had.
Ends.
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