{"id":36385,"date":"2020-01-29T19:38:46","date_gmt":"2020-01-30T00:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.runkevinrun.com\/?p=36385"},"modified":"2020-01-29T19:38:46","modified_gmt":"2020-01-30T00:38:46","slug":"january-20-2020-whats-cooking-udaipur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/?p=36385","title":{"rendered":"January 20, 2020 – What’s Cooking, Udaipur?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having flown from Mumbai to Udaipur, our tour guide\/driver for the next week or so met us at the airport. Budhi Man gave us the traditional Indian ceremonial garland reserved for honored guests. I actually recognized it from a scene in Gandhi<\/em> when Ben Kinglsey as Mahatma Gandhi returns to India from South Africa on a steamer ship. After the smoky haze of Mumbai, the fresh flowers smelled extra restorative.<\/p>\n

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Katie\u2019s friend Derek got us a special at the hotel \u2013 a top floor place with amazing views. The downside to it was that there was no elevator. Huffing and puffing up and down those flights over the next few days would be a great stair workout\u2026 and would make me all the more impressed with my friends who do those skyscraper runs that have them run up the LA Library Tower or Chicago\u2019s Sears Tower or various other ones. Admittedly I had just done a marathon but even in great shape, I would\u2019ve consistently struggled with these 4 or 5 flights. Why am I saying 4 or 5 flights? Because I swear it was more flights going up than down.<\/p>\n

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The first evening in Udaipur had us taking a cooking class just up the road from the hotel. Universally acclaimed by TripAdvisor, Lonely Planet, and local guides, Shashti\u2019s Cooking Class was a help make your dinner courses crash course in Indian cooking. The food turned out to be some of the best I\u2019ve ever had, if WAY too much for the stomach and I should\u2019ve stopped eating three dishes before the end. Shashti\u2019s story though was even better. Widowed at the age of 31 and part of a caste that told her to mourn for 51 days in the corner, shedding tears, for her forever partner and then never being able to remarry, she had two small children and no sources of income. It was a struggle and a hardship and she was severely depressed. After many years, somebody suggested that she was such a good cook, she should open a cooking class. She did and though she didn\u2019t speak much if any English, she started with two Australians and they loved her and helped set up her website. Other people helped by translating all the names of the ingredients into foreign languages for her. She practiced her English and word of her classes and cooking spread. Reviews poured in. Somebody knew somebody at the BBC and suggested she be featured on a documentary on India and more and more good things happened. Karma. Her family helped her run the classes (and indeed started the class as she was late getting back from physical therapy \u2013 she broke her leg 5 months ago and is slowly walking about the kitchen these days). And her family was just as delightful as she was.<\/p>\n

They did ask me if I was an actor or an anchor and I laughed. They said I looked and acted just like a Bollywood star and they googled an image to show me. I didn\u2019t see it but they told me to watch his movie Houseful 4 where he plays Akhri Pasta. They kept calling me Akhri Pasta. So if I\u2019m not Jeff Goldblum with TSA I\u2019m Akhri Pasta in India.\u00a0 I don’t see it, but…<\/p>\n

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As I said, it was a delightful meal. Katie had booked it and we had one other person join us \u2013 Isaac from Ottawa by way of South Africa. He was just 18 but was lightyears more mature than I think I\u2019ve ever been. On a gap year before starting university, he\u2019d been working on farms in Australia and New Zealand before coming to India where he planned on spending 3-4 months. Nice guy and an amazing cook \u2013 he told me as a birthday present he had gotten some classes at Cordon Bleu but that Shashti\u2019s class was much more fun. How could it not be? Akhri Pasta was there!<\/p>\n

Too many photos from the class:<\/p>\n

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Having flown from Mumbai to Udaipur, our tour guide\/driver for the next week or so met us at the airport. Budhi Man gave us the traditional Indian ceremonial garland reserved for honored guests. I actually recognized it from a scene in Gandhi when Ben Kinglsey as Mahatma Gandhi returns to India from South Africa on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/runkevinrun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}