Ever tried telling a professional baker that his pastry was missing an ingredient? I did. Last night. When I picked up Baba's b'day cake. Black-Forest.
Long, long ago (and I honestly mean a really long time ago), ladi-tai handed me a recipe for baking a Black-Forest cake. I memorized the ingredients. Not 'coz I thought I'd lose that piece of paper she'd written it on (infact I still have that ancient piece tucked into my recipe collection book), but 'coz those ingredients felt almost divine. Atleast in that era, it certainly did (Aai would NEVER use such exotic stuff in her cake preparations).
Last night ofcourse, on tasting my Rs. 20/- pastry piece (meant for making a choice among several pastries), I happened to tell the baker that there wasn't any rum in his Black-Forest preparation. The response - dumb-struck awe.
Picture this scene - In a town that's been introduced to the world of pastries only a few years ago, a female (maybe I should highlight that word), wearing a worn-out, unkempt, soiled pair of jeans, with an even more worn-out, unkempt, soiled T-shirt and a pair of slippers (ahh! disgusting!), orders for a black-forest pastry so she can decide if that's what she wants to buy and ends up complaining - it has no RUM!
I must say, the guy was truly modest when he recovered from that momentary breakdown and smiled gingerly, revealing his white Dabur-Lal-dant-majan teeth, and said, "No madam, no rum. Only sugar-syrup."
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