A break from traditional Bijoya and Eid sweets: “yoghurt pate”. Thick yoghurt, the Greek-style kind, smeared with apricot preserve (am as yet to understand the difference between jam and preserve), sloshed with dark rum till one could see the apricot flesh and streaks of yoghurt hold onto each other and drown in the soft white depths, and then crusted with beads of sticky brown sugar that also fell a victim to the rum’s seduction. Churned, coaxed, loved, and lo and behold, ‘perfect’, precisely what ‘parfait’ means in French. When my 75 year old mum was presented with a chilled glass of the pate or parfait or whatever you’d like to call it, her A-grade olfactories swung into action, having learned the art of detecting smells from the dogs she cared for, swaying to the rhythm of the calypso in the glass, she quipped, “I hope I won’t get drunk”. And there I thought I could conceal the sugarcane juice from her and watch her wriggling on a Jamaican beach to the sound of the kettle drum, Hardy and Byron farthest from her mind. In Greek Mythology, Calypso was a nymph who kept Odysseus on her island, Ogygia, for seven years. The origin of ‘calypso’ in Greek literally means she who conceals. Well, damp squib the dancing turned out to be. Mum ate her full, asked for several refills, was stone cold sober and then took to bed; I was left holding the empty perfect glass.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 06:30:54 +0000
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