Food, Glorious Food!

11^th October 2018

Despite never cooking at home (shout out to Esther for all those dinners and lunches), one of our favourite travel activities is a cookery class. The top rated class in Udaipur is taken by a woman called Shashi so at 10.30am we found ourselves sitting in her kitchen, going through recipes for the day. As a little bonus we saw some sort of parade from the window, which was just amazing!

Unlike previous cooking classes we didn’t have our own cooking station, rather there were two gas hobs on the kitchen island and each participant (five including me and Rory) helped prepare different elements of each dish. We started with chai masala tea and moved on to vegetable pakora that was served with mango chutney and a coriander dip.

 The rest of the day was spend preparing and cooking chapattis, nan, paranthas and three different curries which all began with the same base, known by Shashi as magic sauce. Apparently most Indian dishes are cooked using this base. We picked up some good hints and tips and when it came time to leave we stocked up on Indian spices, recipe books and even a spice tin. We might not have pots and pans but we have plenty of spices for when we finally start using our kitchen!

We ate so much food at the cookery class that we were too full for dinner so instead we lounged about our amazing room and made the most of the view. Our first night at the Haveli was spent in a traditional room but today we moved to a lake view suite. We think this was Selina Scott’s room on the TV show and while the traditional room was lovely, the lake view was unbeatable. I don’t think we’ve ever been so close to the water – it really is like the Venice of the East (but with no gondolas and lots more rubbish).