Dinners At The School On The Hill

When you visit Barnes School, outside the cantonment town of Devlali, which is nearly 13 km, and several light years away from Nashik, you enter a sort of charmed little realm. Life pedals along here, leisurely, snooze-ily, a few decades behind the rest of the world, in a wonderfully pleasant manner.

The campus buildings of this Anglo-Indian boarding school, with their cobblestone exteriors, which date from the early 1900s, have names that evoke nostalgia -- Far Cottage, Spence Block, Candy Block, Haig-Brown Block, Gate Lodge, Tuck Shop.

School traditions -- while up to date when it comes to education -- do reflect a kind of old-fashioned cadence, perhaps because of the surroundings and the distance from an urban centre. It's a sort of wistful flavour that you wish you could bottle up and take home with you.

At socials, for years past, teachers, and earlier students too, would do the ballroom glide or peppily jive to numbers that ran to stuff like Blue Suede Shoes, I Love You Because, or Strangers In The Night etc.

All lady visitors are reverentially addressed as 'Miss' by the lower staff.

Waiters, still called bearers, bring you various types of old-timey snacks for tea, including 'pudding -- pieces of fresh pineapple, canned cherries, cubes of cheese loaded on a toothpick. They arrive with this delight, on a tray, at 4 pm, and a steaming kettle of chai, announcing curiously, as you hold back a smile, "Miss, Pudding... Miss, Pudding."

A retired MiG-21 adorns one of the school fields, a gift from grateful alumnus retired Air Chief Marshal A Y Tipnis.

The sounds around here are simple and wholesome -- of school gongs, shift sirens, Sunday church bells, musical honks and wails of peacocks, geese cackling, singing and children playing. And you wish the romance of this little corner of India never changes.

The School on the Hill -- that looks out onto the Sahyadris, which gleam bright green in the monsoon, and jungles of peacocks, deer, civets, panthers -- has educated generations of children since 1925, including one of Rediff's own A Ganesh Nadar (who wrote a book on Barnes), as per its motto Accepto Robore Surgam.

Some of its famous alumni -- Dilip Kumar, Vinod Khanna, London chef Cyrus Todiwalla, Admiral Karambir Singh, Arshad Warsi -- did indeed live up to those words 'I shall arise with the strength I have received'.

The meals served in the dining hall to boarders for years were as pleasantly and cutely anachronistic as the school's quaint environment and you got to taste dishes not had anywhere else, especially at teatime.

Of course, over time, the menus have been updated to include South Indian specials and more modern items that appeal to today's kids.

Bread and biscuits are yet being freshly turned out at the firewood-powered bakery (in the photograph above).

The mess manager was once soft-spoken Mr Thomas Mathai, who had taken premature retirement from the army. He attempted a few innovations, including introducing idlis

The dish I remember Mr Thomas for was the ceremonious whole head of cauliflower he would serve visitors. It had almost the pomp of roast turkey or a whole stuffed chicken, or some other non-vegetarian dish, but was your humble gobhi or phlower, as cauliflower is often called, smartly primped up with various frills and trimmings, like a mule pretending to be a horse.

The enitre, uncut cauliflower is steamed and then fried up with masala. Finally, it is finished with toppings of salli or potato sticks and a little shavings of paneer. It tastes gorgeous.

It's a party dish that will keep the veggie faction of your guests happy at dinner. Serve with pulau or steamed rice. That's not to say it isn't an everyday choice too because it doesn't take long to cook and goes well with dal-roti as well.

Mr Thomas' Barnes Cauliflower

Serves: 2-3

Ingredients

• 1 medium-sized head of cauliflower
• 1 tsp haldi or turmeric
• Water
• Salt, 2 tsp + a pinch of salt while steaming the cauliflower
• 1-2 tbsp oil or ghee or butter
• ½ tsp hing or asafoetida
• 2 onions, finely chopped
• 2 tomatoes, finely chopped
• 2 tsp garlic paste
• 1-2 tsp red chilly powder
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp dhania or coriander powder
• 2 tsp grated ginger
• 3 tbsp ketchup or tomato sauce
• 1 medium potato, peeled, julienned or cut into fine sticks
• Little oil to pan-fry the julienned potatoes
• 50 gm paneer, grated, optional
• 2 tbsp chopped green dhania or coriander or cilantro 

Method

• Parboil the whole cauliflower with very little water (about an inch), a pinch salt and the haldi in a pressure cooker or covered kadhai, till ¾ cooked, about 1 whistle.
  Open up the cooker to stop the cauliflower from cooking further.
  Keep aside to cool and don't discard the water.
• In a frying pan, over medium heat, fry the julienned potatoes with a little oil, till crispy.
  Drain onto a tissue or paper towel-lined plate.
  Keep aside.
• Meanwhile heat the oil (or the ghee or the butter) and fry the chopped tomatoes with the onions and the hing over medium heat till it becomes a paste and the oil begins leaving the mixture.
  Then add the garlic paste, chilly powder, haldi, garam masala, coriander powder, ginger, leftover water (from parboiling the cauliflower), mix and fry for 4-5 minutes more till the garlic is cooked and its raw smell disappears.
  Now add the tomato sauce to the paste and mix.
  Add in the whole cauliflower and lightly cook for 5 to 8 minutes, covered, without stirring much; the cauliflower should remain whole.
• Garnish with the grated paneer, pan-fried grated potato juliennes and the green dhania.
  Serve hot with pulau, steamed rice, rotis or naans.

Zelda's Note: I prefer the softer, pan-fried potato strands, as opposed to salli or crisp potato sticks, but either will do.

The grated paneer adds a little festive garnish, but is not crucial to the taste of the dish. A little grated cheese would work too.

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