"Actually I once bribed a cook in the Moghul's own kitchen to give me this recipe. You will taste nothing like it here in Surat."
Hawksworth watched as he assembled a ball of the rice-and-meat melange with his fingers and reverently popped it into his mouth.
"Please try it, Ambassador. I think you'll find it remarkable. It requires the preparation of two sauces, and seems to occupy half my incompetent kitchen staff." The governor smiled appreciatively. Hawksworth watched dumbfounded as he next chewed up and swallowed one of the silver-foil animals.
Hawksworth tried to construct a ball of the mixture but finally despaired and simply scooped up a handful. It was rich but light, and seemed to hint of every spice in the Indies.
"There are times," Mukarrab Khan continued, "when I positively yearn for the so-called deprivation of Ramadan. When the appetite is whetted day long, the nightly indulgence is all the more gratifying."
Hawksworth took another mouthful of the savory mixture. After the many long months of salt meat and biscuit, he found his taste confused and overwhelmed by its complexity. Its spices were all assertive, yet he could not specifically identify a single one. They had been blended, it seemed, to enhance one another, to create a pattern from many parts, much as the marble inlays of the floor, in which there were many colors, yet the overall effect was that of a single design, not its components.
"I've never tasted anything quite like this, even in the Levant. Could you prepare instructions for our ship's cook?"
"It would be my pleasure, Ambassador, but I doubt very much a _feringhi_ cook could reproduce this dish. It's far too complex. First my kitchen prepares a masala, a blend of nuts and spices such as almonds, turmeric, and ginger. The bits of lamb are cooked in this and in ghee, which we make by boiling and clarifying butter. Next a second sauce is prepared, this a lighter mixture--curds seasoned with mint, clove, and many other spices I'm sure you know nothing of. This is blended with the lamb, and then layered in the pot you see there together with rice cooked in milk and saffron. Finally it's covered with a crust of wheat flour and baked in a special clay oven. Is this really something a ship's cook could do?"