The Chef Read Free Page A

wash rice, pick over lentils, grate coconut, harvest coriander, and when he was as young as three he was
allowed, under supervision, to chop tomatoes and slice onions with a sharp knife.
    From an early age Maravan was fascinated by the process of transforming a few raw ingredients into something quite different. Something not merely edible, not merely filling and nourishing, but
– something which could even make you happy.
    Maravan would watch carefully, taking note of ingredients, quantities, preparation techniques and sequences. At the age of five he could already cook entire menus, and at six, before he was
meant to start school, he learnt how to read and write because he could no longer keep all the recipes in his head.
    For Maravan the first day at school was almost an even greater tragedy than the death of his parents shortly afterwards, the details of which he did not discover until he was almost an adult. As
far as he was concerned, all that had happened was that they had not come to Jaffna with the rest of the family; most of the time they had not been around anyway. He found the journey to Jaffna
chaotic and his relatives’ house, where they stayed initially, small and cramped. But he did not have to go to school and could spend his days in the kitchen with Nangay.
    The oil burner had brought some warmth into the small sitting room. Maravan got up and went into the kitchen.
    Four fluorescent bulbs bathed the room in white light. It contained a large fridge and a freezer of the same size, a gas stove with four burners, a double sink, a work table and a wall unit
covered with stainless steel, on top of which were various appliances and food processors. The room was spanking clean and resembled a laboratory more than a kitchen. Only by taking a closer look
could you see that the various units were not all exactly the same height and that they had slightly different fronts. Maravan had bought each one individually, either second-hand from markets or
from specialist exchanges, and installed them with the help of one of his compatriots, who had been a plumber back in Sri Lanka and who worked here as a warehouse assistant.
    He put a small frying pan on the lowest flame, poured in some coconut oil and opened the door to the balcony. Almost all the windows opposite were dark; the back courtyard far below him lay
silent and abandoned. It was still raining – heavy, cold drops. He left the balcony door slightly ajar.
    Pots with mini curry trees were lined up in his bedroom, each with its bamboo cane and each a different age. The largest reached up to his armpits. He had got it as a sapling some years back
from another Sri Lankan. Taking cuttings from this plant he had raised one tree after another, until he had so many that he could sell the odd one. He did not like doing this, but when winter came
he did not have enough space. The mini trees were not hardy: it was only during the warm months that they could sit on his kitchen balcony; in winter he had to put them in the bedroom under a grow
light.
    He broke off two of the nine-leaved twigs, went back into the kitchen, threw them into the hot oil and added a ten-centimetre piece of cinnamon. Slowly the aroma of his
childhood rose from the pan.
    In a small cupboard under the wall unit he kept his distillation equipment: a flask, a bridge with a cooling jacket, a receiving flask, two flask holders, a thermometer and a roll of PVC tubing.
He carefully assembled the glass elements so that the distillation flask sat over a gas burner, put the roll of tubing into one sink, and connected one end to the tap, the other to the cooling
jacket. Then he filled the sink with cold water, took a plastic bag of ice cubes out of the freezer, and shook them in.
    Meanwhile the fragrance of coconut oil, curry leaves and cinnamon had opened out fully. Maravan emptied the contents of the pan into a tall-sided heatproof glass jar and processed it with his
wand mixer into a thick,