"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?"
Hawksworth smiled resignedly and took another mouthful.
Whoever thought there could be so many uses for spice. We use spice in England, to be sure—clove, cinnamon, pepper, even ginger and cardamom—but they're intended mainly to disguise the taste of meat past its prime. But here spices are essential ingredients.
"Let us return to your requests, Captain Hawksworth. I'm afraid neither of these is entirely within my power to bestow. In the matter of trading privileges for your cargo, I'll see what can be done. Yours is an unusual request, in the sense that no Europeans have ever come here to war with the Portuguese, then asked to compete with them in trade."
"It seems simple enough. We merely exchange our goods for some of the cotton cloth I saw arriving at the customs house this morning. The Shahbandar stated you have the power to authorize this trade."