Extra, extra, read all about it! Want to know what a supper at Hush is like? The lovely Sarah Khan spent an evening at Hush and wrote a piece that I hope to be worthy of. Read all about it HERE.

Give the Gift of Hush!

Want to give something unique, spicy, and unforgettable? Nothing says cool like seats at Hush Supper Club. Give the gift of Hush. Their taste buds will thank you!

Hush gift certificates available for one supper guest, a couple, or the whole family.

Email Geeta to purchase your gift certificates

Give the Taste of Geeta’s Kitchen for the Holidays with a Chutney Gift Pack!

Your list is long, but you’re short on original gift ideas. The Starbucks gift card screams BORING. Never fear. Geeta is busy this holiday season blending up some Indian magic. Give the gift of fresh, delicious chutney and say goodbye to boring.

Each gift pack includes two chutneys, chaat masala, and three recipes using the ingredients. First is Geeta’s signature cilantro-mint chutney, spiced with green chiles, cumin and black salt. Also included is the sweet and sour combo of tamarind-date chutney. Finally there is what Geeta affectionately refers to as ‘crack powder’, or chaat masala. This spice mixture will turn any dish into heaven. With Geeta’s chutneys, you’ll have the flavor of India.

$10 delivery in DC on orders of 5 or more gift packs

Two recipes for chutney melts transform grilled cheese into a gourmet meal. The chana chaat recipe is for the famous Indian street food that requires two chutneys and chaat masala to make. But chaat is only as good as the chutney you use. With the chutney gift pack, you have all the secret ingredients to turn your kitchen into a street corner in Bombay.

HOW TO ORDER

1. Email Geeta to place your order.

2. Cost is $20 per gift pack. Pay via PayPal or cash when picking up.

3. Schedule a day to pick up your order between Friday, December 14 and Monday, December 24.

($10 delivery available in DC for orders of 5 or more)

4. Happy Holidays!

Want to learn more about India? Whether you are interested in food history, culture, or Indian religions, Geeta has a talk designed for your audience. Hire Geeta to speak at your next event. To learn more about Geeta’s signature talks, go to the Public Speaking page.

The signature talks are:

1. Desis 101

2. The Spice Tour

3. The Jains and the Jews

5. Religions, East and West

Private Events

Would you like the experience of Hush in your home? Whether you live in Chicago, San Francisco or Siberia, Hush will come to you. We bring the meal and stories. You provide the venue and guests.

Geeta has hosted Hush in homes across the country, from Brooklyn to Berkeley. She can fly in for an evening, or a weekend to provide a luxurious 5 course meal for you and your guests. All suppers include a guided tour of Geeta’s spice box and the story of the Jains.

Weekend events include a private cooking lesson with you and up to 7 others.  Want to learn how to recreate a Hush meal? What is masala, chai and chutney? Geeta will teach you the basics skills and vocabulary. She will also stock your pantry with the essential spices needed to cook like an Indian.

Please contact Geeta for rates.  geeta (at) hushsupperclub (dot) com

Because Hush will be there, silly! Hush is going on the road again, this time all the way to the high desert mountains of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Geeta will be hosting a supper on August 18 at 7 pm in a gorgeous adobe home in the mountains with a view that extends for miles. Come have cocktails on the terrace and dine in splendor. This is a supper not to be missed. Click here to make a reservation.

Santa Fe guests, would you like to learn how to cook the dishes Geeta will be serving up? Then join us on August 20 and 21 for Hush cooking lessons. The menu will include Geeta’s famous minty mango lassis and spicy corn with coconut and green chiles. Makes your mouth water? Then reserve a spot!

In response to the oft asked question, ‘What do Indians eat for breakfast?‘, I’ve decided to answer with a new menu and format at the inaugural Hush Brunch. I will be serving a feast of numerous breakfast, lunch and street food dishes from India, mainly from the western state of Gujarat. Gujarat is famous for chaat, a wildly popular type of street food. These dishes are rarely found in Indian restaurants. Also, it wouldn’t be brunch without bottomless masala chai. If you’d like a stronger beverage, Hush Brunch is BYOC = Bring Your Own Champagne. Hush supplies the orange juice, you supply the champagne for mimosas.

It wouldn’t be brunch without bottomless masala chai. If you’d like a stronger beverage, Hush Brunch is BYOC = Bring Your Own Champagne.

In keeping with the storytelling tradition of Hush Supper Club, I will share the strange tale of how tea first came to India (hint, it was not thousands, or even hundreds, of years ago) as well as the history of street food in India, complete with chutney tastings, photographs and spice mixtures.

 I will share the strange tale of how tea first came to India (hint, it was not thousands, or even hundreds, of years ago)

Upcoming Supper Dates: February 3, 4, 17 and 24 (7 pm – 11:30 or later)

Upcoming Brunch Dates: February 12, 19 and 26 (Noon – 3 pm)

An idea born on a dark and stormy night has survived against all odds, or despite the fact that Mama Geeta insists that I didn’t know how to cook when I started Hush! Nonetheless, this Saturday, November 11 will be the 50th evening of Hush Supper Club. I am more in love with Hush now than I was on that first supper night (partly because my cooking skills now meet Mama Geeta’s approval). How shall we celebrate? With champagne bubbles of course! I will prepare saffron-infused desserts, a fragrant delight called paan, and share stories of Hush suppers past. This is a supper not to be missed! Reserve HERE.

If you can’t join us this Saturday, upcoming supper dates are November 18, 19 and December 2, 3. Reserve a seat now!

Can’t imagine billions of dollars in gold and gems lying around your basement, next to the broken treadmill and old golf balls? Well, like so many stories about the subcontinent, this one falls in the category Only in India. In the southern state of Kerala, one Hindu temple is asking just that question after finding $22 billion in gold and jewels in a vault that hadn’t been opened in 150 years. But there is a spicy twist to this oh so Indian tale. What paid for all those jewels? Pepper. Read all the details from Vikas Bajaj of The New York Times here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmoEPnty3Rk

]]> http://www.hushsupperclub.com/2011/10/honoring-the-legendary-jagjit-singh/feed/ 0 http://www.hushsupperclub.com/2011/10/what-kind-of-millionaire-are-you/ http://www.hushsupperclub.com/2011/10/what-kind-of-millionaire-are-you/#comments Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:00:58 +0000 Geeta http://hushsupperclub.wordpress.com/?p=387

With the obligatory idle banter over, it’s time to start the questions. The slicing game show music theme cuts the eardrums. The camera pans in tight. The contestant fidgets. The host flashes impossibly white teeth.

Prem Kumar quizzes Jamal Malik: Who was the star of Zanjeer?

A) Anil Kapoor            C) Amitabh Bachchan

B) Shahrukh Khan      D)Madhur Mittal

Hmmm. The boy knows the answer without blinking. ‘Pakka’ – he’s sure. But I’m certainly not. I have come to watch Slumdog Millionaire. I’m thrilled to see a film about ‘my people’, but question one has me doubting whether I am one of them.

Question 2. What motto is inscribed at the base of the national emblem of India?

A) Money alone triumphs      C) Power alone triumphs

B) Justice alone triumphs      D) Truth alone triumphs

Jamal needs a lifeline. So do I. Money and power seem crass for a national motto, but how to decide between justice and truth? I would guess truth – Gandhiji being a lover of it – but guessing is the problem. I don’t actually know. And for that matter, I don’t know what the national emblem of India is either. For Jamal, an uneducated orphan learning millionaire answers on the streets of Mumbai, this answer doesn’t exist in his daily orb. In the following scene, the police inspector is aghast. ‘How can you need a lifeline for a question my five-year old daughter could answer?!’ That’s when I know. A silly game show slaps me in the face with my American roots. I can’t get past the $200 question on Indian Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

Alas, the issue doesn’t end here. Instantly images of bald eagles on embossed golden circles, ‘In God We Trust’ and ‘E Pluribus Unum’ pop up before me. I know these answers, but they are relevant to a faraway place. Not the world of Jamal Malik, or my ancestors.

Then, finally, a question I can answer with musical ease.

5. Whose picture appears on a U.S. $100 bill?

A) Benjamin Franklin        C) Franklin Roosevelt

B) George Washington       D) Abraham Lincoln

No, there aren’t any $100 bills thickening my wallet, but I can sing ‘It’s all about the Benjamins’ with Puff Daddy any day.

What kind of millionaire am I? So far, an American one. But game shows are the land of culture and kitsch, not citizenship.  How can I be so deaf to a culture I call my own? Maybe I’m not. Returning to the opening question provides a clue, for this is a film about what Indians believe.

As the film begins, we, the audience, are posed a question that feels more like a riddle: Jamal Malik is one question away from winning 20 million rupees. How did he do it?

A) He cheated        B) He’s lucky

C) He’s a genius    D) It is written

At the end of the film, the answer is revealed, but any Indian knows to mark D) immediately. No amount of luck, genius, or trickery can best fate.

The name of the Indian version of the game show points to D) – Kaun Banega Crorepati?  Translation – Who Will Become a Millionaire? Becoming rather than wanting -  therein lies the difference. Do you want it badly enough?  It’s a present tense question, in the active voice, and it’s all about your will. Will you become a millionaire? It’s in the future, passive, outside of you. You are not the actor, but the receiver. 

Destiny is not esoteric or vague. She is corporeal, precise, unique.

Destiny is the true leading lady in the love story of Jamal and Latika, but destiny’s role is not always starring as a uniter of lost love. From the Western perspective, believing in fate appears a dangerous passivity, and a cruel, ‘you must have done something to deserve this’ karmic moralizing that cuts through the main artery of your will and bleeds you of your resolve. How many times and in how many voices has my mother repeated, reminded,  scolded, consoled, chastised, revealed, and illustrated to me, in moments mundane and dramatic, ‘It is all written, beta.’  Often with a glance to an open palm, guiding the eye to one of the physical locations of destiny. Destiny is not esoteric or vague. She is corporeal, precise, unique.

But the Indian will parry with the counterpoint – what is this infamous will? What calamities have befallen those who pound on the chest of willful ignorance, not seeing all around as maya – illusion? This grasping of the ego as real has led to folly upon folly, battle upon battle. For will and ego are brothers in arms, isolating you from the truth of the stars. 

We who have schooled in one world, but dined and prayed in another know only too well how many gaps there are in our dealings with both. Holes that leave us confused, but also a double-seeing that leaves us more subtle.

These philosophical differences are starting points rather than arguments to be won or lost. Knowing the first principles of a people is key to understanding their motivations.  Ultimately I feel at home inside the world of Slumdog Millionaire because I know that Jamal Malik believes in destiny. Or, more fundamentally, I know what believing in destiny looks like – the verbs and nouns, icons and symbols of that belief. But what of the other questions? Where do anthems or wordplays or names of movie stars fit into identity? Knowing the answer to a game show question is certainly entry to a culture club. We who have schooled in one world, but dined and prayed in another know only too well how many gaps there are in our dealings with both. Holes that leave us confused, but also a double-seeing that leaves us more subtle. I feel the pull of will and the power of destiny.

There is a clunky name for this mixed bag. Mexican-American, Kenyan-American, Indian-American. We are a hyphenated breed, a hearty half and half joined by a congealing dash. Maybe Slumdog Millionaire is right. It is written that way.