My father, seventy-eight, is a methodical man. For thirty-nine years, he has had the same job,
cataloguing books for a university library. He drinks two glasses of water first thing in the morning, walks for an hour every day, and devotes almost as much time, before bed, to flossing his teeth.
“winging it” is not a term that comes to mind in describing my father. When he’s driving to new places,he does not enjoy getting lost. In the kitchen, too, he walks a deliberate line, counting out the raisins that go into his oatmeal (fifteen) and never boiling even a drop more water than required for tea.
我的父亲，78岁，是一个办事有条不紊的人。39年了，他一直做着同样的工作，文献编目，就是在一家大学的图书馆里把图书按目录分类。
他早上的第一件事是喝两杯水，他每天要步行一个小时，在上床前他会花尽可能多的时间来对付他的牙齿清理牙垢。在我心里，“即兴发挥”不是一个能用来描述我父亲的词。当他开车到达新的地方时，他不会因为迷路而兴高采烈。在厨房，他也总是能不慌不忙地仔细应对，
比如对他燕麦粥里的提子数一清二楚（15个），又比如用来泡茶的水他从不会多烧一滴。
It is my father who knows how many cups of rice are necessary to feed four, or forty, or a hundred and forty people. He has a reputation for andaj – the Bengali word for “winging it” – accurately gauging quantities that tend to baffle other cooks. As oracle of rice, if you will. But there is another rice that my father is more famous for. This is not the white rice, boiled like pasta and then drained in a colander,that most Bengalis eat for dinner. This other rice is pulao, a baked, buttery, sophisticated indulgence, Persian in origin, served at festive occasions. I have often watched him make it.
我的父亲，他清楚地知道多少杯米能够喂饱四个人，40个人或者140个人。他有着andaj（在孟加拉语中指“即兴发挥”）的荣誉，就是能够准确地估计判断数量，并可以凭此让其他的厨师汗颜。如果可以，你可以称呼他作“米圣”。其实，另外一种米让我的父亲更加出名。那不是白米，不是那种要像面食一样煮熟并在滤器中滤干水被孟加拉人用作主食的米。那种米叫做pulao（普老），一种烘过的，多油的，经过复杂沉浸的米，来源于波斯，通常在
在节日里食用。我经常看到他做这种米。
It involves sautéing drains of basmati in butter, along with cinnamon sticks, cloves, bay leaves,
and cardamom pods. In go halved cashews and raisins (unlike the oatmeal raisins, these must be golden, not black). Ginger, pulverized into a paste, is incorporated along with salt and sugar, nutmeg and mace,saffron threads if they’re available, ground turmeric if not. A certain amount of water is added, and the rice simmers until most of the water evaporates. Then it is spread out in a baking tray. (My father prefers disposable aluminum ones, which he recycled long before recycling laws were passed.)
那过程中涉及到伴着肉桂条、丁香、月桂叶和小豆蔻夹 ，在油中将印度香米炒干。
其中加入对半的腰果和提子（不是燕麦粥中的提子，这种必须是金色的不是黑色的）。用盐和糖将被磨成糊状的生姜混合到一起。如果有肉豆蔻、肉豆蔻衣和藏红花，那也要和他们混合到一起，如果没有这些，那黄姜粉也可以用来代替。加一定数量的水，并当大部分水都蒸发时把米慢煮。然后那些米就会在烘烤盘里伸展开来。（我的父亲喜欢用处理过的铝盘子，那都是回收发令通过的很早以前他回收的。）
More water is flicked on top with his fingers, in the ritual and cryptic manner of Catholic priest.
Then the tray, covered with foil, goes into the oven, until the rice is cooked through and
not a single grain sticks to another. Despite having a superficial knowledge of the ingredients and
the technique, I have no idea how to make my father’s pulao, nor would I ever dare attempt it.
The recipe is his own, and has never been recorded. There has never been an unsuccessful batch,
yet no batch is ever identical to any other. It is a dish that has become an extension of himself,
that he has perfected, and to which he has earned the copyright.A dish that will die with him when he dies.
更多的水在他的指尖从顶部一点一点的加入，就像用天主教牧师那种例行宗教仪式般神秘的方法。然后把用箔纸盖好的盘子放入烤箱，直到米完全烤得透熟并且粒粒分明（没有任何一粒米粘着另外一粒）。尽管对于技巧和佐料成分我有一些肤浅的了解，可我真的不知道怎么去做父亲那种pulao，也根本不敢去尝试。秘方是他自己的，也从没有被记录过。父亲从没有哪一炉米不成功，也从来没有哪一炉米和另一炉米一样。那是一道已经变成了他自己扩展的菜肴，他使得这道菜完美，他也拥有着这道菜的版权。这道菜也会随着他的逝去而泯灭。
In 1968, when I was seven months old, my father made pulao for the first time. We lived in London, in Finsbury Park, where my parents shared the kitchen, up a steep set of stairs in the attic of the house,with another Bengali couple. The occasion was my annaprasan, a rite of passage in which Bengali children are given solid food for the first time; it is known colloquially as a bhath,
which happens to be in the Bengali word for “cooked rice”. In the oven for a stove no more than twenty inches wide, my father baked pulao for about thirty-five people. Since then, he has made pulao for the annaprasans of his friends’ children, for birthday parties and anniversaries,
for bridal and baby showers, for wedding receptions, and for my sister’s Ph.D. party.
1968年，当我17个月大的时候，我的父亲第一次制作了pulao。那时我们和另一对孟加拉的夫妇住在伦敦的Finsbury公园，父母亲共用着厨房，而那厨房在房子阁楼里一列陡峭的楼梯正上方。那段时间是我的annaprasan，一段孟加拉孩子第一次被给予固定食物的仪式。大家都对它（这个仪式，这段时间）熟识于心，
俗语中它叫做bhath，正好是孟加拉语中“煮好的米饭”的意思。在不超过20英寸宽的炉子烤箱中，我父亲要为35个人烘制pulao。从那时候起，他就开始为朋友孩子的annaprasan仪式，为生日聚会和纪念日，为婚宴和宝宝洗礼，为婚礼接待，为我姐姐的博士聚会烘制pulao了。
For a few decades, after we moved to the United States, his pulao fed crowds of up to four hundred people,at events organized by Prabasi, a Bengali cultural institution in New England, and he found himselfat institutional venues – schools and churches and community centers – working with industrial ovens and stoves. This has never unnerved him. He could probably rig up a system to make pulao out of a hot-dog cart, were someone to ask. There are times when certain ingredients are missing, when he must use almonds instead of cashews, when the raisins in a friend’s CUPBOARD the wrong color, He makes it anyway,with exacting standards but a sanguine hand.
我们搬到美国后，好几十年了，在Prabasi（一个在新英格兰的孟加拉文化机构）组织的庆典上，近400人吃过他的pulao，他发现在公共机构场所，学校，教堂和社区中心他自己都只是和工业烤箱和炉子一起工作。但这从没有使他气馁。有人在说，也许他都可以装配一套系统从热狗推车中制作pulao了。有时候有些佐料会弄不见，有时候他必须用杏仁来代替腰果，有时候朋友橱柜里的提子颜色不对，可是他会一样的制作，用一样严格的标准和乐观而充满希望的双手。
When my son and daughter were infants, and we celebrated their annaprasans, we hired a caterer,
but my father made the pulao, preparing it at home in Rhode Island and TRANSPORTING it
in the trunk of his car to Brooklyn. The occassion, both times, was held at the Society
for Ethical Culture, in Park Slope. In 2002, for my son’s first taste of rice, my father warmed
the trays on the premises, in the giant oven in the basement. But by 2005, when it was
my daughter’s turn, the representative on duty would not permit my father to use the oven,
telling him that he was not a licensed cook. My father transferred the pulao
from his aluminum trays into glass baking dishes, and microwaved, batch by batch,
rice that fed almost a hundred people. When I asked my father to describe that experience,
he expressed no frustration. “It was fine,” he said. “It was a big microwave.”
当我的儿子女儿还是婴儿的时候，我们庆祝了他们的annaprasans，我们雇了一名厨师（伙食管理员），可是我的父亲会做好pulao，在罗得岛的家里准备好后再用他的车里的大箱子给我们送到布鲁克林来。这两次仪式都是在Park Slope（斜坡公园）的名族文化社区里举行的。2002年，为我儿子第一次的米食，我的父亲在屋子地下室的巨大烤箱里烤暖了盘子。可是2005年，轮到我女儿的时候，责任代理却不准我的父亲使用烤箱了，理由是他没有授权的厨师执照。我父亲将pulao从他的铝制盘子里移到了玻璃烤盘里，一炉一炉的用微波炉烘制了供近一百个人使用的pulao米。当我问及父亲那个经历时，他没有感到受挫，而是说“没事的，那就是一个大微波炉而已。”
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翻译了好久啊，欢迎采纳，个别之处不地道请谅解。
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