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A drama

Since June 21, 2011 the island of Santa Lemusa is no more in the Caribbean, but on 44 ° N / 33 ° W in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. These pages are about how this could  happen?

The media on Santa Lemusa agree that the postponement of the island is due to the «exorbitant failure of the political authorities» («Leko»). They suspect «Corruption in the highest circles» («Gazette de Port-Louis») and expect «hardly foreseeable consequences for the future of the island"(ANAT).

But when have things begun, to develop unfavorably? Was it when agent Hektor Maille prevented an assassination attempt on the President of Senegal in Dakar? Or only when he got lost in the ruins of Angkor Watt? Why did it not help anything that the agent managed with perfection 12 heracleic works in Australia? And why did not even trip to Cape Horn leed to the needed answers? Questions over questions – perhaps the right moment, to trust in the magical power of an oyster fork.

  

  

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Recipes

During his mission Hektor Maille travels all continents and various countries – whenever time and circumstances permit, he seeks the road after culinary experiences and tries, what the different local cuisines have to offer. For some of these dishes we give the recipes in these pages.

Fish in Pandanus Leaf

The Assignment – Santa Lemusa

The whole menu, Odette Sissay cooked for Hektor Maille the eve of his mission:

Glace Souadou

Secret Service in Senegal

The whole menu, Agent Hektor Maille cooked one memorable evening in central Dakar for the guests of the the beautiful Lady Souadou:

Pelmeni, Maille style

Ballad in Mosow

In the process of relishing this delectable menu prepared byf Hektor Maille, Ruslan Rachmaninow found it easy to bring a Russian alphabetical salad into order:

    Red Braised Chickpeas

    Wallgames in Beijing

    While eating the items of this menu on a hot evening in the restaurant of Ren Zilin in central Beijing, Hektor Maille finds out why the dragon trail had failed to yield any results earlier:

    Salmon cured in salt and spices

    From Sweden with Lilies

    While eating these preparations Hektor Maille became aware of some strange connections between his tropical home and intrinsically Swedish traditions:

    Soup with Silky Tofu and Mussels

    Through Korea on the Cabbage Route

    While Hektor Maille sat absorbed in the spicy aromas of these culinary preparations, he pondered the meaning of the Solomon's Seal that had appeared before him all of a sudden:

    Minced Lamb on a Skewer

    In a Fever Through the Emirates

    With every morsel of this Arabic menu, secret agent Hektor Maille bit deeper into the question of what a Lemusan water-lily from a Swedish pond could possibly have to do with the kidnapping of Professor Koslow:

    Mango Salad Lun-style

    Silence in Bangkok

    As hard as Maille found it to get Jelena Jansson to speak to him, as easy did he find it to conjure up the following menu under the direction of cook Lun:

    Fish «Amok»

    Straight Across Indochina

    On his way across Indo-China on different types of transportation, Hektor Maille found his menu reaching him in bits and pieces: While he enjoyed the main course in Siem Reap, he only got the starter much later in Ho Chi Minh City:

    Noodle Soup «Kyuri»

    Cherry Blossom Blues in Tokyo

    Japanese restaurants have a few surprises ready for their guests – some are just a tad bizarre, others are, more than anything else, unaffordable. Those who, like Hektor Maille, have stretched their expense account to the hilt, would do well to eat at sushi or noodle bars. Surprising aromas can be found to waft out of a soup bowl in such eating places too:

    Anzac-Cookies

    Twelve Labours in Australia

    To cook a crocodile stew in a river bed, as Hektor Maille was asked to do as his eleventh labour, is quite something, even for our secret agent:

    Tabouleh

    Speechless in Syria

    Even if he is speechless while he journeys through Syria, Hektor Maille is not devoid of appetite. Here are three delicacies that the secret agent savours in the wonderful restaurants of Damascus – after sunset, naturally, because it is the holy time of Ramadan:

    Arroz con morcilla

    Double Game in Tierra del Fuego

    In a hut in Puerto Williams, the last settlement on the American continent, Hektor Maille prepared a menu following recipes he found in his rustic dwelling - two things that simply did not jell with each other:

    Cream with Tahitian Vanilla

    Deadlock at the South Pole

    In the white expanse of the Antarctic, Hector Maille was more irritated than usual by the black threads flitting through his view, reminding him constantly that seeing is not an obvious thing, but an act of consciousness. This menu is a tribute to these «floaters»:

    Coeurs de Poulet à la Moambe

    Congo Dreams

    Even when there is no TV chef smiling at them, dried shrimps and deep-frozen chicken hearts are the ingredients of a menu that one can dream of, most certainly when one is sitting around as a secret agent in the Congo, not knowing what one should say about it:

    Herzog's Gefilte Fisch

    Mishmash in Jerusalem

    After a failed metamorphosis, a hungry Hektor Maille traipsed through the streets of Jerusalem, his head full of fishy thoughts, but ended up with only a couple of chickpeas on his plate. We have therefore requested the restaurant «Herzog's» in Port Louis to put together a small fish menu for us:

    And also:

    New Mexico Bizcochitos

    Wordy Wild West

    On the road from Denver to Los Angeles Hektor Maille sees himself featuring in a variety of heroic tales, which superimpose his own story like projections. This, of course, does not prevent him from sampling the cuisines of the regions through which he travels – nor from falling in love with a few specialties from New Mexico:

    Stuffed Pumpkin

    On the Spice Trail in Maharashtra

    In India, Hektor Maille gathers the ingredients that make up a special spice mixture in which his entire «mission» is represented – each ingredient in this «Maille-Masala» brings to mind one particular scene from each of the 20 episodes. Maille-Masala can be part of many different recipes - for example:

    Open oyster

    With the Oyster Fork Through Paris

    There are various ways in which oysters can be prepared. They taste best when they are eaten raw, without even a dash of lemon juice – particularly when they are not simply swallowed, but chewed a bit. This gives one a taste of the various maritime aromas emerging from within their depths. We are, therefore, providing no oyster recipe here, but merely a brief guide to how oysters can be opened. It includes two methods plus one test for freshness:

    Sorpotel

    Somewhere else

    We waited a long time- and in vain - for the first edition of the «Studio Hektor Maille» . We had planned to illustrate the last episode of «Mission Kaki» with a recipe from this television show. However, when we finally asked Anath, the state television company in Santa Lemusa, for news about the scheduled cooking show of our agent, we simply got this recipe, instead of an answer. We are reproducing it here for the sake of completeness: