After a series of serious ones here is a light 'kitkat' break.. Days before I left for US, my mother began pleading me to learn some basic cooking stuff and as like any male progeny, I duly brushed aside her comments. Perhaps, the only thing she forced me to learn was vegetable rice and I nonchalantly nodded for the series of instructions she told me. (Man! if the simplest of recipes had so big an instruction set.. nope I am not thinking ahead)... But soon I was made to repent for my non-heeding..
Making the cooker 'feel the pressure'
This was the first of many things that made me feel "what we often take so much for granted is not that easy". Forgetting to put the whistle, adding salt, to add water to the cooker base before keeping anything etc etc.. What are the implications? Here goes one.. In my enthusiasm, once I forgot to add water to the cooker. The copper bottom (which is welded to the bottom of the cooker) took all the blame and decided to loose 50% of its circumference. Meaning, it was kind of hinging at the bottom. As a result the cooker did all the modes of heat transfer, conduction (direct metal contact where the hinges are alive), convection (metal and water) and radiation (where the hinge is pretty much open). And after a few months of attempts, I successfully de-bottomed (if there is a 'de-throned' there has to be a 'de-bottomed' too) my cooker. It's no longer the famed 'copper bottomed' butterfly. It still has some traces of the weld material and statinless steel. I still have some time though to penetrate this material.
An hungry chef is an advantage
One worst part about cooking is when you are really hungry, you badly want somebody to cook for you, so that, you can eat immediately. You just can't see the processing of your food, you badly want the whatever you are making to get cooked immediately. Remembered of my mother time and again, "Amma I am hungry". There she goes in 2 mins I have my plate ful, the latter even if I am not hungry :P. But the good thing about cooking is, if you are that hungry it just doesn't matter how bad your cooking had been. It just directly goes into the stomach bi-passing all its senior managers including the tongue.
Forgetting Physics lessons can be dangerous
Physics tells me that the boiling point of water is much lower than oil and my first teacher (mother) has told me never to mix water with oil and heat, but throwing caution to wind and not bothering to wipe the vessel, one day I started heating oil in a vessel that had droplets of water.... an immediate diwali was celbrated and i went (s)currying for cover! (For those who did not understand the water droplets evaporate and the vapour actually blasts, splitting some oil in the process which is ofcourse way too hot for your skin)
Forgetting can be equally interesting
Usually before you fry, you add oil followed by mustard seeds, and wait till the mustards blast (this is kind of a cooking timer, as the mustards blast once the oil is hot enough! lol), but one day I don't know what was going in my head, I poured the oil, kept the mustards in my hand and kept staring at it as though something miraculous will automatically happen, it was ages before I finally realised that the mustards are still in my hands!! Even worse was the day when I din't even turn on the stove and kept staring at the oil and mustards!
... and can also lead to serendipity
Another day - had forgotten to add water for Dal. I discovered dal coagulates together to form a heap. i thought these dhal unite under the 'depression' of lack of water. But later, realised that the heap was because when i pour dal it automatically results in a heap (ok ok it is a PJ .. sorry).
Another day - first ever experience of the sabji (Kari/Kai) getting blackened. I wasn't to be blamed this time though. It is cricket 07 (a computer cricket game). I thought I will play just one over before the sabji is done. 1 over became 2 .. 2 became 3 and sabji became hot and black :P .
But experimentation is not funny
Cooking is best learnt/enjoyed by experimenting ;) . So I don't follow recipes exactly. I figure out why my mother cooks in a certain way by trying the exact opposite :D, and thus prove that what she does is perhaps right! But then there is a limit to experimentation. I got so bored of eating beans, carrot, turnip etc again and again that I wanted to try something different. Saw somethign called 'Celery' in the shelf, it was green and cylindrical (like carrot), thought it will be like snake gourd and tried to make a dish out of it. After opening the cover i realised they were stalks ('thandu' in tamil), but still was courageous enough to continue. The dish was bland, and the oddest thing that I had tasted. Curiosity led me to find out that Celery is something that is put in a soup!!
Introducing Sambhar Makhani
Well, we have heard of Dal Makhani, but what in the world is this? Honestly, I wanted to make Dal Makhani. But though I had the beans and stuff, I did not want to put Garam Masala as it had a tinge of onion and garlic and I wanted to make a sattvic food :P. So I decided to put some sambhar and rasam powder and thus was born Sambhar Makahni lol. To me cooking is not analog, it is digital. Either I like it (edible) which is 1, or I don't which is 0. And this dish was thankfully a 1 !!
To be frank my cooking is not that bad. But then as you can see there were many a interesting happening in my cooking career ;) Variety is the spice of life, but when I cook even if I add spice, it becomes another variety and thus I survived an entire year by just managing with less than 5 recipes (Sambhar, kuttu, rasam, sabji)
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