I confess I love cooking!!
My journey from not caring about cooking to enjoying food is a boring, regular and predictable story. Very few really love cooking prior to marriage. I am no different. Once you step outside mom's kitchen and into your own frightening kitchen, you first yearn for mom's dishes that you took for granted, then you gingerly replicate some parts of it and hope for some miracle now and then. Granted, it takes time, but if you don't sweat about it, it just falls into place..once in a while ;-)
I used to cook like a scientist. Measure exactly and if the recipe calls for 1/4 tbsp garam masala, then not a pinch more. I hated the words 'salt to taste'!?! I mean when do I taste and how much do I add first before tasting. Needless to mention, I cooked many dishes needing a lot of salt adjustments, after tasting!!
So what do I love about cooking, considering I am still a novice and don't eat such a lot. I like some specific things while cooking. Let me share just some of my favourite things.
* The smell and sight of onions frying in oil. Only when they are cut evenly. My knife-skills call for a separate post and I shall refrain for the moment.
* The aroma of basmati rice (once cooked and ready to become a pulav/fried rice).
* Ghee! I have had many disasters with this one. Burnt ghee, undercooked ghee, caramel and still to come. But everytime I make this, I am hopeful this will the time I get it spot on! Just because I love to eat it. Spoonfuls of it! Spread on bread, roti or even biscuit.
* Mixing the ground idli/dosa batter. I learnt to make this only because we don't like the batter available in stores. Had many disasters with this one of course. But I don't regret it and grind batter every week as I love homemade dosa and tomato-onion chutney. It is easy now and once I grind the dal and rice and its time to mix them to allow for fermentation, I feel it is all worth it. Super fun. Ignore if I sound crazed. We have made kaima idly and even bought an abelskeiver pan to make kuzhi-paniyarams!
* The moment I add the cooked and mashed tur dal to the boiling tamarind extract and the consistency of the sambhar is perfect. I did not have any disasters here, thank God!
* Rasam. Period. Its my comfort food and I love rasam rice. But no rasam in the world tastes like my mom's rasam.
* Fluffy rotis. It is not possible in a house with electric stove (our current one) , sigh!
I can add a lot more and I haven't even mentioned pastries and desserts. Simple rule I follow for cooking. Everything(veg) has to be tried once in my kitchen. If I don't like something cooked in another kitchen, it will definitely be cooked in mine. Same goes for when I love something too. Four months back when we visited folks here, they had made pine-apple rasam. I couldn't stop licking my fingers. Within a week, I tried it out. On the flip side, I had a terrible experience at this chaat place here where they served bhel puri with channa, sprouts and soggy tasteless chutneys. I have had a craving for good bhel puri, indo-chinese fried rice, bisibele bath, shahi paneer and more. Though its not rocket science, at the end of the day, everyone cooks for their palate so it does differ. I get a lot of support from my husband, both our parents and all our friends on whom I regularly unleash my culinary trysts!!
p.s. - I do read recipes from popular chefs like Tarla Dalal, popular online sites like www.showmethecurry.com and www.joyofbaking.com. The regular stuff is from cookbooks by Meenakshi Ammal (5 volumes) and Mrs. Mallika Badrinath. I have an amazing foolproof baking 'bible' by Dorie Greenspan and I highly recommend it if you are a beginner. I also watch Food Network and sometimes its been informative. Have to mention I am always inspired when I watch Masterchef Australia, my favourite program on tv!
If you know of other sites/books , do share. One can never have enough of good food, isn't it!?
12 comments:
I hear you should cook onion always thoroughly, and once you cut it, to use it up right away,never letting it sit around,as it's not safe.
u knw wat..u made my day :))) it was word for word wat i feel abt cooking..except that i am yet to explore. as of now rasam and kootu :D safe bets :D
Thanks for the wonderful post. I love it. I hate “salt to taste”. There are quite a few differences between American chef and Indian chef. American chef will say exactly how much salt to put. Indian chef will say salt to taste. American chef uses measuring cups and measuring spoons. Whereas when an Indian chef says “one cup”, we never know what size cup he/she is using. Same goes for spoons. We don’t know if they are meaning measuring spoons or stainless steel tea spoons. Also, they always confuse the audience between tea spoon and table spoon. Also most of them put ingredients not originally listed at the beginning. And vice versa, never use a listed ingredient.
I can go on and on. My pet peeve is Indian chefs will say one cup toor dal. Is it one cup raw toor dal to be cooked or one cup cooked toor dal. If I want to cook the toor dal, for how much toor dal how many cups of water I should use? They never say.
Another problem is meaning for words. In tamil milagai podi means chili powder. But in Chettinad cooking, milagai podi means sambar powder. When they want to use chili powder, they call that also milagai podi. I am confused.
Write to me or give me a call. We can talk for hours.
PS: My wife read your post. She wrote this comment for you.
Lovely post Rohitha...I totally get u. It was just the same for me in the beginning but I think you are much more confident than I ever was. But my fil used to stay with us and he used to direct much of the cooking so I guess I wasnt confident enoff to experiment in front of him. But later on I did.
I dont really like cooking the regular stuff but I like baking;-). I've been meaning to make a cheesecake for sometime now...will do it soon. Sometimes I wish I had friends closeby who shared my interests;-(.
And please tell me what is this kosher salt...how different is it from regular salt. Most of the roasts and grilling suggest kosher salt & I havent seen it anywhere in Dubai;-/.
Home made reasam is my comfort food too :) Share pics of ur culinary delights also na :)
This reads like my story... no cooking before marriage and then husband a foodie and Chef by passion, so learnt a lot of it through books. Tarla Dalal is our fav for Indian cooking. Sanjeev Kapoor is good too. Jamie is our God for Italian and Spanish cooking. And we have a big fat book on Mexican and another one on Tuscan cooking...We have over 50 cook books on various cuisines from around the world and so many word documents full of recipes on laptop. We experiment a lot. Though we follow the instructions (basic steps) religiously, we do add spices as per our taste, which of course you get it right after practicing. But now the WE part has changed to He, as the Chef has graduated to a Master Chef and I let him create magic in the kitchen and am content and happy tasting the goodies or just doing gurkhagiri! :D
Happy cooking :D
Ah, the smell of onions in the frying pan.... love it!
KittySigurdardottir, Its nice to see you here:) I thought we could store onions in the refrigerator (I mean not a full onion, but half-cut or quarter). Thanks for the tip !! :)
gils, wow..did not think you would relate to all this drivel about cooking. SO glad you enjoy it. Happy cooking !! Rasam & Kootu are good starts.
SG (Mrs.) Your comment had me in splits. I have to agree to EVERYTHING. Our stainless steel spoons don't even have measurement, every house has spoons of different sizes and as for the cups, its another confusing measurement altogether. This is why I love baking. Everything is standardized. I too know ppl who say milaga podi for sambar podi and I started asking them yellow or red as I thought I had been calling them by wrong names all along! LOL. Unless we have tasted what we set out to cook, Indian cooking sure is fully complicated. I will definitely call you one of these days. This is one interesting topic to chat about ;-D
If I ever get to meet Joy of baking's Stephanie , I will go fall at her feet; will probably have tears of joy. I exaggerate, but I do swear by her recipes.
And nothing beats Rasam. I love to pour it in a tiny steel tumbler and drink *slurrrp slurrrp* :)
Reflections, I just sound confident, but i'm all nerves mostly (specially when guests are coming over). I too love baking. I like eating north indian food but cooking south indian! So what even if you have no friends nearby, you have so many virtual ones who share your interest. I have seen kosher salt here though I haven't used it.. I found this link for you -
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes-and-cooking/kosher-vs-table-vs-sea-salts/index.html
Swaram, I will put up pics if it looks good.. ;-) Mostly I forget. Also need patience to style it. I must try sometime :)Good idea.
Shilpa Garg, WOW, You have a library indeed!!!! I like Jamie too but haven't tried any of his dishes yet. My husband sounds just like yours. On weekends he's usually seen pottering around the kitchen inventing dishes. Like you, even I just do 'gurkhagiri' (nice term!) Haha..
A, Touche mon amie! :)
Shruthi, I like Dorie Greenspan more than Stephanie but I understand your sentiments 100% :-)
Ha ha :) .. Finally , the experiments of cooking .. I still remember the post of nariyal barfi , where I laughed like crazy :) .. This post was funny :)
Hello,
Try 660 curries book by Raghavan Iyer. Its got a good mix of recipes to try out when you want something different. Good luck.
Gayatri
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