My Experiments with Cooking...

Having the best cook in the world as your mother (Every child feels that no doubt, but seriously she is awesome!) and a house full of great cooks in aunties & granny who all had their specialties; isn’t an easy thing to live upto! The task toughens further when you have a mother-in-law who too comes in the same league as your own family! Not easy at all :-)

I had my first tryst with cooking when I tried my hand at tea! The simplest, I’ve kind of mastered it now, but mum’s tea still rakes in more compliments. However, I did get one up on her when papa began to prefer mine to hers. I think he was just playing the idle dad:-)

I then learnt the most basic things, the dal and the rice. Today I experiment with new kinds of dal with different seasonings and with every try it only gets better. No doubt they say practice makes you perfect.

The most important thing my mom always told me was enjoy your cooking. Don’t treat it as a burden, remember if not for anyone else you’ll have to cook for yourself, I’m not going to be there to feed you all your life!

True and when I lived on my own for little time, I learnt to do it and not be dependant on outside food. It’s only then that I realized why home food is home food! Though my husband and I love to go out often, both of us still prefer our home food!

Then I tried experimenting with rice. Now what is there to experiment in that you say? It is so simple to cook and so bland a dish! But even that can be made interesting, tried steam rice, jeera rice, plain fried rice, chinese fried rice, biryani rice, famous maharastrian “masala bhath” and “ fodnicha bhaat” ( you season the previous day’s leftover rice and the taste is super!!)

I love non-veg, I’m not so much a sea-food lover but I absolutely relish chicken and mutton dishes. So more than veg I first learnt to cook non-veg. I learnt super short-cut methods from my mum (a working woman) as I knew with my kind of work-life I wouldn’t have all the time in the world like my mom-in-law(housewife). I don’t like spending hours in the kitchen, I hate that, it has to be quick, with minimum fuss and the result should be delicious :-)

Another part of the course meal is the salads & the raitas. They just make your meal complete. You can try corn salad, veg raita, cucumber raita, and plain onion-tomato-carrot-beet salad. For more taste try seasoning it too.

My mumma taught me another important lesson, a lesson we all tend to ignore when we cook at home. Have you observed how yummy the dishes in hotels look, why can’t we do the same at home?

Garnish plays a big role in triggering the appetite of the eater. A fact we so conveniently neglect at home. It doesn’t take much to garnish and make a dish look yummy. Corriander, grated coconut, tomatoes, onions and cucumber is all it takes. They don’t cost much and it doesn’t take much effort to decorate your dish with them. Also use some nice vessels to spruce up the dish.

If you take so much effort to be presentable in public and at work, why can’t you take minimum required effort to make your food presentable to your loved ones.

Follow the golden rule in cooking is what my mum told me and the rule was “KISS”: Keep It Simple Stupid :-)

I don’t cook regularly, my work timings don’t permit me too, but I do enjoy it on the weekends. I’ve yet to scale the heights that my mumma, aunty and granny have scaled. I’ve just started my journey and going by their judgement they have the confidence I’ll get there:-)

I used to smirk when mumma used to tell me nothing beats the joy when your loved ones relish your cooking. I realize it only today, she thinks I’m finally turning into a woman:-) She has lived with a tomboy all her life and is pleasantly surprised by the little changes:-)

As she says cooking and having others savour it is just one of those little joys in life! :-) I couldn’t agree more with her :-)

P.S: I’m no Sanjeev Kapoor but a lot of my friends and my sister have been asking me for recipes for some of the dishes I have cooked. What better way than to share it along on my blog. So watch this space for more and tell me how they turn out:-)