Carefree culinary- a liberating experience
My wife being a good cook, I generally do not get much access into the kitchen. The occasional adventures did not cross the boundaries of a guided trip into the realm of a solo trek in a little known territory.
I have not ever learnt chess or the game of cards. The view of a cousin, my wife or anybody absorbed in cooking used to evoke a feeling of unknown mystery not quite dissimilar to what the absorbed players of these two games and their onlookers generates in my mind.
Apart from the laziness to learn the seemingly sublime art form, there are more reasons to being evasive about cooking. A good cook is generally fussy to a fault about everything concerning the hallowed activity. ‘Grate this way’, ‘chop that way’, add ‘sugar and saunf to taste’ are cryptic messages strong enough to dangle ‘Keep off the grass’ kind of notices before the mind’s eye.
Therefore, when my wife had to stay away in Bengaluru with our elder daughter for a relatively longer period, the younger daughter and I first engaged ourselves in building the safety net in terms of stuffing the kitchen cupboards with a range of ready to eat packages.
Thus rid of the fear of a calamity, we went to market and bought plenty of ‘to be cooked’ material. The baby steps initiated with rice, daal, scrambled eggs and fried vegetables soon graduated into complexities of chapatis, vegetable curries, those of chicken as well fish and tomato chutney with dashes of dates and raisin.
The confidence soared high. However, when our niece with her family from another city expressed their willingness to visit, we welcomed them (not without a sense of trepidation, though). That bravado too bore fruits of unexpected appreciation on the quality of our cooking.
Therefore, time has come for this upstart culinary specialist to dish out a few words of advice garnished with specks of philosophy. Here they go-
1. Cooking is a source of pure joy. Do not stay away from it. Have you seen a homeless but, happy at the moment, woman cooking on the footpath with the whole family eagerly watching the process with eyes aglow in joyful anticipation? The primordial joy can be yours too.
2. Cooking is not a waste of time. While performing that, you can plan your day, recite, sing, compose a poem, an article or build a mathematical model.
3. Fling the grammar book out of the window. Follow instincts of a chemist carrying out titration. Keep tasting the biriyani or brew at all stages. If you forget a spice to add in the beginning, do that in the middle, even at the end. That works. In most cases, en route correction is possible, achievable.
4. Tell the finicky intruder, Pele and Platini didn’t play the same way, nor did Sachin and Sehwag . All of them are masters of their game of choice.
Don’t fall for clichéd fashion, build your own style.
Happy cooking!!!
About the author
Arijit Chaudhuri is a petroleum geologist by profession. Presently, he is based at Navi Mumbai. Apart from his core domain, he also nurtures interest in issues concerning pollution, climate change and fast depleting groundwater reserves.Travelling, reading, writing articles, composing rhymes and recitation are his hobbies.
He is a GZA member