I finally got a chance to put my MBA to full use. I achieved Level 25 on the Ultimate Delegation Challenge. The cooking was outsourced to the husband and the writing to the guest. I did agree to find the answer to two critical questions though. First, can we agree on what the real name of this mouth watering dish from the hills of Kashmir is? The answer, is No. Is it Mutton Rogan Josh Or Mutton Rogan Gosht Or Rogan Ghost Or Gosht Rogan Josh? It is all of the above, except for the option where you mistake the mutton for ghostriders from Rogan. Secondly, is there an ideal pairing with the dish? The answer is Yes. Beer and Garlic Naan. If ever there was a complete meal on earth, to steal the words of Amir Khusro - it is this, it is this, it is this. Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this couplet, I leave the translation of this to your googling talents. And now, Ladies, gentlemen, overeaters, fellow slackers and free riders, I present to you, the one and only Jishnu Dasgupta, today’s guest writer on the blog. As regular readers of Assorted Items will know, these people have been killing it with one smashing gourmet meal after another. So much that self-respecting foodies such as myself often describe reading Icy's posts as arduous. But if you also live less than 2 minutes away from the author and her masterchef husband, it is pure torture. The knowledge that lasagnas, pilafs, sushi and other delicacies are being conjured up less than 300m away, is pain. So, this past Friday I swallowed my pride (I was hungry), and sent out a whatsapp feeler to see if we could invite ourselves (self, wife and 2 kids) to the Assorted Item Warehouse for one of their smashing lunches. Alas, I was shot out of the grey Nagavarapalya sky with a terse, "we're expecting company, so kindly stop inviting yourself over". Picking up remains of what I once thought was love for thy neighbour, I retreated to my phone looking up consolation biryanis that we could have at home. Sunday dawned, and my phone pinged. My heart leapt with an unnamed joy on seeing this “Buggaz you up for an impromptu lunch at our place? The guy who was coming forgot and is now in (location withheld) And we have a ton of mutton rogan josh lying around” The above message is the best appetizer I have ever had. Of course, I replied. When the Rogan calls, you answer with Josh! And like the SS Carpathia cheerfully sailing to the aid of the gravy-stricken Titanic, four hungry Dasguptas dressed in their Sunday best washed up at the Assorted Items Warehouse with shiny, hungry faces. Now I cannot fathom how the finest Mutton Rogan Josh I have ever tasted was rustled up by a relative first-timer like the chef. But be it known that the succulent, fall-off-the-bone meat was bursting with flavour. The gravy gave the meat a new life. The naans were simply incredible, especially the ones with a sprinkling of butter-fried garlic and coriander that was toasted just right. We literally moaned in sheer delight as we devoured one of the finest lunches in recent memory. I consider myself fortunate to have been given the chance to partake of this meal and then as dessert, be featured on the very blog that gave me the meal to begin with.
Burp.
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It was a long week of snacking. When I say snack, it might give the impression of a small dainty bowl full of small dainty things lying next to my laptop and me nibbling on them over the course of the day. In reality, I grab the entire family sized packet of salty goodness and go at it until my nails are scraping the assorted crumbs off the bottom. All this accomplished in under 3 minutes, sometimes without pausing for breath. Anyway, the weekend arrived, not a moment too soon. And brought with it the Chinese New Year and Valentine’s day. Any blogger worth her salt has to keep up with these things. I am already worried about the upcoming Women’s day. I could have written about the CNY if the other half of this resolution agreed to make momos. But no, he wanted to make a romantic meal. So, here we are. I was all for ordering cake and chocolate and calling it a day. By now you can guess, that did not cut it with the Valentine. So, long story short, we found ourselves researching dishes of the heart-and-soul variety. Once we ruled out the desserts, heart shaped pizzas and eggs cooked inside heart shaped holes made in bread, what we were left with was the Moroccan rice pilaf with olive and orange chicken. This was the obvious choice because there were two non obvious things going into the chicken. And let’s face it, pilaf sounds valentine-y, even when pulao doesn’t. The morning of the V day, I wanted to work out. He wanted to go out for breakfast. So, we walked to the breakfast place, 6km away. After gobbling down a ton of eggs, coffee mascarpone and other tasty, gobble-able things, we realised our car hadn’t followed us and quietly walked back the same distance. It was a bit much and naturally, we made up with many bottles of chilled beer. As the afternoon wore on and we could no longer keep off the hunger, we finally started making lunch. First on the assembly line was the making of the pilaf. All through the process, I felt the need to contribute relentlessly. “Too many raisins. Too few almonds. We should really have got those apricots...” This has always been the case. It all started when we first started cooking on our couchsurfing adventures, ten years ago. We were staying with a couple and their toddler in the lovely town of Graz, in Germany. We had carried along a ready mix for dosas and offered to make them masala dosa one of the mornings. It’s interesting how you naturally assume certain roles in a relationship. He started chopping up things and I started my commentary. “Too many potatoes, wrong ratio of masala to the number of dosas, too much spice...” Watching us bicker, they asked us who cooked at home. We had to admit it was neither of us - we had a cook at home, and this was one of the first times we were attempting to cook. Still, they were brave enough to try it and even claimed to have liked it. I’d like to think, we have come a long way since then. Soon, it was 3.30 in the afternoon and we were only done with the pilaf. He had not even started on the chicken and we were unbelievably hungry. I helped myself to some pilaf with mango pickle, thereby bringing the pilaf down to the level of pulao. And he slurped down the leftover chicken broth, giving it much the same treatment as filter coffee. Having nourished ourselves thusly, we got down to the flour covered chicken and doused it in orange juice and cooked it. With the olives thrown into the mix, the chicken was now perfect - bitter, sweet and sour - much like love.
Bam! Valentine-y end to the post. So, we really wanted to skip this weekend. He was in no mood to cook and I was/ am in no mood to write. But the son butted in and wanted the dad to make him sushi. He believes his dad is the best cook in the world. The only thing he credits me with making well is curd. Grudgingly, in search of some inspiration, we dined out on Friday night. We ended up at this newly opened sushi restaurant, which was thankfully empty (the things we are grateful for, these sucky days). The sushi was ok, but the paisa vasool was from the elaborate sauce quiz the waiter was subjected to by the man. The man and I made a trip together to the grocery store on saturday. After the noodles-spaghetti debacle, he didn’t entirely trust I’d come back with the right things. There was salmon, chicken, seaweed, sushi rice, avocado and a million sauces. I will need to dedicate a blog post to go into what these experiments are costing us. Of course, no price is too much to pay for experiences, and etc. I could write a bit more about what happened on Sunday, but I'd rather draw your attention to the fact that I don't want to write this post. So, moving on. When we finally got down to cooking, again grudgingly, many things started happening simultaneously in the kitchen. Chicken was cut into strips, rice was cooked in a pot with a cloth on top, cucumbers were sliced, vinegar was mixed with salt and sugar and even mushroom was brought into the picture. The man followed the recipe to a T this time. For him, that meant using glass bowls to measure and mix vinegar and salt, just like in the video. Vinegar was poured into the boiled rice, changing our perception of how rice can be eaten, forever. Chicken was teriyaki-ed. Cream cheese was taken out. Salmon was cut into pieces. And we were ready for the finale. The whole secret to making sushi is in the rolling of the roll. There were bamboo mats involved. In the video that is, not in our kitchen. At our most humble abode, as the Japanese would have put it, we made do with a plastic sheet. It took as much time to spread the rice on each sheet of seaweed as it did to cook the rice. Post seaweed no. 3, we got good at rolling the joint. I mean sushi. Sundays have now become something of a family ritual where everyone looks forward to catching up. As they say, food brings people together. No wait, I just remembered the beef over beef, and my own eye rolls at vegan substitutes. I meant sports brings people together. No wait again, that’s not it either, just remembered the cricket matches. Ah, now I remember! Nothing does. Nothing brings people together. Because people are petty and bicker at the slightest chance. I was told my posts have too much humour. So there, I hope you enjoyed the above nugget of darkness. Thanks to all the staying in during the past year, I have developed a rather unhealthy weekend FOMO. If I don’t do at least six different things, anxiety kicks in by Sunday afternoon and I make everyone around me miserable. But this weekend was right up there on my productivity scale. Saturday morning started off with a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle with the son. I squeezed in a book, a dosa at my favourite street vendor and put up some yellow shelves in the bedroom. All this before we even started thinking about the Sunday cooking. The time had come to experiment on a vegetarian dish. At first glance, it appeared only Indians knew how to make anything half decent without meat. Google tried to convince me dal makhani and misal pav were exotic dishes. The Western world seemed to have discovered only potatoes so far. So, we turned east. We figured Khow Suey was the best choice, considering how the son was chanting ‘noodles noodles’ for quite some time now. We were gonna invite some friends, whose kid is a dear friend of the boy. The boy wanted everything to be perfect, but also from past experience, didn’t in the least expected it to be. I made our list of ingredients to shouts of ‘we have beans in the house right, and I mean French beans?’ ‘Ice, is there besan in the house?’ ‘When I say beans, I mean more than 5 strands’, yada yada. Such a non believer! I zoomed off to the store and lugged in a whole lot of new stuff to stuff our small pantry shelf with. Come Sunday, the chef (I think he’s earned this upgrade in title, no?) decides he has to start cooking at 9 in the morning. The son’s friend was already at home. Both of them give us strict instructions - no broccoli, no spice, no coconut milk. So, we dice the vegetables, grind the spices and pour in the coconut milk. Which is when I discover this brady bunch of broccoli abandoned and sitting alone on the counter. One of the side effects of leaving raw material procurement to me is that I have no idea how much broccoli is required for any recipe. Luckily we are the kind of family that goes through an entire cycle of ‘dice vegetables, ensure all colours are represented, stir fry, sautee, toss, add seasoning, store in the fridge and let rest for 3 days’ before discarding the said broccoli. Guilt delayed is guilt denied (Did I just come up with the most amazing life hack or what?). The cooking this week was sponsored by Black Eyed Peas. That’s one chef and one bad line cook shaking their backsides to Hey Mama. It almost made us believe we were in a reality show. However, the post is dedicated to Sway, my current favourite track by Rosemary Clooney. The soup is done, and it’s time to boil the noodles. The chef discovers I have bought spaghetti instead of noodles. Did any of you know they are not the same thing? They are not. Much indignation later, online orders are placed. The wonders of customer entitlement combined with bad startup math ensure we collect them minutes later at our doorstep. While the noodles are boiling away, we turn to the garnishings. As everyone knows, the most critical part of Khow Suey is to have fancy bowls to serve the accompaniments in. Although, having seen it being made, I can tell you it’s not the bowls. It’s the deep frying. Everything and anything. The noodles, the onions, the garlic pods and, in what must be a culinary first - even the green chillies. The deep frying routine taught us quite a few things. For one, fried noodles confirm my theory that every cuisine has the equivalent of bhujia, thereby proving that bhujia is core to the sustenance of our race. For another, the time it takes for onion to get deep fried, is the time it takes to watch an episode of Brooklyn 99 and read that article on environmentally friendly products. Which is where I learnt about the “collapsible steel tumbler for easy travel”. One wonders, if you are the kind of person who is willing to carry a collapsible steel tumbler on your travels, surely you are the kind of person whose bag is the size of your car, and must be large enough to carry a regular steel tumbler? Is the tumbler the new towel now? Is that what we all need, to hitchhike across the galaxy successfully, while munching on fried onions in a steel tumbler? The chef made a meal large enough to last for lunch and dinner. The small humans called BS on it at lunch, and informed us kindly they meant maggi when they said noodles. I can’t imagine why they’d think we were gonna add broccoli in maggi! We have always endeavoured to never give them the impression that we were responsible parents. The big humans, however loved it and are now duly pressurized into returning the favour sometime to us.
The parents joined us for dinner. It is now difficult to say if they are just humouring us or really enjoying these culinary sojourns. Whatever the reason, their many epiphanies during the meal make up for it. Father says, “we are that 10% of parents who are fortunate enough to eat food made by their kids”, to which the father in law wisely replies, “eat slowly, you don’t want to finish the soup before more noodles come.” I had my own epiphany. We are not the clothes we wear. We are not the God we fear. We are not the food we eat. But if we are, I’m glad to report I am a burnt garlic pod dressed in coconut milk embracing the hot oils of hell. |
Aishwarya KalakataThe loss of and search for individualism has never been felt more acutely. Everything changed after I had a kid. But this blog is not about me being a mom. It’s about the things I do when I want to stop being a mom. It’s about telling myself that it is possible and that it is ok. It’s about my little escapades. Mostly travel - sometimes physical, sometimes mental. A desperate bid to stop my identity from being rolled into a single word. CategoriesArchives
March 2021
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