I am a planner. When I say we need to look at the recipe and plan for the cooking two days in advance, I usually have a damn good reason. He is a procrastinator. When he ignores my call for planning, he usually has no reason. And when we have guests coming over, he goes the extra mile in the space time continuum. At 11 in the morning on Saturday, he messaged a list of ingredients to me. I made a stop at the regular gourmet store. To my dismay, apart from cabbage, they had none of the ingredients in my list. I pulled out my car and drove to a fancier gourmet store, the one with the basement parking, infinite wait time at the lift and expats shopping for their local ingredients in a global food store. I caught hold of the unsuspecting store helper in the sauces section. "Oyster sauce and Hoisin sauce", I rattled off. Without blinking an eye, he tossed them into my trolley. "Chinese 5 spice mix", I said. He directed me to a different section and a different helper. Helper #2 not only located the 5 spice mix (which I strongly suspect is our good old garam masala), he even offered to help with the recipe. I stopped him in his tracks. This is going outside my designated duty and I had no intention to over perform. "Char siu sauce and mongolian paste", I said. He sent me right back to helper #1. H #1 gave me the perfunctory smile, "Just what are you cooking ma’am", he asked. "Vietnamese rice rolls and chinese stuffed baos", I proudly declared. "Do you know the ingredients of the sauce, I can suggest a substitute", he said. I did a quick google search and it turned out char siu is made from hoisin, honey, soy sauces and the chinese 5 spice mix. In short, I didn’t need it at all. He sneered. I wilted. I took a unilateral decision to drop the mongolian paste altogether. It felt like summoning the collective wisdom of the great Khans just to cook a bao. It was way past lunchtime and the hour of the guests landing up was fast approaching. I hurried home and burst open the door to find him sprawled on the sofa, snoring. He doesn’t wake up until half past four. Eventually, he started off with the dough for the bao. The video showed the chef kneading the dough with chopsticks. I panicked. This was obviously not going to work. A mere 2 hours to go for the guests to arrive and we discover chopsticks are not just meant for poking around your plate of rice. Anyhow, sanity prevailed and he remembered the use of fingers and hands and got the dough all made and out of the way. In addition to the list I was given, he had placed online orders for rice vinegar, hot chilli oil, sichuan peppercorn and soy sauce. I could have just as easily got these from the store, but that would have been too easy and no fun. These were delivered in batches at our doorstep. The soy sauce was the first to be dropped off. He figured out he had ordered the Japanese soy sauce instead of the Chinese one. What is the difference you ask? It is the difference between being welcomed with open arms into the wuhan market vs our visas being rejected until further notice. But, we adapt and make do. We get on to making the minced meat for the stuffing. While the meat was being cooked, the sichuan peppercorn arrived. It was promptly ground and added to the mix. The meat was doused with multiple sauce combinations, leading to an aroma that lingered on for the entire evening. I was put in charge of the Vietnamese rice rolls. The hot chilli oil and rice vinegar were finally delivered and were whisked away to the sauce making corner. The rice rolls were the easiest item on the menu since the vegetables were already sliced into nice long strips. Must say, this is by far the healthiest snack we’ve ever made. The sauces is where the magic happened this week. There was a peanut sauce, a xxx sauce and a yyy sauce. All of them to go with the rolls and the baos. I have to go with xxx and yyy because he doesn’t remember their names. "How would Watson feel if Sherlock says he doesn’t know how he solved the murder at the end of it all", I asked him. "This is not him not knowing how he solved it, this is him not knowing the name of the guy who got murdered because he doesn’t care", he replied. I had to concede that point. As for the bao, I am happy to report we did not need to use the idli cooker for steaming. We discovered we had a steamer at home. We have unearthed many such appliances from our kitchen cabinets this year. If we take stock, I am pretty sure, we would find that 90% of the stuff in our kitchen is handed down to us from one of the moms. With the steamer, we went full legit, well as legit as we could, given that it was a plastic tupperware container and not the bamboo steamer that the panda in the recipe seemed to be using. Notwithstanding, the result was amazing. Trust me, the baos looked and tasted a gazillion times better than the wrinkled, rejected versions of uruk hai they look like in the photos.
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I have been mulling over my writing a lot these days. Putting aside apprehensions on the style and content, I realised I really enjoy the process of writing. I might have even transcended the need for social approval. The last few posts I have written, I haven’t even bothered to share with anyone. I was happy to just have written something to serve me as a memory, of a time captured in words, to regale me in later years when I can no longer remember things in detail. In a world filled with pictures and videos to capture our daily life, I find writing to be very soothing and more accommodating of all my thoughts and feelings.
Hold on, I think I have just extolled the virtues of journaling, as though I have discovered it for the first time in the history of humanity. Oh, well! That’s what writing does to you, makes you feel like you are inventing all of life’s philosophy. As Wodehouse puts it "There is about the printed word a peculiar quality which often causes it to exercise a rather disquieting effect on the human mind. It chills." Having discovered this balming effect of writing, my mind ventured into evaluating how good I was at it. The report card did not look good. I promptly set about looking for writing courses that could hopefully set this right. I did boil down to one. Haven’t started it yet, but it’s there in this year’s to-do list. Intentions and everything. Meanwhile, I vowed to myself to continue the attempts. I have to admit the inspiration came from my dear son, over a conversation that went something like this D: Can you paint a masterpiece that is better than the Monalisa? Me: Erm, no. D: Why not? Me: I can’t even paint a masterpiece yet, forget about it being better than the Monalisa. D: Ok, can you at least paint a ‘piece’, doesn’t have to be a Masterpiece? Me: I guess. D: Well, get to it then. And so, I go on to the next episode in our cooking series. This week, Habibe dished out some Lebanese fare for us. It lasted us well into the weekday. First there was Tabbouleh, which conclusively proved that my disdain of salads throughout my uninformed life was completely uncalled for. Parsley, couscous, finely chopped vegetables - all served on a bed of lettuce - make for the yummiest salad ever. Then there was the Doner Kebab. The only reason I am even calling this a doner is to humour the dear husband. There was no vertical spit and there was no rotisserie, we didn't even use skewers to grill and carve up the meat later. We sliced the meat into the right size and shape and used a tawa instead. The spices were spot on though. The yogurt, cloves and paprika marinade was perfect and what the kebab lacked in authenticity, it more than made up in taste. The pita bread was a complete victory - it came out soft, fluffy and crusty all at the same time. The hummus not so much. Despite spoonfuls of olive oil desperately added to the mix, the hummus stubbornly refused to get the creamy texture required for a good photo-op. It continued to remain dry, much like my humour. So, a yoghurt and cream cheese spread was whipped up on the spot to add to the mix. In all, the pita pocket stuffed with chicken, hummus, tabbouleh and the spread was just what we needed for a sunny weekend afternoon. Oh yes, the summer is definitely here and we aren’t liking it one bit. A lot has been happening the last two weekends. The first weekend was mother in law’s birthday. She had been dreaming about stuffed cannolini for a few weeks now. So, the husband caved in and made it for her. I made a version of the Japanese Nama truffle which was so dearly loved that it might become a weekly thing I need to do. As I sat down to write about that weekend’s cooking, the son declared that stuffed cannolini is no different from lasagna and did not qualify as a new dish. One thing we were clear on, when we embarked on this resolution, was that we would make something new and different every weekend, otherwise it doesn't count. So, I had to concede and skipped the writing. This weekend, the parents had gone to get vaccinated. So the whole Sunday cooking had slipped our mind, buried under concerns of side effects from the vaccine, unfruitful discussions on the user interface of the website and zoom calls to exchange notes on the easiest ways to identify the nearest hospital. Meanwhile, I have been making an effort to get back on a keto diet after a full year of working from home. A year in which I made up the daily 10k steps solely with trips from the workroom to the kitchen and lockdown snaccidenting. So, in an effort to support the woman at home, the husband ordered some lamb and set out to make a dry mutton varuval. He has become something of an expert in cooking meat South Indian style. However, over the course of the 2 hours he spent grinding various kinds of spices and leafy things, he ended up with a gravy version of what tasted like pepper mutton. Nonetheless, I could not have asked for a better lip smacking start to the diet. The drama around the vaccination appointments and hospital visits took up the rest of the day, and it was evening by the time everyone was declared jabbed and packed off home. The next day started off with our cook waking us up with a gentle knock on our door at six in the morning. I tumble out of bed to open the door but then wake up the husband to discuss the day’s meals with her. I would do it, but usually I end up under planning and make at least one of us go to bed hungry. So, he insists on waking up and having the talk. We have a very beneficial symbiotic relationship with her. She usually goads me to have more than just eggs for breakfast (she isn’t aware of what goes into my tummy post the breakfast, or for that matter how many breakfasts I have), reminds the husband that he had made her promise to not give him anything more than eggs and indulges the son with whatever he asks for provided he first eats what she makes.
This morning, she takes over the reins and steers the discussion towards not only using potato but also mixing it up with a host of other vegetables. To be honest, I have never been a fan of pav bhaji. For one, I am wary of dishes where everything has to be smushed together. Are the vegetables too ashamed to be seen with each other? Why do they have to be made unrecognizable? Also, is it legal to have chat items in any other setting apart from the one where you are standing next to a cart in the middle of the street? But, decisions were made before I made it to the kitchen with a clean face and a clear head. The bhaji was ready and a dozen pavs were already ordered. Much later in the day, when the fingers were thoroughly licked and the bub asked for a second helping of the bhaji and rated it a 10, we realised that we had accidentally cooked our dish, ate it and didn’t photograph it. We had ended up making pav bhaji and pepper mutton in place of our specials. Do I regret that I have no photographs as proof? Yes. Am I tired of photographing the same pots and pans, on the same wooden table? Also yes. Do I need to upgrade to some respectable cutlery in the house? Strong yes. Am I ready to pause consumption, carry my plate of food into the balcony and take a fancy food shot with the foliage of DRDO and the construction dust of the new upcoming block as a background? No. And that, dear people, is how matters stand as of week 10, in the year of the cook. |
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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