This week’s adventure started on google with a hunt for the Sunday dish to be. An hour and five hundred links later, reading my way through “most popular foods around the world”, “average dinner in 195 countries”, “world’s most disgusting foods”, a quick backtrack and “top French foods to eat before you die”, I landed on “Easy French recipes”, a more accurate indication of aukaat. Before I do the grand reveal, a piece of trivia for you. There is a museum in Malmo called ‘Disgusting food museum’. Between the police procedurals and this, Malmo has got the gamut of human interest covered. Btw, the entry to the museum is 185 Swedish Krona for you and absolutely free for your toddler. You are welcome. Coq Au Vin emerged the winner. The dish eliminates the need to pour wine into a glass, both during the preparation and the consumption of the meal. Instead, it is poured directly into the dish. The original one pot meal. The French have obviously won at life. So Coq Au Vin it was, along with Lyonnaise potatoes. I can see now that I am going to be the one making the weekly trip to the gourmet neighbourhood supermarket. This time for Thyme, Parsley and the Vino. The friendly store helper asks me to buy rosemary as well. No sir, I am not going to be selling at the Scarborough Fair, none for me. Back home, mon monsieur puts the bacon on the pan. The grease that is generated is enough to fry the bacon, the chicken, the mushroom and just about everything else for the day. He wants to watch something while cooking, something 70s-ish Hollywood. Apparently, the perfect thing to go with the French cooking. ‘Grease’ literally suggests itself. In case you are wondering, the movie is still as terrible and fanciful as it always has been. My job primarily consists of following le monsieur, cleaning up after him, changing the volume of the movie in tune to the kitchen orchestra, and of course, assisting with the sauces and the broths. Nothing that can’t be thrown away and redone midway, if it all goes south. We discover just in time that the thyme leaves have to be taken out at the end. What? We clearly don’t know how such a task is accomplished. We end up placing them like this, hoping they stay that way. At this point, with the chicken, mushrooms, bacon, carrots and the thyme, it looks like something Getafix is brewing for the warriors of Gaul. I am trying to keep up with my other New Year resolutions as well. So, I open a book - Factfulness, which starts with Hans Rosling declaring he loves the circus. I steal sideways glances at the kitchen, he could have just visited us. It is a singularly uplifting book, for those of you looking to start the year with some positivity. He makes a point where he says the dim worldview most of us hold is not entirely true. For e.g the rich are not getting richer and the poor are not getting poorer. It gives me hope that maybe the fat are not getting fatter. This hope is essential when your only side dish is a bushel of potatoes. Which brings me to the soul searching question of the week - Why do we, as a race, love potatoes? How is it possible for one vegetable to get so much of our love? How shallow are we to be taken in by the dark wheatish complexion and the round shape? Back in the kitchen, the chicken has been drowning in the wine for a couple of hours and combined with the thyme leaves, it smells heavenly. Meanwhile, the twitter wars are raging on, between Sebamed and the rest of the soap world. I wonder why no one has made a soap with wine in it. That would resolve the pH debate once and for all. I’ll say it, everything should have wine in it. The potatoes are sliced and following the steps of this recipe reveals that we just made good old aloo fry. Which means, it tasted like la bombe. The whole family was called in for dinner, attempts were made at plating and all of the coq au vin mopped up with some amazing sourdough. In short, to paraphrase Danny Zuko aka John Travolta “We got chills, they are multiplying”.
4 Comments
Arathi Uchil
12/1/2021 07:06:05 am
Yet again, a lovely read!!!
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Aishwarya
12/1/2021 11:23:49 am
Hahaha, Thank you Aarthi!
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Nandita Sinha
12/1/2021 02:30:35 pm
So funny! Keep cooking and writing
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Jamuna
13/1/2021 10:24:37 am
I was one of the recipients for the dinner invitation and it tasted...Oooola..la. The target for this year is 52 new dishes...only 2 done. Still long way to go dear! :) 😉😘😍
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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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