It was one long party. It started on Friday. We headed out to this beautiful place just out of town to celebrate our wedding anniversary. We landed there at 8 in the morning, just in time for breakfast. An excellent one at that. The butter meter indicated that the people were top notch in the service department. What is the butter meter you ask? Please. Allow me to explain. You can judge how much someone cares about you from how they serve the butter. If it comes to your table in single serve packets, know that they love you as much as I love staying off sugar. If it comes just soft enough at a spreadable temperature, they have warm cuddly feelings for you. If they mix it with garlic and herbs in addition, they are practically bending their knee with the Eiffel tower as a backdrop. This came with the herbs and garlic. Love declared and accepted, a day and half of debauchery followed from there on. We were too tired from all the eating to cook something nice on Sunday. Besides, Tuesday was father in law’s birthday. So, our cooking party was moved from Sunday to Tuesday. Given how he’s been asking if we were making a sizzler for the past 3 weeks, we decided to go for it this time. A roast chicken, with mushroom and pepper sauce, with a side of mashed potatoes and boiled vegetables. A plum cake from Thom’s bakery for dessert. Tuesday morning, I go out for a cycle ride and come back after an hour. The chicken is cooked, the vegetables are boiled and the sauce is done. My lone sauce making responsibility, taken away from me. At this point, it is safe to say not much is expected from me in these sessions. However, this was the week I discovered the husband’s methods. Apparently, he selects a recipe, gives me the list of ingredients and then makes a lot of disgraceful assumptions about how to actually make the dish. Like how it is enough to just mash the potatoes to get mashed potatoes. I swoop in, with zero humility and multiple instructions on mixing the butter, the hot milk and the churning (Btw, anyone realise this is how thayir sadam is made as well?). Meanwhile, with all the fancy cooking, we were fast accumulating ingredients that we didn’t know where else to use. We still had leftover bunches of thyme and parsley from the coq au vin and pasta sheets from the lasagna. It seemed sacrilegious to use paprika or parsley in sambar. I mean dhaniya has served us well for so many years. If I were a famous blogger, this is where I would slip in a product placement for the brilliant fridge-storage-boxes-for-greens that have kept the parsley and thyme fresh. I impressed myself by garnishing the mashed potato and the pepper sauce with the parsley. Having made invaluable contributions to the cooking, I proceeded to take bad photos of the food. The sizzler plates were brought in. Cabbage leaves were neatly spread on it. The chicken, mashed potato and sauce were laid out. Leading to discovery#132: You don’t really need an oven for this dish. The sizzler plate goes on the stove. Anti climatic, to say the least. We lift up the cabbage leaves and sprinkle a mixture of oil and water for the sizzle. Which brings me to my pet peeve - why do we need our food to sizzle? It is just plain uncivilised, uncouth and unwarranted to have your food sizzle. I, for one, was not looking forward to that. They say your emotions show up in what you cook. This time, how I felt showed up in the husband’s cooking. There was no sizzle. Not even a whimper. The dish tended to portray more of a demure South Indian bride look Arguments followed over whether the cabbage should have been boiled, or kept dry and raw, or boiled and then blow dried. But the damage was done. There were no fumes over our food. Nonetheless the fancy wooden sizzler plates were used and I got to tell my dad he won’t get a second helping of the mashed potato unless he finishes his vegetables.
1 Comment
Sriram
29/1/2021 05:01:38 pm
Wow awesome roast chicken sizzler with mashed potatoes and boiled vegetables
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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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