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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
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
|