My First Cooking Experience

Sometime during my bachelors the feminist side of me woke up and I wanted to learn cooking. My grandmother was scandalized with the idea of a male son (stress intended) entering the kitchen and my mom didn’t take me seriously. My kitchen was anyways filled over the brim with my mom, grand mom, sister, two cousin sisters and all the floating female population and I didn’t even start learning. I lived away from home in Hyderabad for a month [it is beyond the scope of this blog to explain why I was in Hyderabad only for a month :)] but I had strict orders from my roommate’s girl friend to train him to be a good house husband (which I dutifully and happily followed). So my cooking so far was restricted to cutting vegetables, making masala chai and preparing about 6 varieties of egg.

I am now living alone in Lucknow and moved into a nice rented place (never mind that it is just servant’s quarter in that big bungalow) two days back. Since I am working for peanuts I have no choice but to cook as I can’t afford to eat out everyday. So I fondly setup my kitchen with a new gas stove, black market 4 liter gas cylinder, some utensils that I brought from home and some grocery.

Before I left Bangalore I took theory classes from few people about how to cook. For example – Take rice, clean it, fill water up to an inch above the level of the rice and let it be done. For my first attempt I choose to cook rice and eat it with the MTR ready to cook Puliogere Mix. I followed the above instructions to cook rice. A couple of minutes later the lid was an inch above the vessel with white hot bubbles in between them and I am thinking no one told me about the bubbles. Before I could think I realized that the steel vessel was turning black in certain spots. I guessed my rice was getting burnt and the only thing I could think of doing was to add more water. Five minutes and three more cups of water later the rice was cooked, never mind it was a little liquidy and the vessel a little black.

Next was to cook the ready to cook Puliogere Mix. Simple instructions on the packet –heat one and half spoon of oil in a vessel, add 20 grams of the ready to cook mix and stir and finally add 200 grams of cooked rice to it (they should give a measuring device free with these products). I did but the results were unexpected. I put the oil into the vessel and within a few seconds (literally few seconds) there was smoke again and the vessel was turning black again. Guessing that the oil was hot enough, I added the puliogere mix and within a few seconds (I am not exaggerating) the powder and the groundnuts and everything else turned black. Without knowing what to do I added some of the cooked rice into it. I did dare to taste it and something was too burnt. So I had to throw that down the drain.

But I am not one to give up easily. So I decided to make some egg fried rice with the remaining rice. After all I had seen countless street vendors prepare it so easily. So I added chopped onions, tomato and chilies into heated oil. Then I broke the eggs into the vessel and suddenly I realized this is how I make egg burji! Shit I said and added the rice (which was now a single hard lump) into the egg burji mixture. And I see smoke again (Thank devil I don’t have a fire alarm) and the vessel turning black. So I generally added water and as I was adding water I was thinking what is the water doing in the fried rice. And the end result was as liquidy as Bisibelebath so I decided to name my creation Bisi-motebath. But hey, it was edible and a little tasty and I had satisfaction of cooking my own meal for the first time in my life. I am just a little worried about cleaning all those blackened dishes in the evening. My girl friend better start learning to cook or ours will be one messy kitchen.

P.S - I know this has been a long time coming. Apologies to the few who followed the blog and kept asking me to blog again. Hopefully there will be more such experiences for me to pen down here. The three or four of you that read the blog, leave some comments so that i get motivated to blog more and to know that someone is reading it.