Cooking is an art

They say “Men who say they don’t know cooking; consider their wives as slaves. And women who pretend negligent to cooking are dominant wives.”

Hmm I don’t want to get into the first category; neither my roommates. We all got a passion in cooking. Rather speaking we always showed interest in doing culinary experiments. Most of the time it proved to be good and some other time we found ‘Cooking is injurious to health’.

When we started we all thought; cooking is nothing but cutting vegetables/meat and boiling. Later with our experience we realized timing and discipline is really required to bring forth a yummy dish. Hey!! Am not claiming us as seasoned cooks. We are not. But I would like to put some funny experience we had with our ‘Passion of Cooking’.

Pulav.

The idea was that of Praveen. Though a mallu, he is born and bought up in Delhi. He being a North Indian, we all decided to make pulav under his stewardship. So he is the ‘Chief Chef’ of the day. He started giving us the instructions. Asked us to cut the vegetables, wash the rice, and wash the cooker and so on. We all did those with utmost respect to our chef.

He started making it. We all were wandering around the kitchen to get the glimpse of the receipe and the procedure. He seems to be very confident and doing the things with heavy concentration. We thought of not bothering him. We were all waiting for the pulav to malinger on.

Finally he came out of the kitchen. He said ‘Five minutes guys and the pulav is all yours’. We were sure that it would taste good (He has proved his culinary skills already with Sambar and other varieties)

Time came for us to eat the pulav. We don’t have a dining table in our room, rather speaking we don’t have space for a dining table. So we used to sit on floor to have our food; the typical ‘mallu’ style. We did all the initial arrangements (spreading news papers and washing the plates n glasses). The cooker is still not open. Praveen opened it. He did put his nose inside the cooker. Hey ‘where is his head?’. He is still trying to catch the smell of the great pulav he has made. No smell of pulav. But still it should taste pulav. We all got our share on to our plates.

I had a mouthful, “maaan”. I was looking at other guys. They also were wearing same kind of expression. What does it taste like? I really can’t put those in words. If at all I try, it would be like ‘Eating raw rice with raw vegetable parts’. We all started bullying him. Poor Praveen, he was still looking at the pulav he has made. No expressions and he has gone dump for some time.

He is still confident, “I would make ‘real’ pulav some other day”.

We made biriyani also. It is worth detailing. Expect that here some other day. Bye for now..