Thursday, July 26, 2007

Me ( n ) & Cooking

There are many typecasts for men as much as it is for women. Like the whole Universe believes that women can’t reverse the car properly, men are seen as someone who can’t boil a decent pot of water. Not withstanding the fact that there are as many women driving cars as men and all the Chefs in the hotels are always men.

Me, I freak out on cooking. I call it therapeutic and get into the nerves of people around me. I get all kinds of rejoinders. How it can be therapeutic? Try doing that everyday! Try making the same stuff again & again! But I hold my ground firmly. Because that’s how I feel!

For me, it starts from chopping vegetables. I don’t allow anyone else to do that. And the main ingredient of all my cooking is Kingfisher. No, I don’t add beer to the recipe as they add wine in the west. This is for me, taken raw and cold. While I do the prep. If somebody else cuts the vegetables, I am somehow never happy.

And then I need some hundred people & pans for my help. An elaborate ritual of getting things set for the actual action. And then the creativity starts flowing. No recipe is followed as it is. It will always be stuff that I want to add. That’s all. So are the measures, they are always by feel. Then it is the fate of people who eat. So far no one has died and that’s good news. But I don’t know whether it could be something dormant and suddenly act up one fine day. I have never had a good taste of what I made. Either others gobble it up or I am well into my beer to taste really. But at the end of it, it’s great fun. I come out of the kitchen as if I have won a war and the place mercifully does not look like a horse stable. I am obsessed about that part. Only issue is that the sink is full of dishes that the maids need to use the sensory perceptions to reach the tap.

I guess I cook well. My daughters don’t stay in their grandparent’s place if they know I am getting into the kitchen and Krithi surely is extremely decent to give nothing but good feedback. My wife is more relieved that the ordeal is over, but neither has she complained much. Sorry she also has said that I do cook pretty well ( I don’t know whether there is some hidden agenda in there ) Afterall I think cooking runs in my blood. My mother is a great cook. But then she is a woman!!

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