Cooking !

Cooking is one of my passions ... Its not something that I have to be forced into ... In fact, its something I am very very fond of .. Its time well spent for me .. (compared to many other things such as work ;) ) I think, its something I am very good at and proud of ... ;)

I dont remember how it started ... I guess, when my mom was expectant (with me), she must have cooked a lot of dishes and I must have picked it up from her like Abhimanyu :) ! because I have always been fond of cooking (jabse maine hosh sambhala as they say in movies :) )!

I guess, the credit for my love for cooking goes partially to 'my love for food' ... (BTW, my mom is an excellent excellent cook ! She is soo good at cooking, I just cant tell you ! you have to eat it yourself !! Mom, you are the best ! ) so anyway, I love eating !! ;) .. who doesnt, right ? But I mean it .. I love to eat different different varieties of food ... sweet, spicy, salty, sour (sometimes :) ) ... pretty much everything ! And if you like something, you want to be able to make it yourself .. e.g. I love 'pohe' (rice flakes) .. I think I learnt to make them when I was in 12th or 1st year engineering .. I think after chai (tea), Pohe was my first dish to be learnt and then it just continued ... One dish after another ... in fact, I remember during 4th year of engineering (yes, even before coming to US !) when my mom was not feeling well, I had even made rotis alongwith other stuff ... of course they were nowhere close to what my mom makes .. and I dont think I can ever do that ... but I had tried my best ...

After coming to US, it was pretty much on a day-to-day basis that we had to cook (I used to stay with roommates but some of them were horrible at cooking ... roommates is one topic I can keep talking days about but maybe in some other post some other time .. ) .. so that was the time when I got to practice a lot of dishes along with trying a few new ones .. I have been cooking on an average, every alternate day for last 4 years ... and its been wonderful ! now I pretty much leave 1 - 1.5 hrs of my day time specifically for cooking ... I have tried north indian dishes like different (aaloo, muli, onion etc) parathas, chhole, palak paneer, dal makhani etc. also south indian dishes like dosa, idli, puliohara, vada sambar etc ... Mumbai dishes are my favorite though ... Pav Bhaji, Misal, Vada pav, Bhel Poori ... oh I am so hungry !

Believe it or not, I have even made 'Besan Laddoos' here ..starting from scratch as in starting from besan ... I had made 20 laddoos and me & my roommate, we finished them in 2 days !! Again something I like so much that I wanted to learn it ... Of course, I took the recipe from my mom and I guess I spent like 5 hours on it ... but the very joy of it coming out the way you expect is what makes me do it !!

One thing I have not tried is cooking non-veg stuff at home .. I never ate non-veg when I was in India .. I never had anything against non-veg (like some ppl feel that its killling animals etc... I feel its a part of the food chain) but then in India, the places they sell meat are very unclean, filled with flies, bloody etc etc ... so I never felt like it .. but I was always open to the idea .. I started eating it here in US since here its all about sanitation and cleanliness ... now I love all different types of non-veg, seafood and I miss it if I dont have it for a few days .. but I have never ever cooked it at home (except only once when I had cooked frozen shrimp curry .. man ! was it delicious or what !!) and probably will never cook it on a regular basis ... dunno whats with that ...

Another thing is, it is very very very boring to cook for yourself ! I need someone to be with me to eat it ... I will never cook for myself .. I get too bored to do that ... If I have someone to share it with, I am ready to do it .. its like an incentive ...

I have had my share of disasters and failures ... I have even had public failures ... I remember this one time when I was with my friends' family ... They are Punjabis and wanted to know how to make authentic Maharashtrian Pohe .. so bhabhi asked me to make them one day and I happily agreed ... The 'thick poha' they had was very very different and it would not become soft even after soaking it in water ... Pohe I made, were a big big disaster that day ... what an embarassing moment ... bhabhi hadnt made any breakfast thinking that I am making pohe and I ruined it all !! so yeah I have had such embarassing situations .. but thats part of the game ..

Anyway, here are a few things that are troublesome when cooking:

1. Cutting Onions !! - We recently had a potluck sort of get-together .. I had to cook for 10 + ppl .. I almost cried for my life cutting 5 -6 biggg onions !!

2. Washing utensils : I think thats one thing my mom never did when I was to be born ... so obviously that has not come to me ;) .. its such a pain to wash all utensils ... I would never do it if I had a choice ...

3. Cleaning : I want everything to be clean around me and so though this is a painful step, I do pretty honestly .. but nevertheless it counts in troubles of cooking

4. Grocery shopping : You need to buy groceries before hand if you want to cook .. so planning necessary !

5. Marination / Soaking : Things like Chhole, Rajma etc need at least overnight soaking ... all those ppl who cook chicken know that it needs marinating .. so again cooking needs lot of planning sometimes ...

Anyway, these troubles are very small in front of the joy of cooking ...