A couple of days went by, and my neighbour gave me some delicious food. But, I was just wondering...if I could just do something myself... I mean, the kitchen has almost everything I needed to start cooking, and I was quite bored myself... So, cooking ain't a bad option to while off time. hmmm... So, out I go out one evening, get some vegetables (if tomato, onion and potato can count as vegetables) and am back and spread them on the table and talk to them, "I'm gonna make dhaal tomorrow".
Next morning, like all mornings, had an early wake up call from the NBA, had horlicks, courtesy my neighbour (I prefer complan, people, and you see the effect :-P lol) and then took bath. Set up the rice cooker, this time with some dhaal along with the rice to be cooked. After a while i found out the rice cooker is aptly named. It cooks rice, nothing else. Not satisfied with the half cooked dhaal, i put it back into the rice cooker... result - better, but not the best. Anyway, its only me who is going to eat it, so why worry... It was soft enough for me to chew. So, lets start with it.
The vegetable cutting... Tomato and onions... If you can cut through the tomatoes without messing it up and squishing it to a liquid state (ridged knife please), and if you can cut though the onions fast enough without weeping, then things did go on well with this stage! So much to discuss about cutting vegetables with enthusiasm??? Hmmm.. Pros prefer to use a grater, mechanically/electrically operated one... one funny noise 'wwhhwmmmmmmmmmwhmwhwmwmwhwmhwwwhwhwmmmmmmmm' and then all your vegetables are neatly chopped and grated and whatever. It robs all the fun.. When you have time, chop it yourself, atleast you can write about it in a blog :-P .
Well so, then I came to the kitchen, bent down to select a tawa, after some inky-pinky-ponky and some technical thinking and elimination rounds, I selected one big pan, and put it up on the stove. 'green oil' as I call it, hosted an unsure amount of jeera and then onions and tomatos and a few pieces of chilly, plus turmeric powder! And the lovely sound of frying vegetables humming in the air, as I stirred them around, till the onions turned into their traditional world famous 'golden brown' colour and then I poured in the supposed-to-be-well-cooked dhaal into it. A few unsure amounts of salt into it, and me tasting the preparation just to make sure things don't go beyond limits. Then I reached the perfect level..or maybe I got bored of adding more salt and assumed I liked the taste... Shut the flame and added coriander leaves on top of it (garnish)...
Tadaaaaa! Dhaal!
And then I had it for lunch. It tasted fine (phew! it did) :-) . Had dhaal chawal, used it as side dish for dahi chawal, and made it again (better this time, lesser shunts to the salt department :-P ) and gave half of it to my neighbour (no complaints thus far) . So, success :-).
Next day, its time for Alu sabji.
Peeling alu was not fun, I've been doing this many times, but this time, it was for me :-). So, it was peeled, and then cut into small pieces, needed patience, as pieces had to be small. and cutting small pieces wasn't easy.. Either I cut them too big (later cut them smaller) or too small...well, who cares, its just me.
Then, took out a smaller tawa, a non stick one and dug out a non-stick spoon to not damage it... oil and sesame seeds and some onion pieces and the same sound, the same wait and then the addition of alu (err..if you are wondering what alu is - potato). the little pan was too little, so I dug up another big tawa and transfered the contents from 'this' to 'that'.
Now, some chilly powder, less, I didn't wanna screw this up, so, less, safely. Then salt and then regular stirring and stirring inbetween chat sessions on the comp with some college pals who had reviews about my previous blog post... So, after all that, when my alu sabji was seemingly done, when atleast 85% of them were brown in colour, and soft and tasty, I turned off the flame. and now, again, had it with lunch :-) . It was Nice :-)
Enjoyed cooking...enjoyed eating better :-)
More posts will come up if I can successfully cook something and enjoy eating them.
PS: I'm not elaborating on my maggi meals and my superior bread toasting skills here... some secrets are not to be disclosed :-)
Hope you enjoyed yet another more-than imaginable long post of mine. Thanks for putting up with me and my post.
Comments and recipes welcome. I will treat you all only when I perfect my skills, so, don't ask for the above mentioned stuffs immediately :-P
congrats :-)
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