Kitchen - playground, rules & discipline.

Like reading, cooking was something that I started doing only when I started work. Of course, this was also the same time I started to eat out a lot. Like many in the internet age, I would go on to "rate" the food at restaurants, judge the food at my cafeteria, give my 2 cents on what could have been done better, or why it was better. Sure, I was entitled to having an opinion - it was like a customer review. But, I've also come across many situations where I would have thought, "Well, let's see you try it."

Work got me to Baroda, then to Chandigarh and later to Nagpur. During these periods, I got to try out many restaurants with a mix of local and foreign cuisines on the tables. I instantly fell in love with pasta, and I found out it was ridiculously simple to make. I appetite was so deep into the tandoori cuisine, it was a culture shock when I moved out of Punjab. The food fare at Baroda is brilliant. Albeit costlier, Nagpur can keep your taste buds dancing. I had the privilege to be in and around such wonderful places to be exposed to such a variety of cuisines. And because I still had some time to spare, I wanted to try cooking them up myself.

Many don't include it, but cooking is an art. It is an art that feeds you and keeps you going whether or not you acknowledge it as art. It must be an art of science. You can explain all the cooking methods in terms of science. So, you can rave about it or nerd about it too.

For the first time, I picked up that pack of pasta shells and salsa that seemed invisible to me till then. Oh, there is a "red" sauce, a "white" sauce, a "green" sauce... What do I do? (Now, I've gone a little better than the colours to Arrabbiata (Also, Napoletana), Alfredo, Pesto, and the rest.) I loved the "red" one, and started to cook them almost once a week, adding in whatever vegetable I could find that could fit into a bowl of pasta. I tried out myriad types of pasta shells, different makes of ready-made sauces on the market shelves. I also had a sandwich maker which hosted a whole other line of experimenting. Sometimes, I would mix the two, wherein the pasta would go inside the sandwich. Ten points to Gryffindor.

Spaghetti Aglio e olio,
learnt on Laura In The Kitchen

My favourite pasta - Penne Arrabbiata

All this was done simply following instructions on the packs. Boil the pasta and strain them away; fry the vegetables; add the salsa; add the pasta, cheese, seasoning - your pasta is ready! I thought I could start from a level earlier - from the raw materials, cutting down on the processed food. This is when I started watching more of cooking shows on TV. Carnival Eats is one of my favourites. Carvinals are where you would find the wildest and most innovative things to eat. I picked up a few off the show to try them out. I remember watching an episode where a Greek sold fried tomato balls at a fair. "Yaya's Tomato balls". The next day, I walked a mile to the store to get all the ingredients from the store and sat all afternoon in the kitchen preparing the ingredients and hen frying it up and tasting it for myself. Though not an exact replica against what I saw on the show, the taste was very good, and as described! (I am unable to find a video of the episode or the clip online in India)

The levels keep getting tougher. I was in awe when I watched Gordon Ramsay cool-ly make gnocchi. When I tried to replicate, I had burnt one side of a whole batch. I have had a thousand pizzas, but I found making pizzas incredibly hard. There is a fine line between a pizza base and a paratha. I was spellbound when I read what seemed to be an oxymoron on the menu - "fried ice cream". It took 3 whole days to work and prepare the balls of ice cream before we could fry them.

They are all so tough, and that is why cooking, for me, is so much fun. When we made pizzas, I decided to make everything from scratch. We tried this and that and got the base right only the third time we baked it. But the salsa came out so beautifully right, I was happy for myself. The first fried ice cream ball started to leak in the pan and we literally had fried vanilla cream in the fry pan. But the second one was whole and round when it came out. It was beautiful to see a cold ball of ice cream waiting for you inside a crisp, hot cover of fried batter.

From our first batch of pizzas

The first good fried ice-cream

After all this, I came to terms with the fact that it takes a lot of dedication and concentration to get your output right. You have no idea what the food is going to taste like when you are cooking. I think the salt is enough, but the chole bhaat tastes bland and when I try to add a bit I end up over-compensating. When my mother makes sambar, she adds precise amounts of tumeric, masala (not ready-made!!), tamarind, salt, grams without measuring any of them. As long I can remember, it has always tasted wonderful.

At places of work, we stay at hostels and the cooks there are the same. In the one off time something goes wrong, they know where and what went wrong and make sure they avoid the mistake. And when I am cooking, they stand by me and teach me how to do it right. Once, I tried to make aloo tikki and the tikki would stick to the fry pan. In five minutes, the cook taught me what I should have done to the potato mix to prevent this. They also helped solve all my burning onion problems. They also taught me how to cut vegetables, how hot the pans need to be, how much is too much, and what I could do to get a different result. But, you know what I loved the most? When they eat what I made - whatever I made - and tell me I did well. If this gave me something to smile one day in a week, why can't I make their life cheerful, 7 days a week? All I have to tell them is "Thanks, I loved the dinner tonight." with a smile.

Electric Oven made Tandoori vegetables,
because I had a weekend to kill

All this has taught me some discipline.
Cooking is not easy. Maybe, no trade is easy. It is hard work to do anything, let alone create a piece of art.
In retrospect, we know everything that could have been; but live life in the present.
You need help, and don't be afraid to ask - a wonderful chole bhaat tastes much better than one with deep fried roasted, toasted onions.
I need to be in time, else the kitchen wouldn't be available for my needs. If I'm late, the cook would pleasingly tell me, "kal" (tomorrow).
Don't assume others don't know anything, don't assume you know everything. I was making pasta for the first time, and the kitchen staff didn't know what "pasta" was. But, I show them the shells and they smile, "Macaroni!!", and instantly they told me how they used to make it.
When not everything fits in, learn to improvise. When we were short of ingredients, we would add whatever was available locally. Sometimes, potatoes are all that are available. Hola, Hasselback Potatoes! Olive oil? What olive oil?
Share, and spread the smile. I once asked a colleague to bring me a bottle of mayonnaise and he asked me what I was going to do with it, because I wasn't eating the bread that was locally available. I made and sent him half a bottle of Salsa Bravas. I got another bottle of mayo soon.

If I haven't stressed it enough already - cooking is fun! And it doesn't just stop with the food. I am drawn into learning more about it. I learnt to make cajun spice mix, and then I found out where it came from. Same with salsa bravas. The history of pizzas is mouth watering. Did you know Hasselback Potatoes are named so only because they were first made in a motel named Hasselbacken? You ask any foodie to talk about the food they know and you will want time to stop. I guess, I'm much more mature when I taste something at a restaurant and want to comment. I am more likely to know how it was prepared than me telling them how to. More things taste nice now.

I wouldn't have gotten into cooking had it not been for family and friends who got me doing this, encouraged me, showed me new places, exposed me to new cuisines, and mostly had fun during the process. Some have taught me, some gave me tips, some sent in ideas, and some would risk their appetite to taste what I had made for the first time! So, here is a big thank you for that, and more! There are so many of them who inspire me to go into the kitchen and cook something up!

Hasselback Potatoes

A friend nudged me into making
"chapati" Bombay sandwich. Much fun!

Roti/Paratha noodles

It's a weekday-holiday today, Happy Dussehra and all. I was served methi paratha for breakfast, but I wanted to try out something else, with a kitchen and time at my disposal for the morning. I decided to experiment, and try out "paratha noodles" inspired by this video (with whatever ingredients I could find):



This is how it went:
Stack up your parathas, or rotis (bonus points if lachha paratha) and then roll them up together. Now, cut through them, making thin strips out of them. You should get a plate full noodle-like strips of rotis at the end of this activity, and keep it aside. (refer the video)

Heat (medium) oil on a pan, ajwain/mustard seeds sprinkled into them. Just when they start spattering, add chopped garlic and onion to the heat. Allow them to turn into whatever shade you like them best. Add into them julienned carrots and diced capsicums if you have them (I didn't, sad trombone), and the diced tomatoes. Allow them to cook for a minute or so, so the oil works on them all. Lower the flame. Now, sprinkle some chilli powder and salt over them. Here, you may add garam masala and/or other spices too - each give the dish a unique end result. Add crushed black pepper and salt "as per taste". Also add chilli sauce, ketchup (or just the hot and sweet ketchup instead of both). Stir them up quickly.

Before the vegetables get cooked too much, add into them the rotis that you had shredded into strips earlier and mix them well with the vegetables. The rotis must be cool/cold after all the waiting by the side. So, the mixture should cook with the parathas such that the parathas are now hot on the pan but the vegetables don't get overcook to become too soft by the end. Garnish them with coriander leaves for the aesthetics. Serve hot.

Like all things Indian, this can also be customized as per taste and liking, or as was the case with me - as per availability, so try them out. (vegetables - cabbages work fine too, also beans, coloured bell peppers, peas; sauces - soy sauce can be added but not for breakfast; spices - as you like/want) This is a dish to get out of the boredom of the simple roti and paratha with dahi/achaar/ketchup routine, so make it fun.

PS: The South Indian variant - chilli parotta - is the boss of this division, something I hope to master some day (tummy approves).

Tomato Balls

I have not required to make my own meal in nearly 3 years now, and the last I had to do so, it was only for a period of 4 months. I have just started trying out something out of boredom in the kitchen that is open to use on weekend, while the canteen/mess runs it on the other days.

Last week, I made tomato balls, which I watched on TV, no Carnival Eats on Nat Geo Travel (I think) in an episode that covered the Indiana State Fair.

Here is what is needed:

Tomatoes
Onions (Onion:Tomato::1:2)
Mozzarella cheese
Black Pepper
Coriander leaves
Green chillies
A few cloves of garlic, as you please.
Maida/wheat flour/corn flour (as a binder)
Bread Crumbs (even better binder)
Any spices/masala (I used jeera, chilly powder, and a pinch of chaat masala)
Salt
Oil (for frying)

Recipe:

Dice the tomatoes small, drain them. If they are pulpy, squish them a bit and drain the juice away. (If you can combine this with another dish that can use this tomato juice, it would be brilliant!) Chop the onions fine. Grate the cheese, and fill half a cup with the gratings. Add the tomatoes, onions and cheese to a bowl and add a bit of flour to the mix. Grind and add the black pepper and jeera to this. Chop green chillies, garlic and the coriander leaves and them to the bowl. Also add the spices and salt.
Mix them together, add some fine granules of bread crumbs and continue to mix until the contents can be bound into a ball. Once it is thick enough, roll them into small balls 2" or so big. If you can multitask the frying and the ball-making, that is good. Else, have all the balls made before the oil is put on heat.
On a frying pan, or fryer, have enough amount of oil to submerge the balls. Once the oil is hot enough on med/high flame, drop in the balls carefully and deep fry them. The texture on the outside becomes dark brown with the tomatoes and onions frying. Once so on all sides, take them off the stove and place them on a paper napkin to drain off excess oil. Serve hot with ketchup or mayonnaise.

I enjoyed it when I watched it on TV, and I enjoyed the customised way I had prepared it (above) too. The cheese played some magic inside, the tomatoes and onions tasted well. It went well with mayo, too! This would be a nice evening snack. Do remember: the more wet and pulpy the cut tomatoes are, the more difficult it would be to bind them together. Using more dough would bring down the taste/flavour. Also, you can go innovative on the leaf used - coriander can be replaced with mint. Spices can be chosen as per taste.

Click here for the video of the original.

Kolkata, Digha, North Odisha

A colleague's wedding recently presented an opportunity to pack myself East to Bengal and Odisha. I say such, because I was always holding myself back in visiting Kolkata - I dislike crowded cities and find comfort in the smaller ones. I once was at Kharagpur for a week, and didn't visit Kolkata! Only recently I braved myself to Mumbai, and loved it.

The very moment I stepped out into the Kolkatan air, I could feel the humidity, on my palm, very much like Chennai. Airport is far away from the heart of the city, but the city has expanded well to touch and consume the airport into its arms. A long ride from the airport to Bhawanipore gave a glimpse of the city I had been shunning myself away from all these years. First, the long VIP road, which I think is the road that you can recognize from the sky as you descend to land - a long, wide road, with tall light masts, taking very few turns along its way as it drives you to the city. I noticed there were very few two-wheelers on these roads, which is quite different from Nagpur, where everybody drives approximately 1.3 two-wheelers on the road. We bade goodbye to the VIP and snaked our way towards Bhawanipore, probably touching Park Street on our way through. If I trace the same route, I can buy anything and everything I need to furnish my house, find schools and colleges for kids, places to work, shop, dine and bank the rest.

A friend of mine helped me with lodging, and met us when we arrived. We then dined at Jai Hind Dhaba, which started as a tea stall for truck drivers and is now a three-level restaurant at Bhawanipore, and has branches elsewhere. We helped ourselves to this and that, and more of that. I never thought alu-do-pyaaza could taste exotic. My friend confirmed we had space to spare in our tummy, and took us to Balwant Singh's for a dessert - doodh cola. Yes, cola milk. You never know how two things get together well. There is a lesson on Po - the art of fusing two ideas together and deriving answers, in Lateral Thinking by Edward de Bono. I am sure this is what he intended to mean. Ohh, we also saw Netaji Bhawan, the residence of Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, from where he escaped home arrest.

We woke up early next day to make our way to the railway station. I did know it was summer, and Kolkata is to the East, but I did not expect day break at 4.30 am! The time was 5.00, the roads were empty, the early morning light gave a clear, open look at another side of Kolkata - between the lawns, besides the Victoria Memorial, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Eden Gardens, Howrah Bridge and eventually, the loud and bustling, Howrah Railway Terminus.

The short journey to Digha ran alongside a very beautiful scenery by its sides. Once it was out of the city, it ran through vast greenery. I wanted to make up for the short sleep overnight, with some on the train. So, after I read Neville Cardus describing the most ideal match he ever saw, where Sir Don Bradman and his Australians overcame a hiccup to decimate the English, I fell asleep, dreaming that I am happily bashed to the boundary ropes by the Don as if it was an honour to be bowling to him. That lasted for only that short while as my very loud neighbour wanted to talk to his family seated behind him every 30 second, so loud that the most punk motorbike would be put to shame. Barely hearing my own thoughts clearly, I carried myself to Digha, and in all the excitement, forgot the book on the train. That train is now richer by a beautiful volume of Ramachandra Guha's Picador Book of Cricket.

Digha. Less humid than Kolkata, More windy than Kolkata. The sea breeze lured you to the seashore. We had to put aside our baggage before we did so. Digha has two beaches - the New and the Old, named so. New Digha is to the South of the railway station. It is sandy, longer area to play on the beach, and looks cleaner as you have to work very hard to mess up a very large area. The Old Digha beach is to the North of the railway station, near the heart of the city. It isn't a sandy beach, and has rock-cut steps leading into the waters. So, the waves hitting the rocks are more dramatic than at Old Digha, where the enjoyment is more in letting the waves hit you on the sea bed. The city is mainly lined with trinklet shops, and sea-food.

New Digha

Old Digha

Local transport looks very interesting, probably unique. The cycle rickshaws look like horse carts. There are autorickshaw vans. And, the most unique ones are the motor driven carts which look no more than vegetable carts, but carry people instead of vegetables, who tug a metal bar running through the middle of the cart while sitting around it, to prevent falling off it.

We made two trips to Odisha from Digha over the next couple of days. The density of greenery is beautiful. The one time I went to Bengal earlier, through what was then Orissa, I had seen the greenery alongside the tracks and made me wonder what the land was like inside. I had time to see. And this time, during wedding festivities. Unlike Baroda, where a Baraat would be a nuisance, in the village here, it was a festival for everyone. People enjoyed as the carriage went past their place, even thought it was touching midnight. It brought light to their places, which is at some places rare.

The light of the Baraat

Back to Kolkata on our way back, we had half a day to spare before we rode through traffic to the airport again. We visited Kalighat Mandir before it got crowded. It is a pity how commercial temples have become, the temple staff make it such that the darshan is so chaotic, you don't want to try a second time. You can't seek peace in such temples. Gods listen to prayers wherever you are.

With time to spare before a mini-tweetup, we ticked off Victoria Memorial, only the lawns. The architecture is so beautiful, everyone will find something to appreciate. It also seemed to match sculptures of others too, like the minarets. The humid heat was all forgotten in the neat beauty of the lawns and the majestic monument itself.

The Victoria Memorial

My friend then helped me start what I had been eagerly waiting to all trip long - eat sweets. I lost track of all the sweets I tried at Balram Mullick's. The Sondesh were so good, you wanted more of the same, but had to balance that with trying all other flavours. The dahi bora was filling and excellent! The rosagullas tasty! (duh!!) Mishti doi smooth! The thing that took the cake - kheer kadam. It has the ecstasy of rosagullas (or something equally woof!) and condensed milk rolled into one. Literally. Our breakfast, was at Sharma's, where we had a delicious serving of kachoris with alu ki sabji, the kachoris being as soft as a puri, but well flavoured. That was flushed down with a clay cup filled with chai, with saffron. Now, that is a rich tea!

This building is just at the mouth of Park Street - Old, with a Domino's.

A visit to the Park Street reminded me of South Bombay. The buildings were old, and looked like it had a splash of the new, with modern retail shops, eateries and libraries all lined side by side. It was spacious, unlike Bombay. It helped that people adhered to traffic rules, very well. Also, what I noticed right there at Park Street was a lady, a beggar, with a child who was tied to a railing. A stark reminder of the other side of the city, that I didn't see on this short visit.

Park Street

Also, Park Street

We went to Netaji Bhawan to see the house that is now converted as a museum, to display some photographs and belongings of the Netaji and his brother, Sarat Chandra Bose. I packed some lunch and also sweets from Balram Mullick's for the trip back.

Netaji Bhawan

It was a beautiful trip! I am left wondering if I should have planned a longer stay there, cover more of the city. For now, I will just flush my insides with the essence of the rosagullas, enjoying the Kolkata I could.