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!

Outbound Program @ Parvati hills

Ever since winter set in, "Out-bound" would only remind me of the 'out of bounds' phrase from the basketball diction where the ball would go out of official play area and a team would have to bring it back in. Both teams would use the time to refresh strategies, study new plays and try execute them when the play resumed on the "in-bound" sequence.

When I received a mail from my employers that I've been invited for an out-bound program, all this flashed across my mind. And then I saw what it actually meant. Just the same. Only, much much more exciting and filled to the brim with fun, with a bagful of learning experiences to carry back.

A bunch of 42 new-joinees, along with our HR personnel, headed to Parvati Hills (approximately an hour from Himmatnagar in Gujarat. Also, please don't trust the calculations I made while throughout the journey). We had to start at 5.15 am, and hence the alarm sounded off at 4 am. Cold wintry morning was braved by most of us and we set off. We had no idea about what to anticipate, and that added the excitement.

5 wonderful hours of sleep, during which my outstretched legs looked like a snake in the aisle of the bus, only disturbed by the call for breakfast (please don't plan to have chips and wafers and cup-cake for breakfast), we reached the middle of nowhere. The problem was, we really didn't know where to head. After half an hour of the bus going front and back in all possible like-looking roads, we finally reached the site.

I was angry at first. The place had nothing but a large house, a couple of trucks and three tractors. Surely, we had only stopped to ask directions?

Whilst my brain took a stroll, We were led elsewhere by a guide. We went downhill and entered into a wonderful little world nobody could've spotted from outside. Trees and rocks protected the beautiful tiny patch of plain and a gorgeous golf-course shaped lake. We were still in awe. More so because it had absolutely no relation to the place we disembarked off the bus (only 200 yards away).



We put our bags into the tents that were pitched up for us and comforted ourselves on the chairs laid out. Out came our training instructor for the day, Mr Sheetal, along with his three colleagues (pardon me, I'm that bad at recollecting names :-( ). As if on cue, they said "Breakfast is ready, go feast." It was 11.30 am, but who cares? To our tummy, breakfast was what we wanted. Over aloo parathas, bread, butter, jam and eggs, we all feasted for 20 minutes and soaked it up with tea.

Day-1

Our day began with an ice-breaker. We colleagues came from 3 different locations, and from atleast 4 different branches of our company. We didn't know all. And the first half hour went into introducing ourselves and having some fun mingling, and then form groups that would perform activities together.

Our first activity was to build a raft. Any one who was eager to head to the lake had his/her wish fulfilled. We were at the shores, where we were provided with two plastic drums, a bunch of bamboo sticks and lots and lots of ropes at our disposal. Designer heads ran into over-time and all physics came into picture. Rafts were built, people were put on them. Some capsized, only one went to the designated mark. But it was all fun. Especially when you see the "raft-men" laughing at their fall!

Our next activity (once our trousers were dry) was to lift a ball that's resting on a ring held by strings, and moving it to another spot. Both the start and end points were.....an open end of a pipe. The ball rested on the pipe. Simple enough? Just that we had to do it blindfolded. One of our team-mate would guide us, with eyes open, of course.

Next activity - to deposit little ping-pong ball-sized rubber balls from one end of a line to the other, into a bucket. We were ten people, each holding a foot-long pipe cut into half along the axis so we could run the ball from one end to the other of pipe and drop the ball into the neighbour's, to transport the ball across the distance. Well, the distance was 35-40 m per my estimate, and we were, yes, 10. It took us multiple shuffling and juggling to do it successfully time and again over the given time of 20 minutes. It was super fun!

It was lunch. At 3.45 pm no less!! Bas toot pade... Wish we could just eat that all day!

We then had to enact a role play that we had barely prepared for. What we did was the acting equivalent of an extempore. Just that we did it so well for our team to believe :-) . Other teams had done wonderful acts, yes!

It was nearly dusk, and I thought we might get some time off for ourselves before a bonfire. Well, surprise!

Members in each group were tied together and walked into a bus. We were like cows moving in a line on cue! The bus drove us here and there and deposited us into the forest that blanketed the place. Our task - find the way back to the base camp. Not quite easy, as we found out. Our clues like - that star, the red sky of the dusk and "that tube-light there" became sitting ducks, when many more strs showed up, the red light fell into the darkness of the night and many other tube-lights showed up. We trusted our compass, and trekked through the thorny, forest lands, up and down the rocks, everyone striking the pose like traffic policemen when the leader asks "which way should we go". In the end, the guide (who wouldn't give us a clue) said that we had grazed everywhere that was theirs but the camp, and directed us back to the camp. Well, thorns apart, no fun like trekking in the dark with just flash-lights for help.

We brushed though all that we did that day, and then sat around the bonfire, singing songs, warming our hands, making new friends, and waiting for the dinner call, which finally came at 10 pm. The dinner was wonderful, and wonderfully capped with Gulab Jamuns. So tasty, that the ones who wanted to skip dinner were lured into it. Please don't lick the computer screen.

I was tired, and couldn't stand the third karaoke of "Why this kolaveri..." in the last half hour. So, I headed to my tent, only to find my bed missing. I was then told that it was shifted to another tent, where I slept in peace. Some good songs acted as lullabies.

Day-2

Rise and grind, up before dawn, was up and ready to watch the day break its glory upon the canopy. It was a beautiful picture as one part shone in the sunshine, while the other lay in the shadows. We had tea to get wake our brains up.



First up, we had to pitch a tent. We had just come out of one, and here we were, building one. In 12-minutes (??), the tent was up! I was brilliantly foolish in putting up my side of the tent, which looked like as if someone closed the tent's "ears" on one side. Lucky for me, I could stop cursing myself when I heard the race was to finish it first, and the beauty part of the tent could be excused. #saved

Breakfast. Idly and the bread-butter-jam-egg set-up. Am desi. Idly for me. Hands only. Nom Nom. :-)

Next up : Rappelling. If I had no measure of my fear of height, which included staring 400 feet into the Shimla Railway station from an open cliff above it, I had it here - over a tiny 30 foot high rock-cut. Tiny my foot. I was scared till I set my foot back on earth, you know, the flat horizontal part of earth. Yeah, it is ironical that I of all people have to fear height, but that's how mother nature likes to laugh!

We returned to take bath (not mandatory). And then got ready for the next task. A square was drawn on the floor. And that was divided into 4 quadrants. Each quadrant had 5 pieces of brick-shaped pieces of wood. Each team had to travel from their quadrant, traverse through the next clockwise quadrant and exit from the third. All the time, foot on the bricks (allow me to call them bricks), which can have not more than two feet on it at one point of time. Also, if you put your foot on one and then leave it alone, that will be removed. That was one superb activity! Brought in at the right time to tease our brains. Some lost their cool, some lost their voice. In the end, it was done.

The last "activity" was to recite a slogan/song that each team had composed, to justify the team name each had chosen. 10 minutes of salute to innovative ideas followed. And then the winners were crowned!

Needless to say, lunch followed to cap the day!

Over the two days, we learnt many values from simple activities that are valid to our personal life as well as corporate career. It was an excellent idea for our employers to invest into such a program for us "new-bies", that helped us find a bit more about ourselves, something that we only find about when put to test. It was wonderful when we complemented and supplemented each other as a part of the team, or helping other teams with their work, or working together to complete one common goal.

After all, we're all one.

If you want to your team to take up this wonderful adventure-packed program for your team, or bunch of friends, visit Parvati Hills' website - www.parvatihills.com, and Anala Outdoors will sweep you off the floor with excellent facilities and activities that you won't forget for the rest of your lives!

I enjoyed this trip a lot. *insert more sweet clichés*. Made some really good friends over the 2 days, don't know how many of them I would meet again! It was all fun, all the time!

:-)