... From a family where men in kitchen is unheard of.. From a Nation where only women folk prepare dishes..but strange are the circumstances... they change everything. I never used to help in kitchen. I used to enter to smell the beautiful aroma when my mother prepares. They always keep me spellbound. But as like how the ways of the world are.. the good times are not always to stay. I left for India for my higher studies and then after which i started working... survial on outside food though initially was a pleasure soon turned out to be bad for health.., the indian way of cooking made sure that ghee and oil are in the utmost quantity.My roomies (name dawn and vimal) and I decided its high time we enter into the culinary world. We started with the essentials stove, gas connection and plates and all the necessary stuff..
But we hit upon the roadblock in our big plans.., none of us knew cooking.;-) we all had just seen our moms cooking and never did we attempt to help her out. So our first attempt was just barely eatable. Rice was over cooked more like paysam (semi solid almost like a paste) and the curry its better not to talk abt.. we even attempted with Chicken once and after we finished having it we had our hands full yellow due to the excess tumeric...
Our Moms were not the ones to watch us do the blunder so they started coaching us through phone and internet.. My mom stays in kuwait while Dawns in neighboring state.., It was fun.,. Mom says the whole recipe through the MSN and then while cooking if doubt arises she will come on voice chat.. it was fun. She might be busy in work (she works in airlines) and when she is busy with a customer I come pinging her "Ammas how much chilly ? 1 spoon or 1.5 spoon and is it teaspoon or big one?":D
Once we were armed with the basic cooking skills and were not bad at survival we decided to upgrade ourselves to the next level. The whole new portal which was revealed to us by the internet.. our fave site are pachakam.com and bawarchi.com . we used to experiment ourselves with exquisite dishes...from carrot halwa to pepper mushroom masala and lot others..
I moved to Korea and Dawn and Vimal moved to China for Job assignments and still our cooking skill didn't go to hibernation mode there.., I started experimenting korean style.. the sauces, thakalbee, bulkogee, kimchi... and we all came back and guess what.. we started doing fusion stuff.. Indo Korea, Thai Indo.. and some times when we are experimenting we just name something to it.. I remember the Chicken do Pyaza, Tuna Afghani.. nd many more..
Now don't u think that we were experimenting ourselves... my family had come and judged it and passed us.. . Dawns had come and also passed us.. Vimal's girl friend had come and said she couldn't believe that we cooked the appam and stew ourselves..
I wonder why at least from our side of state men are made to stay away from kitchen.. maybe its just the fact that men are truly good in mastering things..but i do agree to the fact that behind every success story of a man there is a woman.. and for us .. it was our mothers.., ;-)
some of the moments I had when i was with my roomies..
Gulab Jamun time.,
Parippu vada prepraration
Cooking in Korea
in US
