ThoughtfulChaos

I have always wanted to learn cooking. I (like most other homo sapiens) like good food. However as every bachelor knows it is very difficult to get good food outside home. You can of course go to nice restaurants but you cannot do that all the time. You get bored of that too after a few days and if you are an Assistant Systems Engineer in TCS you simply cannot afford that :-( Anyways...

My first attempt at cooking anything was when I was in the 7th standard. Vineet was my accomplice in the crime. One fine day (I think it was during the summer vacations) we wanted to eat Maggi and we decided to make it ourselves. Of course there was lot of other stuff that was there in the kitchen that we could have eaten but both of use simply wanted to eat Maggi and nothing else. Mom and Dad had as usual gone to office and the coast was clear.

We read the instructions on the packet of Maggi and tried to do as told. We put the Maggi in a vessel of boiling water, added the tastemaker and waited for it to be done. We made the cardinal mistake of choosing the wrong kind of vessel and also of not stirring the Maggi once in a while. The end result was that the Maggi got burnt and horrendously stuck to the vessel. The vessel was a total mess of black and yellow. Of course our experiment was a failure but the least we could try and do was to erase any evidence of the crime so that we would not get a good scolding from Mom. But that was not to be. The Maggi was grossly insulted and decided to stick like hell to the bottom of the vessel and no amount of scrubbing would make it go. So we did what we had to do. We simply threw away the vessel (hope Mom never reads this). Vineet went to a far away garbage dump and disposed off the incriminating evidence there. We still have a good laugh when we recall this incident.

Anyways as I was saying I have always wanted to pick up cooking. My goals are not very ambitious. I just want to learn to make everyday stuff like normal dals, rotis, sabzis and sandwiches. Maybe if I turn out to be a good cook then I can aim for more exotic stuff.

Yesterday when I reached home after office I had this unreasonable and illogical desire to just have something to chew on. Unreasonable and illogical because I was not feeling hungry at all and it was too early before my dinner time. I am a mallu by origin but an amdavadi by birth so eating almost anything at anytime of the day is one of the many amdavadi-ish capabilities/talents I have. I could have just gone out and got something like biscuits of sponge cake or something, but I was consumed by this burning desire to make something myself.

And what better candidate than Maggi? It was logical, symbolic and satisfying. Logical because it is one of the simplest things you can cook (in fact I can hear many people denouncing me claiming that 'Maggi is NOT a dish' but I turn an arrogant deaf ear to them), symbolic because bachelors have a very special association with Maggi and satisfying because it would be like conquering an old foe.

So I went out and bought a double pack of Maggi, tomato ketchup, chat masala and a tomato (yes, 1 single tomato). Some time back Madhuri (a friend of mine in Mumbai) had treated me to some delicious Maggi that she had cooked. It was basically simple Maggi but with some (fried?) tomatoes and some chat masala sprinkled in the end. I wanted to replicate this exact recipe.

I called up Madhuri, got the detailed steps from her and also requested her to standby in case of an emergency (she was my live support :-) )

Then the actual cooking started. I was fairly confident. After all what could go wrong in such a simple recipe? But the failure of many years ago still nagged me. I still chose the wrong vessel, not out of ignorance but out of necessity because I simple did not have the right type of kadhai. At the last moment I abandoned the idea of putting in tomatoes because it seemed like the most risky part. I decided to make simple Maggi first and then move onto more advanced cooking. I performed the steps as described by Madhuri and also constantly stirred the entire thing. And voila! in a few minutes it was done. Sprinkled a teeny weeny pinch of chat masala on top of the Maggi and it was ready to eat.

It was very delicious. I give it a 7.5 out of 10. 9 is my Mom's Maggi and 9.5 is Maggi the way Madhuri cooks it.

So a chef is born. Next I want to learn how to cook simple dal and chaval. I plan to buy some decent vessels when I get my next salary. Will keep you updated about more of my cooking adventures.

Did I just make a big deal out of something very simple? Maybe I did. But I don't care because I am feeling quite victorious!

On a side note Vineet is now an excellent chef and cooks a lot of veg and non-veg dishes nicely. He has to be since he is pursuing his B.H.M (Bachelors in Hotel Management). Lucky chap is flying to France next month for a 2-month internship there.

Why do I want to learn cooking?

• Wanna pick it up as a hobby.
• Wanna make something once in a while and not eat from outside.
• Wanna impress friends and relatives.
• Wanna be a good husband and help my wife in cooking when I get married :-)