My Experiments With Food

How can I burn thee?
Let me count the ways.

My apologies to Elizabeth Browning for mutilating her poem. But I am not joking. My cooking sessions are always so full of suspense. Until the end, I never know whether the end product is going to be edible or not!!But sometimes I can crack the mystery before the murder happens. My clues?Uncooked or burnt rotis. And I am not even talking about their shape, since I am least bothered about it. As long as I can eat it, I don't really care if my roti is triangular, square or quadrilateral. Too much salt in the food ;I can never detect when the salt is not enough, so I keep on adding till the dish gets too salty. Or worst case smoke coming out of the vessel or microwave. Thank god, my landlady didn't see her blackened microwave. I had to work very hard with the scrubber and cleaning liquid to hide the evidence.

I guess, I should have listened to my Dad when he told me to learn cooking. But I always got angry and thought that just because I am a girl doesn't mean that I have to end up in the kitchen. My secret plan was to marry a chef and be done with cooking forever. So, when my friends were cooking up gourmet meals; along with doing all the other things I must add.I was curled up on the sofa reading a novel, or watching TV. Anything as long as it did not involve chopping/cooking and kept me away at least 100 meters away from the kitchen.

When I finally left home and started living alone, I realized that knowing how to make maggi does not help one much. Neither can you live off canteen food forever. I always thought that people exaggerated the bad quality of canteen food. But first-hand experience taught me otherwise.Uncooked rice, watery dal, same gravy,rotten veggies don't seem like exaggerated stories now.Thanks to some kind-hearted roomies, I did manage to grasp the basics of cooking. Although my role was mainly to cut the vegetables. So beware I am pretty feisty with the knife!!It's only when I was living alone in London that I decided that I would not eat restaurant stuff even if I died of food-poisoning after eating the food cooked by me. Although, I did cheat a little bit by getting microwave ready meals. But hey, at least I know how to operate the microwave now.

Guys don't be MCP's and expect your gf or wife to cook. If you are stuck with anyone like me then you will most definitely need to wear the chef's hat at home. And ladies, you don't need to let go of your feminist vows. Learn to cook at least for yourself; if not for your family. And if your ma-in-law/hubby cribs about your food, tell them to go to h....the restaurant :-).

I have not read any of the "For Dummies" series. But if there is one called Cooking for Dummies, I think I definitely need to purchase it quickly. Last weekend as I tried to fry fish (which my mom had bought,cleaned and marinated),yelling and jumping every 5 minutes coz the oil splashed over me, I realized that maybe I need to think about my back up plan. So, until I master the art of cooking, I am not going to let go of my plan to marry a chef. Or I could develop some additional skills like batting my eyelids very sweetly to get my hubby to cook for me.