Andy - The Chef

Andy---The Chef

Its very rightly said that you realize the worth of something only when you don’t have it with you and I am finding myself as an living example to prove this. I am craving for those tanduri roti’s which I was fed up eating in pune and used to curse.
I miss that paneer butter masala which I used to overlook in menu cards. The only part of daily food which I used to avoid, namely rice, is my loyal companion here; it being the easiest of all other stuffs to prepare. Now, its not that we can not go and have food outside but there are two reasons which thwart us from doing so. First, and the foremost, is that every novice, including myself, coming onsite has the desire of saving as much as he can so as to be able to go home and enjoy after converting the hard earned (?) pounds into rupees and frequent eat-out’s is by no means a cheap affair. The second is that if you are a vegetarian, you are left with little choice in hotels and you never know when you end up eating something that sounds veg but actually is not. So, most of us follow the traditional way of helping ourselves by cooking at home and that’s where was the beginning of deep trouble for me, who neither could cook anything apart from omelette nor was enthusiastic enough to try out the kitchen.

I was made aware of this bitter reality soon after enjoying first few days of hospitality by my roomies. I had great difficulty during the first two weeks forcing the different varieties of rice like sambar-rice, curry-rice, curd-rice etc down my throat. We were six of us initially and two people were enough for making the breakfast or dinner. This shielded me from the kitchen works for first two weeks to the extent that my colleague-cum-roomie even used to pack my tiffin for me. So all I had to do was to taste the stuffs and offer my valuable comments on the quality. But soon we were reduced to five and I started getting the feel of kitchen. I was able to estimate the exact amount of water needed to make given amount of rice and was pretty pleased at my achievement. But this joy was short-lived as I found that preparing the rice was the smallest contribution and there had to be something,a curry or dal accompanying the rice to make it eatable which was more challenging. I took the challenge head on and assured my roommates that they would soon taste curry prepared by me. With utmost concentration I observed them making the curries and got hold of the procedure, thanks to my good grasping power.

As I was preparing myself for the D-day when I would make a curry myself , I was getting into the thick of things in the kitchen, which had been a uncharted territory for me hitherto despite mum’s numerous efforts to make me realize the significance of cooking knowledge. Of all things, cutting the onions was one task which tested my patience to the fullest. I even got up to cleaning the kitchen after daily cooking, something which surprised me the most as I dint at all think that I would ever be doing this. We had got a dish washer though which made it easier, still considerable manual intervention was needed as the machine seemed helpless cleaning vessels in which all Indian style stuffs were prepared. There is high dependency on machine here in day-to-day life and people try and make tasks automated as far as possible. Mostly this automation is appreciable and convenient however there are certain things which one feels can be left to humans. The one good thing about food is that all Indian items right from vegetables to spices are easily available in food stores. So, we have everything from garam masala to besan and from haldi to dhaniya which would make our kitchen as well equipped as any Indian one. The stores are actually full of a variety of items, due to presence of large communities with different ethnicities. People here eat literally anything by making any unusual permutations and combinations. As it is, doing unusual things is pretty usual here. You find people with unimaginable parts of their body pierced and tattooed, wearing weird outfits and making funny hairstyles. This experimenting behaviour of theirs continues with food as well which you can make out seeing at different dishes. The eating habits are also a lot different than ours. I used to wonder how a diet coke and a burger make up for a lunch. The cola’s inevitable part of their food. Coming back to my story, I was making giant strides to becoming a great chef, at least that’s what I perceived.
On a fine Friday evening my companions decided to go for chicken and suggested me to have omelette, as usual. It was then that the dormant wannabe chef in me woke up and enthused me into venturing for a curry for myself. I thought it logical as it would be a rehearsal before I serve curry to others. So I zeroed on potatoes and decided to have them with slight gravy. I chopped the jumbo potato into pieces which I thought should have been cut smaller after putting them for frying. The onions were already there for me thankfully as a result of earlier chicken preparation. I put the chillies in and went on with frying. Then was the turn of spices and I carefully started adding them. I thought of having a spicy curry so let my hand a bit loose with chilli powder and then added pinch of salt. I then added water for the gravy part of it and after stirring and ensuring that everything is perfectly mixed, kept it for simmering.

Ten minutes later I switched the gas off and was ready to taste first ever curry made on my own. The colour wasn’t that great but I overlooked it thinking that external appearances are often deceptive. I baked the chapati’s for me. These frozen chapati/paratha is all you have to do with if you are a chapati fan. I had the first bite with all the excitement and that was all. The wannabe chef, who just an hour before invoked me to cooking , suddenly vanished. The curry was just tolerable as the potatoes were undercooked with extra chilli and less salt. I somehow swallowed it and told myself that there was still some time before I could make a tasty curry all by myself. Currently, I am playing the role of assistant in the kitchen and trying hard to carve a good chef out of me. Hope to have him soon….

Andy