Haven’t there been innumerable childhood instances when you were willing to get into the kitchen and beat your mom at cooking? Your ambitions would ride high and you’d think you could actually roll circular rotis. A small step for toddler, a large headache for mom-kind. If you are blessed with a mother who actually pays heed to your stubborn stand on making rotis, she will allow you roll one with the probable outcome of a blackened (don’t tell me you washed hands then!) roti-like thing resembling some country map. If your efforts end up in making a sea of islands from a single flour-ball, God save your tears.
As you grow up, sense and sanity make inroads in to your head. Or it is just one of those things that drop out of your bag while walking on the path of attaining adulthood. You stop walking on the path leading to the kitchen with scary intentions.
Last minute late night studies may or may not give the desired academic results but adventure gets the better of hunger and you end up learning to cook “Maggi”. Though a time-honoured chef would cook you raw in less than 2 minutes for terming Maggi as cooking, it gives a likeable intonation to it. Something like a batsman who gets out on zero after only three overs but consoles himself by saying that at least he took the shine off the ball.
However, there comes a moment when you have to step out of that two minutes fling and go for a prolonged stint in the kitchen. Staying away from home qualifies as the perfect case for the same. My first attempt at doing something substantial in the kitchen was to cut onions. The attempt resulted in a flood rolling down my eyes leading to an instant zero visibility and a grave engraving on my finger. The vinegar-dipped-onions brought at hotels remind me of my revenge – redness of my eyes leading to redness of the onions [through my chopped finger]. A dash of luck and even massive mistakes might lead one to immeasurable greatnesses but a splash of wrong measure of salt and spice and a guaranteed whip is definitely coming your way. Here, injudicious is highly injurious. It is a matter of utmost subtlety when free-flowing salt leads to a free flow of abuses.
Like most things in the world, “Easier said than done,” is applicable to cooking. Also applicable is how people would rather comment on it rather than actually help. [Smells like cricket talk at paan-shops, doesn’t it?] However, there are some things which are easier done than said and some people prefer to do them in the kitchen, as has been recently learnt, but let us leave that for later. Unfortunately, good breadwinners make excellent bread-whiners. Eating a spoonful [let’s spare the teaspoon/tablespoon debate] more or less of salt has occasionally lead only to outrageous outbursts and nothing more.
Cooking involves tremendous tactfulness. Peeling veggies while talking to others, taking a spoonful on your hand and tasting it and finally, standing in the heat long enough to sweat enough that can be added to the food. It is only out of reverence that the main cook is called Panditaain or Maharaj! If only respect had a measure, I would multiply it by a gazillion and number of salt grains and give it to the people who have ever cooked for me. We need a collective thankfulness to these people.
Only then they will stop writing recipes with - “Salt to test.”
