My Experiments with cooking

Deep-fried, cooked golden brown and crackling and crunchy when popped into the mouth, the taste of the cauliflower perfectly blending into the outer shell of the flour that enveloped it… I could wax eloquent all day about well-cooked Gobi Manchurian. As an avid reader of food reviews, I have learnt that food in most places is really amazingly cooked and the photograph alongside the article convinces the reader on the long hours that must have gone into the presentation (These reviewers must be the luckiest people on earth ---having their cake and not paying for it too) Read on if you want to know how food is not to be cooked and how all people aren’t born with a thumb itching to check the salt and temperature of each dish.

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon when my mother had finally procured the requisite ingredients to make Gobi Manchurian, namely - a big gobi( for all those still in the dark- gobi means cauliflower). Problems started when I started cutting it. Not being the most skilful of people with the knife, I was getting along all fine in my own way cutting in various crisscross lines when I saw my first worm. Light green, it stood out starkly against the brown cutting board and watching it move inside the food that was soon to be consumed was a slightly disorienting experience. Its whole body convulsed while moving millimeter by millimeter with the tail moving first then the middle then the head (or atleast what I imagined was the tail, middle and head). After sending it to the extreme corner of the table, I finished my already eccentric cutting in a even more haphazard fashion, rather afraid to find any more creepy crawlies. Then I heated the diced pieces to evilly do to death other light green worms that may be lurking in my gobi.

Then the fun began. One thing that I’ve learnt after many amateurish attempts at cooking dosas and idlis is that flour and I don’t go together. Ours is a soured love affair and somehow the flour tends to win the battle hands down. It starts off by dripping all over my dress, then the coats the stove in a thick layer of white, and finishes off by leaving a pattern all over the kitchen, even prompting allusions that I was celebrating an early janmashtami. Today was no different other than the fact that the red flour paste led to the wall resembling a typical railway station festooned with betel juice. My father’s laconic comments at the end of today’s episode “Looks like a battle zone!”

After heating the oil, I started dipping the cauliflower in the flour and then into the oil. Putting it into the oil is a another great source of trepidation for both me and my mother (who checks up every ten minutes or so to ensure that I’ve done nothing worse than spreading the aforementioned flour in the aforementioned mysterious ways on the aforementioned wall) The oil hisses and crackles every time an intruder in the form of flour coated gobi enters its territory and habitually spits its venom on me. Dodging these high temperature oil drops is a big adventure (and invariably the oil manages to hit me a few times).

The first batch took a long time and afforded me plenty of time to keep checking on the match. With an occasional stirring and watching it closely, like a mother indulgently watching its offspring, I ensured that all the gobi did was lie contented in the oil and turn the golden brown needed for me to remove it out. Mistiming things a little, I found that some had turned a light black when they were taken out but sampling the first batch, I detected to my delight, other than a dash of salt and perhaps a slight spiciness missing, it was quite good. The second batch turned out faster and while it was cooking, I was with one hand turning the pieces over with a ladle and with the other helping myself to the first batch. It was with a slight gasp of horror that I realized that I had cleaned out the first batch while waiting for the second to cook. Determined not to have any more in the midst of cooking, I took out the second and then put in the third (The third was tiny pieces of cauliflower that had disintegrated during my crisscross cutting). Having slightly lost patience and feeling tired of standing in front of the stove for so long, this batch was taken out rather quickly. Still quite decent it was.

My mother pronounced the dish fit for eating and that it was not bad taken with sauce. HOORAY!
Tips that I have learnt during my past forays in cooking ----
i) If one likes broccoli, then fried broccoli is also quite good( though not in the same scale as cauliflower).
ii) Keeping cold water/ice is very handy for treatment from splattered oil drops.
iii) Cleaning up the mess is a really tedious process.
iv) Waiting for the gobi to cook allows one ample time to ponder on various mysteries of life like how the gobi got its name. When God was naming all vegetables, he told the humble cauliflower to just leave and exist and thus the name stuck.(He said ‘Go !Be !’)

So go ahead. Happy cooking!