GETTING STARTED

Don’t we all remember the times when we would be walking around and suddenly a mouth-watering aroma of a dish being cooked would envelope our senses?

It would be, maybe a dish being cooked at a neighbour’s place or maybe the aromas of the kitchen of a restaurant or maybe the local snack stall on a pushcart.

When we were kids growing up, more often than not, we liked the dishes made by our friends’ mothers and vice versa. It was a classic case of what we were used to at home and the sheer novelty of the dishes at our friends’ homes.

Being a Tamilian family in Bihar, my friends would salivate to eat the dosas, idlis with sambar and chutney cooked by my mother while my brother and I would wait to gorge on the macher jhol and kosha mangsho cooked at my Bengali friend’s place or the rajma and aloo parathas made by my Punjabi friend’s mother.

With time, I was exposed to a variety of cuisine; right from Bengali to Punjabi to Goan to Mangalorean to Kerala dishes. And I learnt to appreciate all. The point is that it does not matter as to how big an eater one is. What matters is that we relish whatever we eat.

I have come across people who would travel from South India to Delhi or Mumbai and still would want to stick to Curd Rice or Chinese food. For that matter a group of Bengali tourists would go to Goa and would look for a joint serving dal bhaat; Safe options, they say.

Nothing wrong in that per say. After all, it is native food which is comfort food. But I would rather try out the local cuisine.

I was fortunate to grow up in a home where there were no stereotypes of cuisine. Of course, we had our quota of sambar rice, rasam rice, idli-dosa, pongal, etc. Topping it all were aloo parathas, poori chole, rassedar aloo sabzi, rajma, Bengali moong dal, etc. My mother made the effort to learn all kinds of dishes. Being vegetarians, my mother drew the line on vegetarian dishes.

I made my move to Bombay (Yes, it was Bombay then) and started interacting with friends and people from different communities. My first gastronomic delight in Bombay was the quintessential Vada Pav. The first time I had that, I would not stop and I ended up with a stomach-ache thereby implanting in my head the point of being not big eaters but relishing what we eat within the space of our stomach and not up to our throats.

As I moved to the environs of a hostel during college, I got exposed to a wider range and mix of food. Here was my first culinary experience with East Indian and Goan cuisine- Loved it. At the same time, we had the hostel mess where anything was served in the name of food- Learnt to tolerate it. We had a truck driver cooking in the hostel kitchen. I always wondered about the kind of oil he was using to cook.

After moving into a bachelor’s pad during the beginning of my working years, the pocket forced me to try my hand at cooking. My brother, who had moved in with me, was the first guinea pig for the sambar I cooked and the glop which I turned out in the name of rice.

After putting a tablespoon of sambar in his mouth, my brother was hopping around and trying to make me swear that I would never cook again.

Not out of low self esteem but out of a sheer sense of responsibility to not hurt or damage other people’s health, I went off cooking for a long time and restricted myself to eating.

But my experiences of exploring different kinds of cuisine continued. Whether it was rich Gujarati food, the tikhat Marathi food or the mouth-watering Goan pork dishes and more.

In my early twenties, I would go out for treks with my friend. By the time the trek ended, we would be so bone tired and hungry that even the extra salty omelette pav dished out by the nearby dhaba would be heavenly.

During the treks, we would also come across locals who would offer some food from their homes for a small price. Trust me – some of the best fish curry and rice that I have tasted was from these homes. Sometimes it would be Bhakri with garlic chutney. While I write this, I distinctly remember the tastes of these dishes.

Just after our marriage (My wife is going to kill me for narrating this), for the 1^st week, I ate different dishes for dinner for a straight 5 days, made with one common vegetable- Brinjal. For the sake of self satisfaction, I give the vegetable 5 different names – Brinjal, Eggplant, Aubergine, Baingan, Begun. Much as I liked Brinjal, 5 days with it was an overdose. I had to gently request my wife to make some other dishes with other vegetables. Having said that our home was, putting it mildly, a melting pot of various cuisines. We would have South Indian, Bengali, Punjabi, Goan, Marathi cuisine. Add to that, for breakfast, we would feast on Eggs and Bacon, sausages, salami, etc.

Then came a time when I was living alone for almost a year. Those were the days when internet was new and a luxury. Relying on recipes from magazine cut-outs, I started cooking again. I fed friends who would call on me knowing that I would be leading a bachelor’s life for a while. My friends survived my cooking. Bolstered by the low mortality rate of my friends after eating my dishes, I proceeded to cook more and more mainly by the book. From veg pulao & raita to pork curry & rice to sukha chicken & pav, I was back in high action.

It all stopped when the family was complete again.

After a sabbatical from the kitchen stove for almost 9 years, I started cooking again. For a while I was labelled as a burger and pizza specialist. I started looking for newer dishes to try out. This time, I was ably aided by Google in my search. After a 2 year stint in Hyderabad, I looked up the home recipe for Hyderabadi mutton biryani and mirch ka saalan. Following this, I was toted as being good at making biryani and not much else.

Soon I was churning out dishes which were not necessarily old but maybe my own concoctions. Today, I can safely say that I have evolved as a cook and manage to rustle up quite a few dishes. Oh yes – an important thing is that people who eat my food necessarily survive.

In this blog series, I plan to showcase the lead up to my tasting a new dish and the recipe. Also showcased will be reviews, interviews snaps and videos of little known eateries and different places.