Sunday, November 29, 2009

I love to cook food - most of the time :)

Spent 30 minutes plus in the kitchen to discover that you cooked some crap? Why should any one spend the precious time in the kitchen to cook something that seldom tastes good?! The arguments against cooking are too strong to beat and rightly so... Many hate cooking. There also are complaints - " the food cooked by me does not taste good to me" "I want varieties" "I can never cook" !!

Cooking is truly an art. It takes a lot of effort and interest to master any art and cooking is no different. Having said all this, it is not such a difficult thing to cook some basic things. In the last two years, I have been cooking regularly and I am proud to say that I have improved a lot. We have cooked more than 40 varieties so far and every time, I try to do something different... Cooking is similar to the chemistry laboratory :) There is a lot of scope for trial and error. Proportions make or break the taste of food but fortunately the cases of failure have been rare with me :)

Other than getting to make something new, there are many other advantages of cooking. Here are a few which are not so obvious....
1. Cutting vegetables is a stress buster - Try to find the worst of your enemies in a cabbage. Then shred it to pieces... How satisfying :)
2. Onions are truly amazing vegetables - Difficulty in crying? Cant tell how sad you are? Try chopping some onions :)
3. Create a new recipe - name it after yourself :) Where else can you experience such freedom? :)

Let me list the different recopies that we have cooked so far at our house in Bangalore:

1. Vangi bath
2. Pulao
3. Puliogre
4. Lemon rice
5. Fried rice
6. Chapaati
7. Dosa - Masala Dosa, Plain Dosa, Benne Dosa
8. Chutneys - Pudina Chutney, Ginger Chutney, Onion Chutney, Garlic Chutney
9. Sambar - 5-6 varieties
10. Avalakki
11. Uppittu
12. Shira
13. akki rotti
14. raagi rotti
15. wheat rotti
16. shallow fry of vegetables - Potato, raw banana, onion, ladies finger, mushrooms, etc
17. boiled egg
18. egg omelet
19. Egg curry
20. Mushroom masala
21. Soya chunk masala
22. Gobi manchuri
23. Pav bhaji
24. Chana masala
25. Gobi masala
26. Low spice vegetable dishes of cauliflower, beans, etc
27. carrot halwa
28. Toor dal payasa
29. green gram masala
30. and many more....

Quite a long list :)

I hope it keeps growing...

5 comments:

Santosh : ) said...

very very palatable .. the food and the post :)

I agree, cooking experiments are really great :)

What I have never tried before is to use cutting vegetables for stress busting :) u sure its safe? :P what if I cut myself :D ?

Vijay Mhapsekar said...

Dada, it is safe.... In the beginning, the probability of cutting fingers is rather high, but that much is acceptable :)

I think that the advantages outweigh the risks...

Archana R Hemmady said...

Hmmm... Good.. put also the receipes of wat u cook,, atleast of those which are new n innovative :-)

Archana R Hemmady said...

N u cal urself koopa manduka .. monkey.. Sarihoytu.. If u urself ll decide this there ll be no scope for improvement.

Vijay Mhapsekar said...

Archi madam,
The number of recipes that we have tried already are too many :)
The number is so large that I have forgotten the names of many dishes; that is why I didnt add much to the list.

There is a reason for the subtitle "koopa mandooka". My knowledge level is low and slowly but steadily increasing; I dont want to say that I know everything and that gives me the thrust to learn and know more. I will be changing the subtitle (and probably the blog site) once I am sure that I am at a proper level :)