Aromas and Spices..:)

Cooking – This has always been a topic of contention between me and my mom. She wants me to do it and me always insisting her to do it. The days I used to enter the kitchen, I could almost hear bells toiling with every step I took. But unlike the welcoming and warm smile you see on God’s face when you step inside a temple I was always greeted by a sad “lot of work, now” look on my servant’s face and a stern look on my mom’s face. Now, things seem to be changing. They rightly say there’s always more terror in the anticipation than in the actual BANG. I discovered that I had to make friends with the pots and pans and the scary looking cook books to make any headway. I owe a lot of gratitude to my sister-in-law on whom I was as dependant as a foreigner is on a translator when he is in a foreign land and doesn’t know the local language. I have started enjoying the riot of colors of the fresh vegetables, the churning noise of the mixer, the sizzle of the pan, the smell emanating from the vegetables cooking in the rich gravy, the Indianness of the spices (being so diverse, they all are together in the same box just like us, Indians) and the grandness of all the dishes lined up on the dining table. The Golden Rule of cooking I feel is looking for the signs, like the one you get when maybe you miss an ingredient and that item catches your eye because you had it all neatly arranged on the stand, the color and the smell of the gravy tells you that something is missing somewhere and no Dil maange more here, it’s better to put a little less of something than putting a lot of it. This journey has just begun for me and I have a long way to go before I even reach a resting place, midway to my final destination. So I wish Happy cooking to everyone who cooks whether it be out of necessity (includes wife’s strikes... ;)) or out of personal love and choice. Cook love for your loved ones.