For the Love of Cooking...

I never cooked before I got married.
My contribution to the kitchen chores was limited to laying the table and taking the dishes out to be served. Or maybe pouring water over my mother's hands as she knead the flour for the chapattis.

My mother is a brilliant cook, by anyone's standards. She can cook up a three-course feast at an hour's notice and even with just a few ingredients to play around with. Calm yet trans-like, that's my mom in the kitchen.

Enter my teenage and she was after my blood that I pick up some culinary skills before prospective grooms come visiting. She recited horror stories of young girls who made fools of themselves (and according to her, more of their mothers for not having taught their daughters the 'essentials of a good home-maker') the first time they entered their husband's kitchens, all to inspire me to pick up the kadchi.

Demand 'something new' for dinner and she would make me choose the flavour my taste buds sought by making me choose from the rich collection of ingredients in her kitchen cupboard, all so that I know my cumins from the fennels; she would make me stand next to her as she made pastes and sauces, she would catch hold of me on days that I appreciated her cooking-experiments and would ask me to help her chop the onions for the next meal. I would whine and make excuses, but she would blackmail me with a 'your poor mom doesn't have a life 'cause she is busy feeding hungry kids like you who don't appreciate her efforts' declaration and I would be forced to grudgingly enter the kitchen but would rebelliously walk out after cutting just that one onion. (It would be so poorly cut that she would have to work on it again by the way).

But that was then.

Now, I have been married for more than a year. And I can more than chop onions, and make all the gravies and the veggies, and confidently experiment with first time recipes too, without wasting the raw materials. My husband-dear, food-lover that he is, does appreciate my cooking and all the effort that I put in for it. (Though, just for the record, he chops the onions much better than me!)

My husband and I go veggie-shopping together every Sunday morning, and bring home a new one every week. And then, I make that all important call, to Mummy of-course, to understand the wonders that I can do with my latest specimen.

Her recipes are easy to follow. She explains all that I need to know to handle the dish, and also warns me of the possible-blunders I am likely to make. I have never failed any of her brilliant recipes, for the simple and comprehensive way they are explained by her. Or I should rather say her recipes have never failed me.

Today, if I were to analyze my growing confidence in the kitchen, I would blindly attribute it to my mother and the skills I have involuntarily picked up from just watching her go about her business. Mumma, I learn more from you than I would ever learn from any cook-book or any online-recipe I dig out. You are the one on whom I bounce-off every new cooking-term that I encounter. You are my Tarla Dalal and Sanjeev Kapoor, rolled into one. You are the 'good-homemaker' that I strive to be.

And I still need you around to help with the Paranthas and the Chapattis.