Welcome to the Recipe book of Chef Nenners. I’m presenting to you the recipe of a perfect dish, which is rather addictive and you simply can never get enough of it! This dish is liked specially by those who love life, and are willing to re-live the best times through a book! The dish I’m going to prepare today, is called Five Point Someone, a recipe which was bestowed upon me by not a culinary expert, but a contemporary literary genius called Chetan Bhagat!!
Health Warning: The review can seriously damage your mental capability and you will experience a symptom coined by me, called Silly-extendo-metaphor-misis!
The Three Main Ingredients
Hari: Thanda-Thanda, Cool-Cool!
Acting as the water to troubled oils (no, my metaphors are not messed up!), this cool and chilled out ice is the mediator between his friends, and the mediator between us (the readers) and his surroundings. This element reacts rather well with a certain mithai called Neha(Not me!) and when put in fire, acts like glue to the other ingredients. Chemically very safe and harmless, this sweet n’ sour spice hits the taste buds and becomes quite addictive! Its like cheese-spread, just meshes well with the bread and adds that extra Yummy factor to it! You can never get enough of tasting (er…too many metaphors can get weird…just substitute “taste” with “read” ok?) its flavour!!
Alok : Whiny Wine!
This rather sweet drink, with a tinge of the Sour factor, is not the sparkling kinds, but rather flat and smooth. Tastes well when served with dinner (or when dinner is served to it :p) But the moment it is put in fire, an enormous flame reaches up, which can be harmful if you’re standing too close! Goes well with cheese and overall has a love-hate relationship with the spices in the food! Can’t do with it, or without it!
Ryan: hot Hot HOT!
This red mirchi is long (read as tall), slender and stands upright. Gives red-chillies a good name! When eaten whole, it burns and makes you yell and scream! When put through fire, it can create a nasty havoc! When added with wine, it might turn out to be great, or it might just make the whole dish a burnt mess! When eaten with cheese, the taste gets a bit sober and less with the Ouch factor. This spice has a mind of his own, and it can either make the consumer scream in agony, or when it wants, can just give a slight spicy touch! Depends on how much quantity is used. Doesn’t fit with bland food and adds the extra spice to wine and cheese!
The Procedure
· Take 1 spoonful of Wine, Cheese and Chillies(read as Alok, Hari and Ryan) and mix them up in a bowl labelled Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).
· Take several pints of disgustingly smelly kala-namak kind of masala which is the main requirement of the Bowl ( IIT), and is labelled studying your b*tt off! (SYBO)
· Now mix the Three Main Ingredients with the SYBO spice. You will end up with a pulp like substance, and soon you will realise that the SYBO doesn’t mix well with the other ingredients at all! In the beginning they will try to gel well together, but as you mix harder and harder, the 3 main components will mix with each other, and leave behind SYBO in the Bowl.
· As you’re mixing, add the sugary sweet called Neha, and you will see that it camouflages completely with the Cheese aka Hari and gets stuck to it. No matter how hard you try to keep the two separate, you wont be able to.
· Now add some Oil to the bowl, which is labelled Prof.Cherian. You will notice that the oil gets coloured completely by SYBO and becomes inseparable! You will also notice that Oil doesn’t mix at all with the Three Main Ingredients. Not only that, but the oil also tries to push the 3 Ingredients out of the Bowl, but is luckily unsuccessful in doing that. The Oil also tries to separate the sugar and the cheese, since sugar is Oil’s daughter! (Man, talk about extended metaphors!)
· Now take the mixture kind of thing that you have prepared in the Bowl, and add it to a huge pan which has a sticker saying Exams! The wine aka Alok will completely evaporate leaving just a tinge of taste behind. It will get totally submerged within another Oil added called Responsibilities. What is left in the wine bottle, is added to a glass called Home, in which there are useless components which only the wine can support and keep them living longer. They’re called, paralysed father, working mother and unmarried sister. Now you have to wait and watch whether the wine remains fresh or turns into vinegar ( I’m going crazy…) with all these different things happening to it.
. Meanwhile, be sure to watch the pan. The Chilli aka Ryan, is sizzling in the Oil in the Pan. The more you heat it up, the more it sizzles. It doesn’t mix with either of them, becomes isolated and yet strong taste on its own. It tries to give some of its taste to Cheese and Wine, but is not able to do that entirely.
· Be sure to also watch the Cheese aka Hari. As you cook it more, it becomes glued to sugary Neha even more, resulting in creating a Sweet-Cheese, which the Oil is repulsive to! This new substance is called Love!
· As you’re cooking watch out for the Flame, which in the crazy chemical terms of this review is called Rip-Roaring fun!!
An Example of a Chemical Reaction between the Three Main Ingredients!
Alok finally brought up the topic of the quiz at the dinner table.
''So, now you don't have anything to say?''
Ryan and I looked at each other.
''Say what?'' I said.
''That how crap this is,'' Alok said.
''The food?'' I said, fully aware Alok meant otherwise.
''No damn it! Not the damn food,'' Alok said, ''The apmech quiz.'' His expression changed from the usual tragic one to a livelier angry one. I found that expression marginally more pleasant to look at and easier to deal with.
''What about the quiz? That we are screwed. What is to discuss in that?'' Ryan simplified.
''Oh really. We are screwed, no damn doubt in that,'' Alok said.
I think Alok picks up a word and uses it too much, which ruins the effect. There were too many 'damns' in his dialogues.
Extra Tips
Chetan Bhagat is a genius! An ex-IIT graduate himself, he portrays the life of the 3 IITians so well that you feel as if you’re living with the characters, sharing their problems, laughing at their jokes, crying at their sorrows, and so on and so forth! Hilarious is the best word to describe this Masala novel and Brilliant is the only word for the author!
