Good evening and welcome to the ultimate, unique, one-off but totally special Chandra ka Cookery News Documentary type thing! Cooking: what an interesting word? You either love it or you hate it, but one thing for sure: you will definitely go wrong at it. And if you think that you are totally accident prone to anything within 3 feet of an oven then I recommend that you stop reading my review because it is written by one of the clumsy cooking catastrophes of life. One of those people who tried to cook curry in a plastic container, yes I admit it, but then I was young and innocent and unwise to the properties of plastic. (I mean who could have ever thought that it would melt all over the gas?)
Today, in my lamba sa news documentary, I’m going to give you some of Chandra’s helpful (or not) tips of cooking food, and to make you aware of the dangers, I shall tell you of some cooking catastrophes which have occurred.
Enjoyment
When I was first taught cooking by my pyaari si mother (culture, you have to do it!), the first thing she told me was how cooking was her passion. Now I couldn’t see at all why getting your hands dirty and using lots of energy up just to mix a couple of things together was a passion but hey, I let it pass. But its true, if you ever want a chance of cooking something successfully, then you have to make it your hobby, something that you really enjoy doing because only then will you be able to fully concentrate on your cooking and want it to taste good.
Crisis:: Well, I was all for this cooking thing, so I got right into making diamond shaped, uneven rotis and a nice aloo ki sabzi (potato curry), which ended up a weird greeeny colour. Unfortunately, Main Prem ki Deewani Hoon was on television at that time, and it happened to be the Abhishek Bachan part. I started to enjoy my cooking so much that I accidentally crushed the curry into a big ball of mush, and in my open-mouthed gaping action, the roti managed to turn into a small black biscuit, something like an oreo. On top of this, some chai I was making managed to disappear. I wonder how that happened?
Lesson: Always keep fully focused on your cooking, always enjoy cooking, but never watch Abhishek Bachan whilst doing so, or his hotness will burn your food!
Ingredients:
Whatever you cook whether it be maggi or pizza or sabzi, you should always realise that you should put the right amount of each different ingredient in. Normally, whilst cooking for two, you should add half a teaspoon of salt to savoury items, as this is the recommended amount, but you can adjust it to your own taste. If you want to make your meal spicy, honestly don’t add too much unless you want steam coming out of your ears. Add little by little of each ingredient, keep trying it, and adapting it to your taste. If however, you are making a cake or something that involves setting for the first time, then I advice that you consult a cookery book, these are things which cant be made from scratch.
Crisis: My cousin’s friends had a particularly bad incident happening with them, when they didn’t follow the cookery book instructions. They were cooking a foreign meal, I think it was Italian, where they had to pour some alcohol into a saucepan and light it, to make the dish set. However, they thought it would be amusing to pour extra alcohol into the saucepan, and when they set it on fire, it managed to spread. (who would have imagined alcohol would be flammable?!) Nobody was hurt, because they finally had the common sense to throw a towel over the fire, but it still managed to burn a quarter of their kitchen down.
Lesson:Always follow the instructions, if the book says it, its probably right. Never set flammable things on fire because that’s just dumb.
Time:
Often, cooking goes wrong because people don’t leave it to cook for long enough or leave it for too short a time. Time is very important with cooking; even two minutes can make the difference between a nice fluffy cake and a big blob of black goo. So you should regularly keep on checking your cooking to see if it is done yet, or even taste it and see if it tastes right. A normal sabzi for around four people takes around 10-15 minutes to make, not counting cutting, and it is different for different types. A large deep pan pizza should take around half an hour to cook properly, which is normally the same with a cake. If you leave your cooking for too long, then chances are that it will burn to a crisp. If for too short then chances are that you will be sick :P
Crisis: I once baked a cake for my friends’ birthday; it was a gorgeous cake and I iced it perfectly. We brought it in to her party singing “happy birthday to you”, and the cake having all of its candles, looking as innocent as ever. My friend set the knife into the cake, and when doing so, lots of brown cake mixture came squirting out of the plate onto us. In the end, after I’d got everyone tissues (and the Auntyji’s gave me evil stares because I ruined their “kashmiri” sarees, which honestly who wears to a party?) after an embarrassing five-minute silence, I had to feed my friend cake with a tablespoon, and the cake still tasted nice: but it looked like kheer!
Lesson: Keep checking all of your cooking, from both the outside or the inside or you may find yourself covered in brown goo with evil stares surrounding you! :P
Originality and Adaption:
Have you ever tried cooking something, followed the instructions perfectly, put it on for the right amount of time but it still doesn’t taste right? Well the solution has to be found by you and only you, all you have to do is pinpoint the problem, and change it. If there is lack of salt, or sugar or whatever then add it in. Even if you think there should be another ingredient added, then do so because experimenting only discovers most wonderful chefs. Yes, follow the instructions, but adapt it to your taste, and make your own unique dish whenever you can, and who knows, you may end up being the next Jamie Oliver or the guy who hosts Khanna Khazana! :D
Crisis:: We had gone to visit a family friends’ house, and the daughter of the house being the cultural type, with the usual thel in hair, little chottis (really cute, but she was 19!) decided to make us some dinner. She made us some pav bhaji, which looked really nice. I took a big bite of some pav with bhaji and immediately spat it out because it tasted…. sweet. In the end, we discovered that she had put kelas in the pav bhaji for ‘seasoning’! Seasoning my foot, I bet she wanted to poison us because we didn’t buy her Amla hair oil for her birthday, but only a make up set. Honestly!
Lesson: Always add some originality, but to the extent that it actually tastes good. Never get someone like that girl make-up, get her some hair oil! :-)
So the essentials for cooking a successful dish: enjoying what you do, following the instructions and ingredients, keeping successful time management and putting in just the right amount of originality! :-) I hope you found my random random review helpful, and do have a great time cooking. And I really hope some guys read this review, because honestly, cooking isn’t some 19th century housewife job, it’s a hobby, which you may find that you enjoy! :-)
And if you don’t want to cook then have a big bowl of cornflakes, or instant noodles, or even a big bar of chocolate to bhar your peth! :P
Don’t forget to RRC….and do pop in and cook me a treat :-)
