Culinary Confessions

Bon Appetit! Buon Appetito! Meshiagare! These are some of the different languages you can use to say ‘Enjoy your meal!’ And they are all such beautiful ways of saying this phrase. All the sounds that are enunciated are as important as the ingredients used in any recipe.

The joy of cooking is nothing but the joy of giving and there is no greater joy than that. As the year 2020 moved on, there was a time when everything came to a standstill and this was the moment that I put on my ‘chef’ hat and dwelled into my passion for cooking. The only thing on my mind would be "What do I cook next? What are the ingredients I need to buy? Can I experiment with something new?" etc. And this would lead to hours of Youtubing recipes and believe me if you could see the tabs open on my laptop right now, you would know the kind of foodie I am :P

So where did I develop this love for cooking? Well, it has to be from my mother - she is an exceptional cook and the love she puts into her food is boundless and I hope that someday I can recreate those dishes for her too. The spirit of cooking was rekindled and kept alive through cook shows such as Masterchef Australia, Top Chef and many others. I would not miss an episode and would watch it on repeat too, if need be. Nonetheless, the majority of what was shown was non-veg and me, being a pure vegetarian would still watch these shows and understand the techniques and words that were being used - not that I ever tried them but still - growing knowledge. My passion for cooking was ‘flambe’d’ through various movies - No Reservations, Chef etc. I also loved to see the scene from Harry Potter (the first one) where the feast is shown and I would be flabbergasted by the whole essence of food.

And so, the lockdown was a way to bring me back to one of my biggest passions - cooking. Just the other day, I was watching the movie ‘Julie & Julia’ and it completely moved me in ways I could never imagine. This was an inspiring moment for me when I thought to myself - maybe I could combine my two biggest passions together: cooking and writing. And so here I am, writing about the things I love the most.

Chapter 1: Microwave Meals

Act II Popcorn, a revelation for our generation - the joy of the crunch, the pop, the whiff of butter and taste of salt - a combination one can never refuse. Similarly, I came across a lot of microwave dishes myself - pasta, cakes and pizza too. And so the first dish I “cooked” was in the microwave (didn’t involve much cooking, obviously) and I made pasta: macaroni, mozzarella cheese, milk, oregano, chilli flakes and salt and voila pasta is ready - deliziosa! Although, I did have a disaster of a cook trying to make mug pizza in the microwave and once it was cooked (not!), all I could eat was the toppings which were tomato sauce, olives and cheese. Oops!

My microwave meals did not stop there; I also made my mother’s birthday cake too and this was an Oreo chocolate cake and surprisingly, it was great! To go with the cake, I made a chocolate sauce which I tried to drizzle as delicately as possible across the cake only to make it look like an explosion of chocolate sauce. Oh heck, as long as it tasted good! Dainty presentation and minimalism was something that I had to imbibe and it wasn't going to be easy.

Chapter 2: Improvise!

One day, I ventured out into making bread rolls which are basically, bread rolled out and stuffed with cottage cheese. Disaster number 1: Could not roll out the bread after cutting the edges. Disaster number 2: applied some water on the bread in order to roll it out and guess what, the bread not only broke but was stuck to the rolling pin!

Cooking tip: If the bread is stored in the refrigerator, do get it to room temperature before using it! Duh!

So what did I do? Improvise! I made my stuffing which tasted delicious; it was a combination of cottage cheese and all the possible Indian masalas such as garam masala, chilli powder, amchur powder etc. With the stuffing, instead of making them into rolls, I just made them into toasts and guess what: it was just fine :)

Case 2:

I decided to make tacos! No, unfortunately not from scratch - I did have store bought tacos and I just needed to make the filling. This was no traditional taco - it did not have any native ingredients that goes into a taco. It was an Italian take on a taco - I added mushrooms, capsicum, spices, Italian seasoning, chipotle sauce and mayonnaise. But the taco didn’t seem to be consumable and what did I do? You guessed it right - I ‘improvised’ to the most basic toast with mushroom and capsicum toppings. And my family enjoyed it! Simple joys of cooking :)

To conclude, I “improvised” the dishes to toast! Amateur cook problems, I tell you….
Chapter 3: Oven Phobia

I decided to have a go at another cake but this time I wanted to be all chefy and I decided to bake the cake in the oven. Gutsy, I must say! Well, lets see the downfall of my guts… I decided to make a butterscotch cake which had 3 parts to it: the sponge, praline and the cream. My first encounter with the oven and I forgot to remove the things that were kept inside the oven which included a plastic covering of some trays. Wow! Thankfully my mother walked into the kitchen around the same time and questioned me whether I had removed everything from the oven. My worst nightmare ever - and the best/worst part was that there was no cooking involved but I managed to create a crisis and almost banned myself from the kitchen. I mustered up some courage and continued to bake the cake (without my mom’s assistance and just so you’re wondering, no I did not burn anything else :P). However, the catastrophe does not end here; the cake was looking good baking away in the oven and it was time to make the praline. I caramelised the sugar until I thought I had taken it long enough and poured it over the baking paper.

Cooking tip: Either do not pour hot sugar on the baking paper directly or grease the baking paper with oil or butter

With this cooking tip, you would have guessed the outcome of the praline: once it cooled and I needed to take it off from the paper, it refused to come out by itself but brought along the paper too! And my superhero walks in again at the same time and somehow manages to save half of the praline. I guess my mom just knew when I might create another disaster in the kitchen, huh.

After almost 4 hours, I finally managed to put up a cake that looked like one and I guess you could say it was worth the effort. Period.

Burnt….

One day, I was extremely ambitious and decided to make mushroom dust. The process of doing so, is by drying out the mushrooms and there are multiple ways of doing this. Obviously, I wanted the quick and easy way out of this and I added my lack of knowledge to this. One of the ways of drying out mushrooms in the oven is to slow dry them for about 6-8 hours at a temperature of about 60*C. Another way of doing the same was to dry them out at a high temperature for a period of only 20 minutes at 160*C. Not having researched my way into this process, I thinly sliced the mushrooms and laid them out onto the tray. Confusion and doubts overwhelmed me and I decided to drizzle the entire tray with some olive oil. What did not come to mind was that, with the oil, the mushrooms are going to cook - so obvious. Nonetheless, I turned my head for 10 minutes and the whole kitchen, yes you guessed it, was filled with smoke - the mushrooms were burnt. I was devastated. Ummmmm, well that went down the drain (literally!) But I would not let this disappointment stop me from having another go at the oven and I did and I overcame it! My victorious story will be revealed soon - stay tuned :)

Chapter 4: From scratch

I have always noticed on culinary shows, the judges ask whether certain things have been made from scratch or if it is store bought? And the credibility that goes into making a dish from scratch is one like none other. I too wanted to give myself this badge of credibility and decided to make ravioli from scratch. There are three components which bring the dish together which are the dough, filling and the sauce. This was my first attempt at making any kind of dough - I haven’t even made chapati dough before - what a disgrace! I was extremely excited to kick start this recipe.

First things first, I started with the dough and rested it. Good amount of exercise for the hands I thought. Although, before kneading it by hand, we must mix the maida, salt, olive oil and water with a fork until it becomes a shaggy dough. Then we’re to knead it by hand. Step one complete: dough is ready and is resting in the fridge.

Step 2: The next step is to make the filling. I attempted to make a mushroom filling and here I tried to bring in as much creativity as I could - I didn’t even follow a recipe! I sauteed mushrooms with garlic and basil and once it cooled off, and in order to give it some more structure, I added some cream cheese - inventive enough?

Step 3: Now, I had to roll out the dough and this is the most difficult part of it all - believe me! Initially, I cut the raviolis into squares but they would break eventually. And so my superhero mom had the idea of using a cup to cut out the raviolis which not only made life easier but they were uniform too. Carefully added the cut raviolis to a pot of boiling water until they were cooked.

Step 4: As the raviolis were cooking, side by side, I started working on my sauce which was just a plain basic burnt butter sauce with basil. Every time, I dissolved the butter it seemed to magically disappear and so I continuously added butter to the pan.

Cooking Tip: Melt a lot of butter initially and once the butter is melted turn off the stove!

The raviolis were cooked, the sauce was ready and now I just had to bring them together. I gently tossed the raviolis in the butter sauce and they were ready to serve and boy oh boy were they squisito! Muah! Success!

This brings us to the end of part one. We'll be back after the break!