Why do I cook?

I have of late been cooking a lot. I’ve prepared some delicious chicken items, some with shrimp and I haven’t spared vegetables either! I suddenly find a rush of adrenaline flowing into my veins to make a difference in the kitchen. And boy, haven’t I responded well?

Contrary to what some of my friends know, it’s not true I don’t know how to cook. I’ve just been lazy! The greatest kitchen discovery of my early life was my mom who could weave magic with an array of sumptuous dishes. She is, after all, a mom! I picked up some basics of cooking from her when I was in high school. Unfortunately, however, I’ve not lived in my Agartala home for years now and mom could do little whenever she visited me in Bangalore. Then came another exciting chef – my wife. She represented a partially different school of recipes that crossed over to the Chinese and European territories while still being accommodative of traditional Bengali delicacies. The obvious beneficiary, as you can see, was me. These ladies were cooking, and I kept eating!

But there was another in-between phase of my life when I lived with none of these chefs, which was an opportunity for me to delve into waters that had attracted me but I knew not much of. I plunged. I started preparing chicken not knowing the basics of how to do that, thanks to my parents not eating and mom not cooking chicken. The naïve me didn’t even know how to clean cut chicken pieces following the grammar book. I decided to set ablaze the cookbooks and launch my own recipes. I invented new ways to flirt with vegetables and spices. Oh, it was so much fun, not caring about what was the right or the wrong way to cook. I was cooking my way. If anyone asked me to name my dishes, I could tell them the ingredients and the procedure, but couldn’t attach any conventional name to the finished product. In fact, I didn’t want to discriminate! Things over a period of time changed and I became more conscious of the chemistry of the kitchen. I gradually realized there was a reason why there were cooking conventions that ought to have been respected.

That realization was further strengthened when I started observing my wife while she cooked amazing stuff for me. Since she too didn’t have a glorious past in the kitchen before marriage, she’d be rather obedient to the rule books and what her mom taught her; something the rebel in me wouldn’t want to comply with. In addition to the methodical approach, what worked in her favor was her love for good food – she herself was a big foodie – and keenness to learn how to prepare different cuisines. The gold medal was going to be hers with me suddenly disappearing from the kitchen; my job again was to eat! For a long time to come, she’d regret hearing great stories of my cooking credentials but not tasting any proof of that. For me, it was the case of the horse who gave up to a more illustrious horse in the race and said to himself, ‘I am proud coming second.’ Whenever I thought I’d cook, I feared being questioned by the lady on my disrespect for some of the rules of cooking, combination of oil and spices and what didn’t go well with what. As a result, it was the poor lady who was always cooking.

But here I am, finally with some sense of seriousness about the rules of the game. Believe me, it’s fun too! I still know my type of cooking consumes less time and yet delivers good taste-bud experience, but then following the convention isn’t bad either. With my wife not being around, I am in charge of my kitchen now and I’ve been humbled by my performances. I pledge to get better and offer her aromatic experiences to cherish. 

As for mom, I’m already a celebrity chef. Move over Sanjeev Kapoor!