Disasters of the cooking kind

I had ranted earlier about me pouring butter milk into my morning coffee upon my first arrival in America. But when I was reading through this post by Anjali, I was horrified to think that someone had set up a video surveillance in my kitchen and had just recorded my experiences there! Believe me, even though that post is nearly two years old, I think it might have been written in 1000 B.C. and would still have held its ground through the ages.

This comes from a guy who just about a year back had a long debate with his friend whether you should put a heaped tablespoon of salt or should it be a heaped teaspoon when you make a single omlette. All this intellectual discussion happened while the oil kept magically disappearing from the pan on a oven at its highest flame. Needless to say, we did not really eat the "omlettes" we made that night.

Things haven't changed so much since then, though. All the curries I make out of frozen vegetables end up magically tasting the same, somehow; no matter if the ingredients were cauliflower and brocoli as opposed to carrots and peas or even mushrooms. Raw eggs and chicken tend to explode inside the microwave, and knives stained with peanut butter strangely find their way into smoked turkey breasts. Onions are extremely unhappy to get cut, and I have rarely fried cut onions without a some tear-drops of my own swimming in them. And someone please explain to me how to flip an omlette without the raw egg creating a pattern on the kitchen counter. The most common phrase heard in the kitchen when I am there is: "Oh shit!".

I follow a simple principle while cooking: if the matter can't be cooked in 30 minutes, it is not worth eating! So from frozen scratch to landing on my plate hot and steaming, it must be done in 30 grand minutes! Therefore, it is always a race against time, because I have already discovered the futility of trying to prolong the pain: I already know what the finished product is going to taste like. And I have found that instead of trying to clean the spills all around after I'm finished, it is definitely a good idea to first cover up the entire kitchen with paper rolls and then start. I don't believe, I simply KNOW that the stains will land there!

My friend tried to suggest some recipes over IM the other day, but she ended up explaining to me the difference between pulao and fried rice over the phone for a long long time. And asking these ladies (including mom) doesn't help too much either, because invariably their recipes include exotic ingredients like soya sauce or ginger-garlic paste. And boy, don't even get me started on trying to map the Bengali or Punjabi ingredient-names into a proper English equivalent that I'll find at HEB or Walmart!

But I honestly appreciate their patience, because if I am faced with someone who needs explanations in as much detail as I do, the least I will do will be to stop helping. Anyway, till then, boxed dinners and frozen pizza rule!!! (err... if you don't try to cook the pizza in a kadhai, that is)

:)