Survival Food

I am no Bear Grylls and I am also not sure if I am qualified enough to have an opinion or a blog on something as sacred as food. But then whoever said bloggers are qualified. Opinionated yes. So here I am…’dishing’ it out for all I care! The word ‘opinion’ somehow reminds me of ‘onion’ not only because of how it is spelt (and sometimes wrongly pronounced haha!) but also because of their importance in our lives and our food, respectively. I grew up hating onions with a passion up until 5 years ago. I could never understand how it was consumed raw as a ‘salaaaad’ when all it did was make mouths stink and it came with that horrible undecidedly soft-but-crunchy sound. I also saw the machoest of men and the staunchest of feminists teary-eyed when they cut it! Oh and that smell when they are cut and stored in the refrigerator! Puke! It was only after I moved to Australia that I finally embraced the O. It was at one of my dearest friends’ dinner table that I was passed the bowl of onion & tomato salad (does this qualify for a salad though?) prepared typically with lots of tangy masala and nimbu. I think I was so homesick that I was willing to do or eat anything to feel that I was back home with my onion-bre(a)thren. My first bite into the ‘salad’ – and voila! I had been converted! It was sweet and spicy and juicy and crunchy and left a tingling sensation in my mouth – all at once! I understood the fuss behind it. All at once! Not that I hadn’t tasted raw onion before – on masala papad (during my undergrad days with McDowell’s No. 1 whisky where I carefully used to remove large chunks of it) or in bhel & sev puris (from my local chaatwala) but I’d just never had onion on it’s OWN and sunk my teeth into those wonderful slivers. My fast food orders changed overnight from ‘burger without onions’ to meals with ‘onion rings’. Indian food (of all!) suddenly seemed bland without a side of raw cut onions. (I am still a bit skeptical about those ‘sirka-wala-pyaz’. Though something tells me that it will become ‘ishq-wala-love’ for me at first bite) However, there were some pyaaz-ke-side-effects. I soon realized that I’d started sweating profusely as my consumption of these deadly Os went up. Which also made me wonder how my friends and colleagues were dealing with this new ‘o’bsession. It was in the air that O was just not being fair. And like a scorned lover in a new relationship, I decided to hold back. I’ve since been holding back on devouring these with raw passion and ‘using it’ only to my advantage, for cooking. It’s a tumultuous relationship. Tumultuous because I get performance anxiety when I have to use one (or many) for my cooking. I STILL haven’t figured out how to ‘cut’ one properly. I have only recently started cooking and for someone who hadn’t had a love affair with THE staple ingredient up until adulthood, I knew it was not going to be easy. So while I own all the gadgets (chopper/knives), I haven’t really found a way to satisfyingly use the O. I do not ‘understand’ how it can be sliced, diced or chopped. And then when you see or hear the word ‘finely’ being used with these methods, you turn to God. On my subsequent trip home, I surprised my family when I asked for the bowl of finely-cut-slivers of onions to be passed at the dinner table. It was met with a ‘WOW you’ve started eating kachcha pyaaz!’ reaction. Who would’ve thought that a (then) 31-year-old raw-onion-virgin would still have developing taste buds? Also, when I sheepishly revealed to my family about my wannabe survival food cooking skills and my inept attempts at ‘finely slicing / dicing / chopping / cutting an onion’, I was promptly gifted (by my wonderful sisters) a book titled ‘How To Boil Water’. I have since been trying to apportion the appropriate technically nuanced respect that it deserves. I have been onionized by fire. Or separation.

Cleanliness is...

There’s this thing called ‘cleanliness’ that I’ve fortunately inherited from my mum. What a Bridezilla is to a wedding and a Godzilla is to mankind; Mumzilla is exactly that to my household. You get the gist? (Mind you, I’m not talking about being ‘tidy’, which she is and I’m not.) Like her, I somehow can’t bear to not wash my hands before and after every single ‘defining’ moment of a day especially when it involves food. I’m certain it’s not an OCD. It’s not, I’m certain. Not doing ‘it’ after using the bathroom for a quick wee or after having dug for gold (even if from the circumference of an orifice) is a complete no no. It’s a criminally disgusting act yet widely practiced. What makes it singularly sickening for me is when I have to play a courteous guest at someone’s that unflinchingly practice these malpractices! Do I politely tell them or do I just look away when I see those hands lovingly marinate that chicken while the cistern flush still plays in the background? Do I tell them that while they are killing the lumpy bits in the cake batter, their hands are also leaving skid-mark like impressions in that vanilla batter? (It’s not supposed to be a marble cake you know!) Do I tell them that it is unacceptable to rinse their mouths in the sinks they use for washing their dishes? Do I tell them to at least rinse the lemon squeezer that carelessly dropped in the sink while they were ‘still’ using it? Do I lie and tell them that I don’t like gaajar-ka-halwa because the one they’ve prepared is ‘kaala-kaala’? Do I tell them I only eat rice when I can’t really do without ‘chapatis’? Where do I draw the line? I’ve read way too often that we are what we eat. Are we really what we eat? Are we all filthy freaks of nature with varying degrees of cleanliness? My super generous and considerate flat mate, after returning from work, habitually takes off his boots in the lounge room and lunges straight towards the refrigerator. The sink in between is an invisible aberration. He invariably takes out something from the freezer section – like a precooked patty or a dish that was prepared last winter. I remember him once taking out a frozen pizza base and putting it on the ledge of the balcony – without an under plate – for it to thaw! “Haw!” I screamed in horror. He remarked, “Relax! It’s going to get cooked anyway. All the germs will get killed”. I retorted with a cheeky “Why don’t you **** on it and cook that too? It’s going to make a great pizza topping!” I realized almost immediately what I’d said was too harsh and apologized at once. When the ‘gourmet’ pizza was finally ready, I was cheekily asked if I’d like to try the “**** pizza”. I retracted my apology, threw my manners off that same ledge and without making eye-contact cut him mid-sentence with an abrupt ‘NO!’ A voice in my head said, ‘I have morals and I will not compromise!’ He has probably long forgotten about that incident because to this day, he still asks me if I’d like to have something from that overloaded freezer. I now only momentarily freeze before saying a genuinely polite & apologetic, ‘No, thank you’. I see these TV shows with celebrity chefs and master chefs and crisis survival chefs like Bear Grylls and Jamie Oliver invariably doling out some great caveman style cooking tips (they could probably have their own ‘Caveman Style’ song like Gangnam Style?) and I unfailingly notice their nails and the sweat and the grime and wonder if I have a sick mind? As kids, we’d given our mum this poster on her birthday (from Archies Shop) that read ‘Cleanliness is a sure sign of a sick mind’. She tore it to smithereens. I now understand why.

Cheeky Birthday Gift!

Two years ago, my family decided to gift me an innovative birthday present. I received an email two days before my birthday with the subject line obviously titled “Happy Birthday”. Without much ado, I opened the email only to be stumped by what I saw – a cooking class gift voucher called ‘Totally Tapas by Master Cheeky Chefs!’ It was my worst nightmare come true! Cooking and me??? I got dizzy at the thought. Mother Earth dramatically moved while I sat still, aghast. After regaining my composure, I promptly called my fam to thank them for this ‘thoughtful’ present – the one that’d destroy me in the imminent future – four days after my birthday to be precise. I subtly layered my mildly garbed nervousness (and huge discomfort) with a pitch perfect ‘Thank you! Wow! It’s going to be such an awesome experience!’ With fingers crossed, I made the next call (it’s possible in a crisis situation) to the cooking class center to see if I could cancel and get a refund – so that I could buy a nice bottle of Shiraz with that money. But nah it was all locked in – they were happy to put me in another slot on another day but a refund was out of the question. I had no choice but to confirm my participation and conform to the norms of a ‘present’ – to fatalistically accept it. I spent the next few hours making ‘casual catching up calls’ to my friends in Sydney – to gauge who could be up for this ‘fun’ experience. I was a man on a mission, decidedly ‘excited’ (and secretly desperate) to recruit at least one co-victim if not more. Man proposes but God disposes. Dispose he did. A very dear friend came on board with genuinely spirited enthusiasm! I, on the other hand, experienced cold feet, sweaty palms, shivers, jitters, tremors and every bit of anxiety in the week preceding the big day. My ‘actual birthday’ came and went without a whimper. It was inconsequential in the scheme of things. It was this ‘event’ that had consumed me. D-day came and with much trepidation, I made my way to the cooking class in Surry Hills – at 10 am. I wanted to stop at the pub next door to get smashed so that I could face my demons, fearlessly. But it was wayyyy too early to drink and wayyyy to late to salvage the situation. My lack of cutting and chopping skills were about to be exposed. My inadequacy of basic food knowledge was going to be ‘outed’ to the whole world (or at least to the other 14 self-inflicted martyrs). My heart was in my mouth. Seriously, if I’d puked, it’d have been on the cooking bench, palpitating and going totally tapas! And then it began... The group was welcomed by a glass of wine (smart move) – and a disposable paper chef hat where we were required to write our names. Now I’d been used to faking it in the virtual World but this was real. And the names were being matched with the list. The second glass of white had started to calm my nerves (Thank God I was empty stomached!) The whiteboard screamed – Cheeky Food Group – Team Cooking Extravaganza! We were then given our benches where lay a recipe handout for what we were going to cook and pots and pans and utensils that we were going to need to cook these Spanish appetizers with unpronounceable ingredients. Then came complicated cookware terminology – sauté pan, griddle pan, paring knife and what have you! Thankfully, all was demonstrated visually for the cooking ignoramuses. Now I vividly remember ‘what’ we cooked (but not the recipes) and there was a lot! There were cherry tomatoes in saffron and garlic oil, mussels with chorizo, smoky fried almonds, chicken wings in garlic oil and spicy pimientos. We were shown one technique and recipe after another and another. I had just been run over by a truck. But I was surprisingly enthused (must’ve been the wine) ‘BRING IT ON’ I said. My friend and I started cutting and peeling and prepping and cooking. She surefootedly. I slow-footedly. We were a perfect foil for each other. Soon enough, she smelled my reluctant lack-of-skills along with the beautiful aroma of the herbs and spices that were cooking all over and took charge! Not satisfied with playing second fiddle at what was supposed to be MY experience, I took over the stirring, blending, mixing and whisking responsibilities with aplomb. In the bargain, I understood the importance of my role. I’d learnt the art of ‘cooking just enough’ to have the dishes taste yummilicious! Moist. Fresh. Not burnt. Not underdone. Not overcooked. Just perfect. There was no scoring like Masterchef at the end of it all. But all of us stood around a big table, proudly showing off our tapas plates – and digging into each other’s with flavorful frenzy. My friend and I were complimented for generously using the ‘spices’ (of course), which gave a fabulous ‘kick’ to our dishes. (I’d like to believe that we were backhandedly adjudged the best team!) Whatever little was left was ours to takeaway – to savor or show off. And I was dying to! If I could, I would’ve framed my first formal cut, my first formal whisk, my first formal flambé. The experience had after all left me stirred and not shaken.

Austraaylian Oi!

There’s something about the Australian twang, you’d agree. It’s got this fascinatingly annoying drawl and that unnecessary addition of vowels. Home becomes ‘hoime’. Loan becomes ‘loain’. And when you apply for one, you roll it like a cow or else you get none! Get that maite? On top of this unique twang, there’s peculiarity in ‘pronunciation’ of simple words too. One of my university friends loved to eat ‘brocco-lie’. Annoying. And then the Strategic Management lecturer at Uni strategically and comfortably ‘nestled’ a proper noun like ‘Nestlé’ in an array of other such ludicrously pronounced words! Not done! But as they say – “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. So at the ripe age of 24, I was unlearning to relearn some old new words, my thick accent notwithstanding. One year down (under) and I was comfortably equipped with an ear (if not the tongue) for Austraaylian. Or so I thought. I was showing off what I knew of the cities while still discovering more of the breathtakingly beautiful country and still learning the brazenly bizarre Australian English! The fine line between the twang and the pronunciation was increasingly blurring. From chicken wings at Hog’s Breath Café to unlimited desi-thaalis at Maya Da Dhaba, from juicy burgers at Hungry Jacks to ultimate long island iced teas at Hard Rock café, we were soaking it all in! Having OD’ed on ‘outside’ food, my sister had this massive craving one night for the über gross, boarding school staple – ‘Maggi’ magic masala! Now this gross thing isn’t exactly ‘home food’ – and she’s not even a boarding school product! Anyway, it’s ‘gross’ because I got this major food poisoning from these maggoty noodles when I was in standard 3 or 4. One recess, when I opened my lunch box I saw the noodles stuck to each other looking like those horrible light brown slimy earthworms. And when I tried to use my fork to have these noodles, they cut like an old smelly nasty piece of moldy blob! I know they’re ‘instant’ and supposed to be consumed ‘instantly’…but this?? I have never touched Maggi noodles since then! Sorry, but instant gratification is not for me. In college, I’d sleep hungry (by choice), while my mates were burning midnight oil devouring this apology of a noodle preparation! At one point, these also came in some silly juvenile ‘alphabet’ soup variation!!! We were in college dudes! Seriously? Oh, but I digress. So on spotting one open-late ‘part-grocery part-smoko’ store at Surfers Paradise (that typically caters to the young & the restless & the horny) my sister promptly went in to get her fix of Maggi noodles while the rest of us waited outside. She was spending more time buying these noodles than they’d actually take to cook! With my patience running amok, I stormed into the store only to see my sister – partly amused, partly traumatized. Because maite, each toime moi sista asked the stubby-blonde-Sheila-from-boganville behoind the counter for ‘Maggi’, all she got was ‘Noi! Whaddya afta?’ And some more ‘Noi!’ And some more ‘Whaddya afta?’ Ah maite, moi sista was losing her shit awright coz this Sheila was a dill behind the till maite. Moi sista could see ‘Maggi’ and when she pointed what she wanted to the blondie, the blondie went dipstick maite – totes drongo I tell ya! As if she’d been drinking with the flies! Oh maite, she SUDDENLY started screamin’!!! She’d spit the dummy oi…Like a fruit loop she kept screamin’ ‘MAAJI! MAAJI! MAAJI!’ Moi sista and I ran like roos maite thinkin’ what’d she want from our ‘MOM’ afta all oi?

A Tuesday

Though I don’t exactly remember what I did last summer, I vividly remember this time when I was very young (okay ‘little’!) and insisted on having ‘French toast’ EVERY DAY including that one Tuesday – when I cried, threw a massive tantrum and refused to eat anything but that! Now it was blasphemy to eat ‘anda’ on Hanumanji day. My family tried to coax and candy-talk me out of it but I wouldn’t have any of it! They gave in (like they still always do) and prepared it lovingly (even if grudgingly) with silent prayers (maybe) to forgive their sinner-of-a-son. Few days later, Hanumanji unforgivingly gave me ‘chicken pox’. It was the first time I was exposed to the causal dilemma of the chicken or the ‘anda’ theory! It was definitely the ‘anda’ I thought. Years passed by and with all that freshly sprouting body hair, my Punjabi belief in eating ‘vegetarian’ on Tuesdays grew stronger. I’d become a ‘chicken’ from an ‘anda’. With all sincerity and to not incur the wrath of Hanumanji again, I became a devout believer in vegetarianism on Tuesdays. Although I didn’t have any growing pains, I always found being confused to be one of my ‘sisters’ over the phone to be excruciatingly painful and embarrassing! Thankfully, this period didn’t last very long. As I transitioned to sounding like my dad (a much weaker version at that point) I decided to exercise my birthright to throw a ‘tantrum’, in my newfound croak. On a Tuesday, “I want chicken”, I said to my mum. Not wanting to make a big scene, she agreed. Or maybe, it was my booming voice. Whatever it was, I was beating my hairy chest in triumph. I could smell the ‘chicken curry’ wafting through the air from across twenty blocks as I walked home from the bus stop after school that Tuesday! I reached home and lunged straight into that wonderful ‘chicken’ curry. It was yummy and exactly what the high school boy had ordered! As I was eating that delish preparation, I kept getting these strange seed-like ‘boney’ bits in mouth. My mum is predominantly vegetarian, so she couldn’t exactly explain what part of the ‘bone’ those seedy things were coming from. Eight chapatis, two big bowls of ‘chicken’ and a warm, fuzzy thank-you-mom smile later, I noticed it was my mother who looked more satisfied…grinning like a Cheshire cat. Moments later, she revealed that what I so intensely demolished from my plate was not ‘chicken’ but instead – ‘jackfruit’ (kathal). I was devastated. I’d just made a pig of myself by attacking what ‘tasted and felt like chicken.’ I threw a tantrum, again. She reminded me of my childhood tryst with Tuesday and said, “I wouldn’t want to put you through that again now, would I?” No mother would, I agreed. But I was angry. Not with my mother, but with ‘jackfruit’. How dare did it deceive me! How dare! A few more hair and years later, I also realized that the version of French toast, which my family had cheerfully been making for years (that I’ve been devouring till date) is not the ACTUAL classic sweet recipe but instead a Punjabified-savory-one. The English-recipe describes it as ‘pain perdu’ – French for ‘wasted bread’ but OUR variation is made with soft, fresh and fluffy bread. A variation perhaps as different as chalk and cheese or should I say as ‘chicken’ and ‘jackfruit’? My family had made a family business of flimflamming their own family while being fabulously ‘innovative’. Some more hair and years later, I moved overseas, where being vegetarian was tough, apart from being criminal. Sensing my virtuous dilemma and perhaps feeling sorry for my vegetarian state of affairs in a foreign land, my sister logically explained, “God hasn’t come and told you to not eat meat on Tuesdays, has he? It’s just a faith and belief thing. So eat what you want.” I wondered if Hanumanji had told my parents or my grandparents or their parents to practice vegetarianism on Tuesdays? Whatever it is, it’s been 12 years since my sister put me out of my eternal moral misery. And 22 since I had a face-off with that jack-the-fruit!

If I could write...

If I could write I probably wouldn't be here. I would be writing films or songs, scripts or screenplays. But I can't. Maybe I can. We'll find out. When I do write, eventually, it'd be about cinema. Or my view of the medium. I'd write films that tug at your heartstrings. Cinema that moves you, gets you on the edge of the seat...and throws you off balance. I would write I'm stuck when I am. I'm stuck. Probably in a rut. It's a mundane existence. Or maybe just existential angst. Or maybe it isn't. I would write abstract things, which make no sense. But I like abstractions. I'm stuck. If I could write this wouldn't be happening to me. If I could write, I'd probably have written something last night. But I played poker and got wasted instead. If I could write I'd write from the heart. I'm stuck. I must be hungover. I'm dehydrated. But at least I'm honest. That's what I want to write. In all honesty, If I could write, I'd write a diary, which I always wanted to. But my brain cells are dead. And struggling right now. And I have no memoirs. But I have memories. And I'm stuck. If I could write, I'd write about people. Or as I see them. I like observing people. And it's probably THE ONE thing I enjoy the most. If I could, I would. And I hope I can. I can read. I can hear. If only I could write I wouldn't be here. But I am and I am writing. It seems I'm stuck. I would write a blog, which I've just signed up for. I will write about the films that I've seen. And give an opinion from my point of view. It may seem like a rant to some. But it'd mean I can write.

p.s. I had to write "I'm stuck" each time I got stuck. Too early to call it WRITER'S BLOCK I reckon!