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.