The Timid Cook

Well here goes! My own blog about food, eating,cooking with a lot of trepidation, hesitation and loads of help from R!

Infact, I had started my other blog Notes from France as a blog to note my cooking experiments. But somewhere three posts down, it became what it was to be : Notes from France and then became Notes from wherever life would take me.

I have always enjoyed food. Preferring quality over quantity. And have been fairly open about sampling different cuisines. But it has only been in the past 5 years (since I have got married), that I have taken up cooking. Or rather forced to. Not that I don't enjoy cooking. But somehow, lack that something which differentiates good cooks from mediocre ones. Even today, 5 years later, my cooking is erratic. I myself don't know how that same old recipe will turn out - Good, great or horrible.

And yet, my ma, my sis R are great cooks. R is ofcourse more than a great cook. She is a FABULOUS cook. And she has been a constant guide over phone and email, helping to transform me from a non-cook to a cook, albeit a TIMID one.

Infact, the 30 odd basic recipes that she wrote for me, in between doing a million things that one has to do in bong weddings, was and is my bible. A bit tattered, dog eared and smeared by turmeric and spices, I am lost without it. Dear sweet R, in her fabulously neat handwriting, managed to find time to write them down.

That gift was the most valuable one for me and I clung onto it. I was so dependent on it that when in one recipe I found salt wasn't
mentioned in it, I rang up R to ask why she hadn't written it.

"Oof oh! I must have forgotten to write it. And anyhow everyone knows that except for desserts, one has to put in salt. So go ahead and add salt". Relieved, I put down the phone and added salt. She must have been amazed at my lack of such basic knowledge, but really, at that point of time, if she had added an instruction to stand on one leg and cook, I would have done exactly that.

I have been bugging R for a very long time, as have been others to collate all her recipes and get them published. But she has been for whatever reason, loathe to go about it. So here I am with my stories and her recipes. If nothing else, I will have another
collection of recipes to pour over while eating lunch. (That's one more quirky passion of mine. I have to, simply have to go through a cook book while eating my lunch / dinner. No matter if the plain rice and dal I am eating is a far cry from the exotic recipes in the cook book I am reading)!

Bon Appetit! (Recipes from the next post onwards)!