It has been a long time that I’ve felt in a space to write
about my family with the kind of clarity that I used to have. It was a practice
of mine to write about the idiosyncrasies of my family at least on the occasion
of my parents’ anniversary. Unfortunately, owing to the passage of time,
anniversaries have moved on to the next generation and the core group of children
(my first cousins and I) are still single, and while I cannot speak for my
sisters, I don’t really feel too much like mingling unless it is mixing a very
old monk with a very young batch of coke.
But today, it’s a morning too good to pass up the chance to
speak a little bit about the family I have, and so while Gandalf reprimands
Bilbo for being cheeky, I am putting my tongue in cheek and I will speak of
cooking and my family’s approach to food.
My grandmother was never satisfied with following the recipe.
She felt cooking was an art form and certainly created many works of art in the
ranna ghor such as incorporating soyabean into mutton chops and getting
away with it. While Gordon Ramsay goes into cardiac arrest, I shall also call
your attention to the fact that my grandfather’s recipe for chilli pork is one
that was the stuff of legend at the table when we sat down to eat.
And then of course that one occasion when my father went into
“I must make fish without any ginger” mode and came up with an onion
less and garlic/ginger less fish, and he succeeded in making it tasty as well
and thus was born the bastard child of the kalia and the standard curry,
which we call kharia. The recipe for this is a family secret meaning
that my father has shamelessly and unapologetically forgotten how he made it.
I spoke of the next
generation did I not? Meet me. I’m the person who will infuse mutton with marmalade
and decide it is too sweet and therefore assign it to the category of do not
repeat, unless you want to psychologically torture your sworn enemies or
wonder why Long Island Ice Tea has the words “ice tea” in it and then decide to
pour white rum into a tumbler of black tea (also works with dark rum and coffee…add
cream and whiskey instead and you shall have Irish coffee). I have also made
chicken curry in which I have put whiskey while marinading and it has become my
signature dish.
And on this noble afternoon, I picked up a recipe book from
Kashmir and decided to infuse the cooking method of one recipe with the
ingredients of another just to see what happens. You may either think this is a
bad idea, or you might just be surprised and ask for a second helping.
Such is my relationship with my family and my food. The urge
to experiment and to see what lies beyond the stress levels of the human
stomach is something that is fascinating. I have no idea what I’m doing in the
kitchen half the time, but I follow my instincts and my nose and very rarely
has someone told me the food I fed them is bad. Obviously to bend the rules,
you need to know them backwards and in this regard I’ve been fortunate to have
the entire internet and the mothers (or fathers) or even the friends whose
houses I go to, to swap recipes with.
I do understand my grandmother’s sentiments when she said
cooking is an art form. I merely try to emulate some of those principles today.
Eliot asked in Prufrock if he should dare disturb the
universe. I ask your stomachs the same question.
The Bilge Master
