My Family and Food

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