These are some interesting
cooking stories, which happened and not cooked up :).
When I was in Virakth
Ashram, my neighbor Atmananda, who is from Maharashtra, gave me some beaten or
parched rice (don’t remember which one it was) and asked me to prepare some
upma. Upma is a fastfood variety of south india. I read somewhere recently, in
some cooking competition someone won by preparing this item. Generally in
south, rava - granules of powdered rice is used. The method of cooking is (oh,
everyone wants to start a cooking class, even shihan hussaini - the famous karate
man and I hear he is multi-talented., who throws everything everywhere, hope
the food he teaches to cook, is not for throwing like that), 1. Fry the rava
dry. 2. Pour some oil and in it little lentil (optional tomato, vegetables etc) and 3. Pour water in a vessel, after it
boils pour the rava and stir till it gets cooked. Easy. Now, this I tried. After
15 minutes when he came by to see the progress, the parched rice was floating
in water, I have not poured the right mount, and the water was excess. Seeing this,
he got angry and told me to do abhisheka (holy bath) with it, and in a huff
left the place. See, marathis prepare it with onions etc and will be dry, this I
learnt later.
The previos experience
was in the beginning, and the next episode was when I had just left Virakth
Ashram, and have come to Ram Nagar. I with My neighbours Swami Vishnu Das ji
and Br. Brahmatma Swaroop ji had gone to Dehradun, there they bought instant
idiappam. Idiappam is a south Indian version of Chinese noodles. On the way
back they were discussing on how to prepare. They didn’t know to, i volunteered
not just because, they did not know. But it is fairly easy. You follow almost
the same method in upma, but don’t fry the noodles. And add lemon juice later
and mix it properly. So, with this knowhow I was ready in the evening to prepare
this lemon-idiappam. My good/bad time, when I put the idiappam noodles in
water, in matter of seconds it absorbed all the water and it became like a semi-paste.
Ad what followed was a disaster. When the product is cooked (!!??!!) and brought
for eating, both my neighbours had a funny expression on their face. There is a
expression in tamil “sollavum mudialla mellavum mudialla” – they could neither
say nor swallow, no pun intended ;).
I
said good/bad time because, from the next day I was not allowed inside the
kitchen. They said, we liked your job, we may not be experts like you, but we
will manage without your help.
