Food Fetish :P~~

I'm crazy about good food. Usually, i'm met by raised eyebrows and other such facial contortions when I say that beacuse, well, I'm a kilo or so underweight. But I adore food, even if I'm not a heavy eater, I like the concept of eating. So to say, I live to eat.
I never wanted to learn cooking- coz it was projected as a very feminine thing and at the age of 15, when feminism is at its peak, you only want to rebel. That led to me wanting to marry a French chef. French beacuse I'd read somewhere that the French are the most romantic, also because I'd always wanted to go to France. Chef because, like I said before, I didnt want to cook.
A picture of Eiffel on my desk, French perfume in the air and French fries on the side. My dream was complete. As luck would have it, about 5 years later, I did go to France. And ironically had to learn cooking to even survive there.
An Indian would never call France the food capital. For me the meat was nauseating, the wines all tasted the same and the baguettes resembled weapons. And French men werent too inviting either ( maybe it was my brilliant French knowledge). I was forced into the kitchen armed with packets of home packed masalas and a few pages of recipes.
Frankly, I turned out to be quite good at it. For the records there was not a single dish which was inedible that i had cooked. Cooking slowly began to delight me- I'd cook when I was lonely or depressed , when I wanted to surprise my tired roommate or simply when I felt creative. Our menus were always simple, chocolate croissants microwaved for exactly 12 seconds for breakfast. Rice/bread/ tortillas with sardine or mushroom curry for dinner. Sometimes we would feel guilty of devouring so many members of the sea kingdom and make some vegetables.

Sundays were days of experimentation. We would cook sambar and rasam ( from the recipe booklet) and try out different recipes from internet printouts- which we would faithfully use the office resources for. There were several nice discoveries on our journey-Chicken 75, coconut mushroom sambal and woodchop ( a very unique frozen dessert). One total disaster was Gobi manchurian. Well, to put it nicely we couldve supplied some to replenish the dwindling glue supplies at our local post office. when I left France, my friends gifted me a lovely book on 'Desserts'. I flip through it very often- to drool at the pictures.

Back in India, when i was working in Chennai, i got back to the cooking routine, but things changed because there was no microwave and ofcourse no sardine tins. So I turned into a veggie at home and my cooking turned less experimentative. Though there is one particular session my theatre pals love to remeber even today.
It was a pot luck dinner and me and my roommate decided to take Gulab jamuns. We bought the mix, and set out with making the dough. We rolled it out into small cute balls with all the experience of doing the same for chappatis. We fried them and made the sugar syrup. Heated the syrup till it became a little viscous and dropped the jamuns into it. We then waited for a while and put it into the fridge. We mustve gone wrong somehwre coz in a few minutes the syrup had crystallised. we took the dish out and analysed the situation. Maybe the syrup had become too thick. We started digging out the jamun. Well, it was really digging beacuse there had been a fair amount of solidification. The jamuns came out with sugary deposits all around it.. so we, ummmm... well.... washed each with tap water. May I remind you here that tap water in Chennai is as salty as sea water. Now to offset the salty taste we dropped the jamun balls in mineral water. And carried it to the party. What followed at the party ranged from wild shrieks of laughter to discussions on how our poor jamuns could be used as ammunition. Last I heard was that my play director was describing my jamuns to some Slovenian friends of his- almost 2 yrs after the incident.
Over the last few years I've tasted many cuisines ranging from Mexican, Lebanese, Italian, German, French, Chinese, Thai, Malay, Baba nyonya ( a very special Malaysian variety), Turkish, Pakistani and many others. The following are some of my all time favorite foods- in random order. Also includes some which I have tasted just once.
*Raw mango with chilli powder
*Belgian chocolates
*Pal Payasam
*Matthi Fish fry
*Thin crust pizzas in Italy
*Satay in Malaysia
*Chaat
*Kela Rabdi in BITS
*Chicken Biriyani at a Bhai's shop in Coimbatore
*Fish tikka in most restaurants
*Elaiada- a mallu sweet dish
*Hot doughnuts
*KFC chicken
*Dahi vada in BITS IC
*Hot 'n' Sour chicken soup at a Chinese restaurant in Coimbatore
*Mom's egg rice
*Chilly paneer at C'not, BITS
*Mango Ice cream
*Bread sandwich with ' kaya' - the coconut jam
*Chendol in Malacca
*Cakes with icecream in the centre and on the top
*Tub Tim siam (sweetsoaked chestnuts in coconut milk) at Benjarong, Chennai
*Danish butter biscuits in round blue tins
*Sardine curry
*Little onion samosas
*Curd rice

Hmm, I'm going rumbley in the tumbley...
Till next time...