Culinary Experiments

My room mate and I had started cooking ( besides noodles and tea ) a week ago.
From then, what I have been involved in is best termed as Culinary 'Experiments'. Experiments because, in spite of having some recipes and ingredients from my mother, I ended up choosing or mixing things in unorthodox manners, creating novel dishes.

But , the good news is that all the dishes ended up edible and majority of them even tasted good. Sometimes they just turn out to be good in spite of too much/too less of any ingredient, or use of substitute ingredients. Sometimes, I need to fix the problem by overriding measures. ;) Once or twice I even goofed up with the sequences. A few additional 'improvisations' after these goof ups allow to raise the status to 'edible'.

Today's meal was in that respect the most unorthodox. I had started with ready-to-make Sevai, which I had to cook and add seasoning. I ended up making a glass of Cooked Rice Water ( 'Kanjivellam' ), and some pasty goo with some salt in it. I was in a tight spot, wondering how to consume the stuff. Then I found the MTR Vathal Kuzhambu mix that my mother had given me, mixed it boiling water, hoping to prepare a thick curry to give taste to the goo. I ended up with something akin to rasam, and mixed half of it with the Rice Water and flooded the goo with the rest. I even added Jeera and Mustard fried in oil as seasoning. And voila, it tasted really good. The mix was a real saviour. I even topped it off with some Chammanthipodi ( prepared from home ), and had a full meal.

That is why in spite of being a rather amateur cook, I really enjoy the process of cooking. There is a lot of fun in it, a lot to learn and finally fills your tummy as well :). Sometimes it gets you quite a lot of compliments as well.


Cooking is a great skill and its an art also. We youngsters sometimes do not respect and recognize the effort our mothers put into preparing the daily stuff that we eat. Get into her shoes and check it out. You will find it a very challenging task. It requires what you call 'Kaipunyam' ( literally 'Virtue of the hand' ) to cook a delicious meal. I recommend everyone , especially males to try out cooking and you will definitely enjoy it.