A LESSON IN COOKING

A LESSON IN COOKING

-Aniruddha Burmon

(Submitted as an Assignment during PGDTE in the year 1997 at CIEFL, Shillong)

I was in school then. It was a Sunday or something. Mom had left for Guwahati to see my sister, leaving dad and me to fend for ourselves. We had convinced mom that we were able to cook four square meals a day, if not more. Saying is one thing and doing is another. Dad took charge of the kitchen. I was supposed to be the helper but the cook in reality. We winked at each other and in an instant we could read what was there in the other’s mind – pork of course. Off I rushed to the market and got the provisions – spinach, my favourite – goes well with pork.

‘Heat oil first and then fry the meat till it turns brownish’, ordered my dad. I followed the instructions religiously – well what could I do – that was my first lesson in cooking and dad who taught me English in school must know something about cooking too. After all, cooking is not difficult. ‘Add salt and turmeric’ – so did I, paste of onion, garlic and ginger is needed to. Leaving the frying to my senior I struggled with the traditional grinder. Plop – jumped out a piece of garlic here and plop went another. Tears rolling down my cheeks – the culprit was onion of course – water running down the nostrils. Well, I did have the paste made after all – you are allowed to differ in your opinion of a paste – but on my day I could have challenged any soul on the earth to beat me to it. ‘Fry the paste’ – done.

Pressure cookers were not heard of much those days but we did have an old make one, without a gasket of course. Once the gasket needed to be replaced we couldn’t get one because it wasn’t an Indian make and to our knowledge even if any pressure cookers were available, such gaskets were not available. Well, we could use it as a saucepan at least. Brownish meat, fired paste, light fried potato, all dumped in our ‘saucepan’ – can’t forget spinach – the smell used to drive me mad – ‘garam masala’ powdered is a must for meat – enough water for boiling – meat takes a long time to soften – we something more – pork needs more time still.

So we went on with our cooking. Spinach was not to be seen after sometime – potatoes started disappearing to but ht meat stood the ground like a rock. Flavour – none, only if you had taken your nose as close to the spoon carrying the ‘stuff’, as it didn’t actually touch your nose, you might have got some ‘smell’ – only a third person from outside might be affected. But we couldn’t go for much publicity either – you may very well guess the reasons.

Hungry, as we were after some two to three hours of struggle, cooked some rice – a little overcooked may be – but it doesn’t do one much harm – had to sit down for lunch – we did have to gulp down a few spongy pieces of meat – gravy was delicious though. Luckily this experiment did not go beyond three or four days – for mom came back to our rescure. Did I tell you that we had a guest that day who very unwittingly told us that spinach and ‘garam masala’ did not go together. ‘I told you so’, said dad.