Culinary Evolution

One of my small wishes when I was a kid was to get into the kitchen and prepare a yummy dish. However my loving and most caring mom never allowed me to do an iota of work in her kitchen! Back home my mom, dad and I used to watch the cookery program by one of the most famous cook of Tamil Nadu - Mallika Badhrinath. This was probably the beginning of my cuisine knowledge gathering - in very small theoretical dosage!

To add water to the growing sprout inside me, that I named "Learn Cooking", came the cookery show by the celebrity Indian cook - Tarla Dalal. The downside was that the program was in Hindi and the brighter part was that it had the ingredients mentioned in English sub titles and I was smart enough to know how to prepare the recipe by the end of the program! Thanks to Tarla, I gained more theoretical knowledge in a specialization that needed only practical!

Well well well, it so happened that I had to come for my onsite assignment and have a kitchen all for me, myself and my own self! With the bare minimum recipes from my mom (As I never knew the basic day to day cooking!), I flied all the way to the US of A and started to cook. From the making of the daily needs like rice, rasam and a vegetable, my practical cooking was trying to survive. Then came my sweet old ex roomie Deepak, who was a master cook and taught me "All about practical cooking" and as the saying goes, practice made my cooking – well: more or less perfect!

Now that I have started to cook a variety of side dishes, main dishes, snacks and a couple of sweets and savories, I tend to try more varieties. With my new roomie Anshuman, the whole north indian cooking is what I am trying to master. That is it! My evolution of cooking - both in theory and practice, from the novice good old days of pure theory to the experienced chef. Last but not the least; I continue to watch some wonderful culinary programs here, in Salt Lake City. This blog would be incomplete if I do not mention my favorite programs - Barefoot Contessa with Ina, Jana's Italian cooking and Emeril's lively cooking had opened Italian, Mexican, American and other area specific cooking!

It is kitchen time buddies - I am off to soak Daal for my ducky Spinach Daal...

With more thoughts...