Vaanu Thiruonam

I have graduated from "I cook so that I do not starve" to "I'm a good cook".

I cooked a huge Ona sadya for few of our friends, they all enjoyed it and had a wonderful time.

Very rarely we invite more than 2 people at a time and my usual menu is Fried Rice/Vegetable Pulao and chicken curry. This is something that you can never go wrong with. Everyone likes it and it is easy to make.

Onam has always been a special time to me, so this Onam I decided to do it on a large scale (cooking for 8 is a large scale according to me) and invited people very close to us.

Me being my usual self had a time line of things to do whole of last week with Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mainly being shopping and cleaning. Thursday was supposed to be the prep day, but something else came up and that did not happen.

Friday since I missed a day, I was little on the "I can not believe I'm behind" stage. Friday evening I started cooking and some last minute cleaning. Woke up around 6.30 AM on Saturday and cooked till around 11.00 AM and I was done. I was so happy because I never knew I had it in me to be able to cook such a elaborate meal.

All our friends came, all the girls were dressed in Set Mundu and the guys in Mundu and Juba. We lit our Nella Vilakku and sat around it and ate our lunch on Vazha ella (banana leaf).

It was such a beautiful experience to celebrate Onam with dear ones.

Happy Onam to all.

Another Kitchen Saga

Other day I was making fried rice. It is very easy so the only help I solicit from Shekar is to chop the onion. So I'm in my happy mood cooking away, and I'm all done other than the frying the chopped onions and garnish my rice.

We have 2 kinds of cutting boards, one plastic bigger and one glass - smaller. Shekar hates the glass cutting board as its very noisy when the knife hits the glass, so he religiously only uses the plastic one. That day for some reason he decides to use the glass one.

Just for reference, this is how our cooking range looks, it is electrical.

So I have this Tava with hot oil, put my onions in it, put the cutting board on the neighboring electric coil. I didn't realize that I was still on.

After this I'm still in merry cooking land cooking away. Shekar is back in the living room. All of a sudden I hear this boom and I see glass pieces everywhere. Shekar comes running and says "What is that explosion". It takes me a minute to realize what just happened, the glass cutting board was placed on the electric coil that was turned on, and this caused the board to break.

I felt so relived that I didn't get hit. Not a single piece of glass hit me, and I was standing right there. Then comes the major part of cleaning this whole mess up. So I start cleaning the counter, every single shelf and finally the floor. It was all done and my kitchen looked back to its usual self. Then I go wait a minute... I had all the onion in the hot oil, which is now completely burnt, because I went after the whole cleaning thing. So I finally decided to serve the rice without the onions.

Then I realized if I had decided this in the beginning I could have escaped the whole ordeal.

On the brighter side of things, Shekar never has to hear the tak tak noise of knife hitting the glass cutting board.

This is just for Taks
Movie Update:

• Inside man - About a bank heist. Very well made, very nice. Will recommend to everyone who enjoys thrillers.
• Super Man returns - Nice, shows superman as having a very sensitive side.
• V for Vendetta - Another nice one. This is one of those movies, even after the movie has ended you will still be talking about it.
• Don - Apun ka hindi wala Don. Finally got a chance to see it. I don't care what everyone says I liked it, regardless of the fact that I can not stand SRK.
• Changing Lanes - This is a 2002 movie, was just ok.
• The Omen 666 - Horror Genre.. but not that scary. Well made and loved the ending.
• Failure to Launch - Date movie, with few giggles here and there.
• Ice age (meltdown) - Amazing.
• The Illusionist - Great movie. In the beginning movie seems kind of slow. Upon further research I found all the magic in this movie was real and not CGI, and that made me respect the movie even more. Read more about on wiki.
  

Flop Week

I'm not a great cook but I can cook, decent. Or at least that is what I used to think, till last week.

It all started this Monday, Shekar had a small cold and I volunteered to make Rasam. I've never made Rasam so I googled, read couple of recipes, but wasn't satisfied and I finally called one of my aunts, (my mom - who I usually call, is in east coast and it was like 11.00pm there) and she gave me the recipe.

So I go and start cooking. Aunt told me to put fresh pepper instead of ground pepper. So I made rasam and tasted it, it was not hot enough, so I added more pepper... still not hot enough so added more pepper, so I kept on adding pepper till it reached my expectation. Then my rasam had now become a think paste of pepper. I added some more water to dilute it, so it looked all good. Little did I know the hotness of the pepper increases as it stays longer. So when we started to eat, the Rasam was so hot that we could barely eat. On the bright side, the overdose of pepper cleared all the congestion Shekar had.

Couple of days after that I made Moru Curry (for all non-mallus, this is a curry made with yogurt- something like kadi, and is a very common curry in every mallu household) and this is the first curry I learned how to make. We add jeera powder to it and I accidentally added Garam Masala to it. It was too late before I noticed it. So we had Morru Curry with Garam Masala.

Then last night around 9.00 pm I was making Double ka Meeta, thank you ROS for the Recipe. I rarely make desserts other than cake and cookies. So I start warming up half and half and then I'm supposed to add sugar to it. So I put 2 huge scoops and then I realize, damn this is salt (My salt and sugar are in 2 entirely different looking containers, and they are placed on different levels of the cabinet). Nothing can be done to undo this, so without disturbing the mixture I tried to slowly drain my entire half and half. Then I tasted the half and half and it was so salty. So around 9.30 I go confess to Shekar and beg him to go to the grocery store. Not having another choice he went and got me a new quart of half and half (I also bribed him with couple of extra pieces of double ka meeta).

As I was stirring the half and half, I started thinking how come I messed up so many times this week? May be I've become more confident that I do not pay attention as before. Or maybe I just am not a decent cook.

Jo bi hai, my Double ka meeta turned out very well and makes me happy and brings my confident back (a little).