My husband looked at
me, excitement on his face.
“Let’s buy a cast
iron skillet. I believe dosas come out crisp and nice on them!”
One of his hobbies is
browsing the Internet for all the latest gadgets and things which make life
easier for the two of us. Like the time he found a slim plastic cabinet which
could neatly slide into the narrowest nook and yet have space enough to keep all
the masalas that make an Indian kitchen what it should be. Of
course, he also picked up masalas from myriad cultures – West Indian,
Arabic, Mediterranean… so that they could be displayed there.
My sister had already
introduced us to authentic Christian meat and chicken masala from
Kottayam made exclusively by one family.
Going back, my
husband tries to cut the clutter in the house by buying various guaranteed
products to cut clutter. However, he has finally realized, after three decades,
that he is living with someone who must have been a magpie in her last birth.
In fact, her entire family, her mother and her sisters, must have also come
from the same stock in their previous births.
Dreamstime.com
So, now we have
fridge separators, under the sink organizers, magnetic wall strips for knives,
S shaped hooks for hanging mugs, ladles, graters, and enough storage space for
three households.
“How can one person
fill up space with so little effort?” is his constant refrain. No prizes for
guessing whom he is referring to! Sadly, he doesn’t see the mammoth effort it
does take to fill space up at regular intervals. The iron skillet was
one such buy on his part.
“Let us throw out all the other tawas we have,” he announced the
moment the massive package arrived. I have always wondered why online shopping
products come in such huge cardboard boxes. There is a process to process these
packages, especially now that the virus could be lurking in or on it.
IndiaMART
The package is
deposited outside, then lifted gingerly and placed in a corner where there is
no clutter! Once that corner is identified (with difficulty!), we give the box a couple of hours to air
itself, and the virus, out.
Out come the
scissors, and a half hour goes in peeling off all the tape, cutting through the
cardboard, lifting out reams and reams of paper or bubble wrap, depending on
the fragility of the product. At the end, right at the bottom of the massive
box, nestles a tiny little packet that makes you feel triumphant, almost like
the Seeker who captures the Golden Snitch in Harry Potter’s game of Quidditch
and wins the match for his team.
Anyway, to cut a long
story short, the cast iron skillet, and its long slim ladle, emerged in all their
glory with instructions to season the former well before using it. This was
supposed to be a skillet for all seasons! Pun intended!
My husband and I took
it in turns to nurture the new baby, rubbing oil on it, keeping it clean and
well moisturized, just about refraining from dousing it with Johnson’s talcum
powder as well.
Voila! It was time to
make our first dosa. There was a wooden contraption with a blob
of cloth along with it to oil the surface. However, anticipating how dirty that
would get in due course, we opted for half an oiled onion to wipe it with.
The skillet sat on
the stove, heating up gently, as I rubbed the onion on it, the tantalizing
aroma riding up my nose as the surface sizzled. I took a ladle full of batter
and poured it, going round and round to make it as thin as possible. What a
lovely sight it was, the dosa getting crisp and brown as the ghee
bubbled on its circumference, lifting it up slightly. One quick whirl and there
it lay, a perfect, crisp, brown specimen that made both our
hearts sing.
“Such a wonderful
buy!” I exclaimed to my delighted husband. “Now we will have the best dosas
in town!”
Maybe there is a
hidden power that listens to such exclamations and decides to cancel them out.
Even as the seasoning
and the oiling routine continued, our baby started showing traces of having a
mind of its own. The first dosa would be perfect, the second one
just the opposite. I would pour the batter out in all its glory and add the
ghee, holding my breath. And it would stick like a limpet to the surface,
almost like chewing gum stuck to hair. I would scrape and swear, sliding the
iron ladle under the now set batter, which held on for dear life. Often it
turned into a tussle, as I scraped the surface noisily, trying to salvage the
bits and pieces which we would eat off the skillet as fast as they crisped.
Needless to say, my
patience gave way and I soon went back to my old faithful non- stick skillet,
which promptly began working twice as well as before. Maybe it had sensed that
it was in danger of superannuation. Meanwhile, the cast iron one stood against
the wall, with patches of rust forming on its surface.
However, my husband, never one to give up without a fight, went on to YouTube
and looked at videos explaining how to maintain cast iron.
“Season it well. Wash
it, and season it again!”
Once that was done,
he dunked it into a large vessel with rice water (kanji), which was supposed to
work miracles. For a day and a night, it lay there, undergoing a metamorphosis. When he finally took it out and washed it, it shone, almost as if it had
been to a spa and back.
“Is it ready to use?”
I queried my better half.
“Nope, now it needs
another oiling!” was his sage answer. “Then tomorrow morning, you need to fry
some onions on it, and then, it will be as good as new!”
I refrained from
telling him that it was practically new! It certainly looked shinier and more
user-friendly now. The onions were fried, the oil sizzled and...?
This story should have a fairy tale ending,
right? The tawa, my husband and I living happily ever after, and
all that?
Humph!
The next day, I realized
the all-blinding truth. Some things are best left alone. Amen!
Images: Courtesy Deepti Menon