Cooking, My Waterloo!

“Oh, you’ll pick it up in no time at all,” said my husband cheerily when I broke it the news to him, after marriage, that I knew no cooking. “Beginners make the best cooks. So, there is plenty of hope for you. Besides, I’ll eat whatever you cook, and I’ll grin and bear it too.”

He ploughed manfully through a soft, soggy egg placed artistically over 2 charred bits of toast. Nothing, it seemed, could daunt him. “You’ll be the best yet!”

A year later, his confidence had taken a downward plunge as I continued to place burnt offerings before him.

However, my enthusiasm found itself growing as the days passed. In fact, I decided to start creating my own recipes. When my cakes refused to rise, I crumbled them and served them mixed in ice-cream. Every time, I tried out something new, which tasted funny, I would give it an artistic name and pretend that the end result was exactly what I had intended to make all along.

Once, lady’s fingers was on the menu. Humming to myself, I started preparing the vegetable, liberally dousing it in water. But soon, I found all was not well and waited dubiously for hubby’s return.

“Hi! What have you murdered today?” was his heart-warming greeting. “Is it potato, cucumber…?” His voice trailed off as he surveyed the concoction before him. I waited till he had taken a tentative bite and then blurted out what it was supposed to be.

“Do you mean you actually put water in it?” According to him, even a 4- -year-old would know that water and lady’s finger were things alien.

As I cleared the mess away, 2 of my friends landed up and burst out laughing. For the next few days, people kept asking me for my “brand new recipe”, and I never dared commit the same blunder again.

Another time, my husband’s friends suddenly showed up at breakfast time. Bread and eggs would have been the usual choice, for as my husband puts it, if hens stopped laying eggs, the Army would find it difficult to survive for the ladies would be deprived of their favourite dish. Anyway, I happened to be out of eggs and decided to offer them upma instead.

As the shouts of “Ma’am, we are hungry,” echoed and re-echoed, I frantically put the sooji into the pan without checking the water. The gluey mess was hailed by them as if it were the prize exhibit in a culinary competition.

They dug into it with great enthusiasm, but after the first mouthful, all conversation ceased. Even my husband who normally manages to carry off any situation was speechless.

As I stood by helplessly, one of the visitors turned to me and mumbled, “Ma’am, it is excellent, but I can’t get my teeth apart.”

 Thereafter, I never heard any of my husband’s friends make the mistake of asking me for upma.

Recipe books lie all over the house giving the impression that I am a superb cook. As my husband remarks, “She can cook with one hand.” Just as people start to look suitably impressed, he adds, “The other is used to hold on to the page of the recipe book. And God forbid, if the page flips over, her mutton korma ends up as Caramel Custard, and she follows the recipe to its finish, even to the extent of adding sugar instead of salt.”

When old friends meet my husband, they generally tell him that he has put on weight after marriage. And he grins and remarks, “That is due to my wife’s cooking.” I wait for the catch and I am never disappointed. “I eat her mess at home,” he elaborates, “… and then I make a beeline to the Officers’ Mess to get some proper food into me. These double meals are my undoing.”

There was a time when one of my curries turned bitter. I dropped a slice of bread in it, as advocated by my recipe book. But I was not aware of the unwritten clause which said the aforesaid slice had to be removed after a while. So, it remained, and crumbled and distributed itself generously in the curry.

 The bitterness was still there; so, I added a spoonful of sugar, and gave the dish a vigorous shake. But now there was a sickly-sweet taste competing with the bitterness. I put in a dash of curd to the mixture – and then, finally gave up.

My husband says that if there is one creature on the face of the earth who really enjoys my cooking, it is Bozo. The day dawned when I had made a bowl of potato stew that looked and even tasted right. I was making chapattis while my husband was beating eggs to make what he does best – an omelette.

Suddenly, we heard an ominous slurping sound from the dining room. We rushed in there to find Bozo happily engrossed in licking off what was left of my precious stew.

What followed was utter chaos – my running after Bozo with a broom, and my husband running after me, trying to restrain me.

But I could not get over the fact that the only palatable dish that I had ever cooked was fated to be eaten by a dog, even if the said dog happened to be a major shareholder in all the food cooked in the house.

Later, my husband said with a twinkle in his eye, “Thank God for this – or I would have had to eat it.”

When we finally gave Bozo away to a friend ( we had been posted out to a place where accommodation was not assured), he remarked (our friend, not Bozo) in wonder, “Gosh, that dog eats everything – and anything.”

My husband countered that by saying, “He and I have been through the same gruelling routine.”

Now 8 years have passed since the time I added water to lady’s finger. Today, maybe, I have improved in cooking. My toast turns crisp, and eggs set well, my dosas are almost paper-thin and my macaroni is well-cheesed.

The most apt proverb that can be applied to my culinary talent could well be, “Better late than never.” However, this marginal improvement does not impress my friends. One of whom recently presented me with a lovely book on Middle Eastern Cookery. Inside, she had written – “Happy Cooking, Deepti,” with a tiny postscript for my husband: “And all the best, Gopi!”  

 Published in Woman's Era

 September 1992