"Take a cup of rice….Add 2 cups of Water…..wait for 3 whistle sounds from the pressure cooker !!! Dear friend you have just cooked the rice. I wish you a very happy married life"…So goes the SMS joke I received recently. It’s not only the newly married but also a Single who face a problem of good food in daily life. Underneath each one of the person, lies a deep desire “I wish I could cook like my mother”. Dear friends & fellow toastmasters Good afternoon to you all.
Are you feeling clueless in the kitchen? Then I would like to share my wisdom on tapping your mother’s cooking skills, leading to kitchen empowerment.
Are you feeling clueless in the kitchen? Then I would like to share my wisdom on tapping your mother’s cooking skills, leading to kitchen empowerment.
Cooking boils down to two tasks:
A) Doing the right things
B) Doing the things right
Let’s begin with the right things to do inside a kitchen.
Know Your Kitchen:
The bare essentials are a cooking gas connection and cutlery. Getting a cooking gas connection is tougher than getting an US visa. So Beg, Borrow or Steal a gas connection in your hometown and transfer to the place you live in.
Regarding Cutlery, The lesser the better. Do not clutter your kitchen with cutlery. Remember this because you would have to clean up the mess that you generate inside the kitchen.
Safety Precautions: In a kitchen you are playing with fire. Any oversight can be harmful to self, family & neighbors. For ex., keep your regulators in off mode while not cooking
Now comes the most challenging part. How to start cooking? Get the recipe from the World’s best chef. It’s none other than your mother or mother-in-law as the case may be. Ask them to write down a step-by-step recipe for day today cooking. No cookbooks. No cookery shows at this point of time. They give only recipe for disaster.
Ask your mother who will give the right recipe for the right dish. Procure the ingredients. Many beginners can hardly distinguish between salt & sugar and that too by tasting it. So Print a name tag and attach to the container.
Learning to cook is like learning to swim. You should know how to bail out to safety, before you take the dive. Doing right things such as Mother’s recipe, knowing your kitchen will facilitate that.
Now it’s time for real action inside the kitchen; doing the things in a right manner.
Prepare a mental checklist of what you want to cook for the day. Sambar, Beans curry; curd rice or Roti, Dal, Aloo Gobi; Check with you mother’s recipe if you have all the ingredients. If not procure them. Else you have to change the menu. There are no shortcuts to a palatable dish.
Having got the ingredients in the right proportion, it’s a green signal to light the burner.
From now on Timing is the all important factor. The patented aroma of your mother’s samba is simply due to the timing. Keep an eye on the clock and act swiftly according to the recipe. Remember there are no undo options in a Kitchen gadget.
Finally Preparation & Timing rest on important human factor: Focus. Imagination at work is great. Imagination while you cook is not. Avoid mobile calls, Television or chatting during cooking. Cooking is a multi-faceted exercise by itself requiring almost attention. Let the world wait till the oil boils inside your kitchen.
In summary, mastering your mother’s recipe along with preparation will put you on path to kitchen empowerment. With cooking skill added to your resume, “Singles” need not worry where there next best meal would come from while the married who dedicate their cooking skills to their mother-in-law will be absolved of all the mistakes
Wish you all a happy time inside the Kitchen
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