Or, How Chandoo got hungry, cooked dishes and had a huge meal
Well, that was a poor attempt at copying an already copied book title 😉 nevertheless, the news in the town is that “Chandoo is cooking” or wait a second there; I think it should be “it has rained for a week in Chennai”. Well, since rains and Chennai are as rare a combination as detergent advertisements and common sense, I am sure a huge number of flabbergasted souls shall blog about this phenomenon soon. That leaves us with the topic of this post again.
Well, for all those “single and cooking” souls out there: let me warn you before you burn your spoons, cooking ain’t that easy and it takes an awful lot of time to complete. But being a kind blogger that I am, I shall guide you to the land of perfectly made dal, sambhar, roti and chawal. Well, if you are hoping for some exotic recipes this is not the place you should be reading.
The perfect cooking gear for a perfect bachelor:
— Buying cooking utensils is not an easy task. Especially, if you have never accompanied your mother to the steel shop like me, then you would end up gasping looking at the price tags. So, be prepared to shell out decent money (atleast a thousand bucks) to get some good quality utensils.
— For those of you from Chennai get sometime in the weekend and head to Saravana Stores in Ranganathan Street – T.Nagar. Its cheep, you get many varieties and sizes and they don’t cheat you.
— The minimum you need is a couple of plates (for eating, for covering the dishes, for keeping snack items like maggi), glasses, one large dish for rice, 2-3 small dishes for milk, dal, sambhar, one normal steel frying pan for your curries, dal fry, one non-stick frying pan for all types of egg varieties and roti stuff, one milk cooker, lots of air-tight plastic jars, spoons & forks, knife, a plastic board to cut vegetables, dustbin, small cloth pieces for cleaning the cooking area. You get the picture, right? Plan your list before buying the items. It is easy and saves some trouble.
— Buy plastic items when ever possible, they are cheap, easy to clean and go well with your life style.
— Buy minimum amount of cooking items like rice, thoor dal, wheat atta etc. If you think you can eat 10kgs of rice every month, buy just five. Believe me, if you are working, its not so easy to save energy for cooking after all the cubicle work you do in the day time. This will push to Saravana Bhavan more than towards your stove.
— Buy vegetables, curd on daily basis. As I said above, when you don’t feel like cooking, you aren’t obligated to finish off the remaining stuff. Eggs, onions, red-chillies last longer most of us.
The cooking tips that your Mom never told you:
— Venture in to the kitchen only when you have an hour to spare. Don’t think you can both cook and finish a couple of chapters from war and peace. May be your mom can do it, but you can never do it.
— Think of cooking as a hobby, not as a burden. Most of the items we like are easy to prepare and serve. Things like peanut chat, roti, tomoto dal, fruit juices, fried rice etc. are easy if you know a trick or two from the book/mom.
— Maintain a discipline while cooking and eating. Don’t save the dishes too long before cleaning them. Either they will stink horribly or you start appreciating the hotel folks. Or better still; get a maid to clean them.
— Don’t cook to save money. It might work out when there are more people. But for one-two people cooking could be as expensive as eating out. So instead think of it as an avenue to explore your imagination.
— Pick up simple recipes from news-papers and try them in weekend.
— Oh yeah, last but not least keep a list of hotels near by handy. Helps incase of spoiled dishes. I suggest buying The Hindu Food Guide for people in Chennai/Bangalore.
Chalo, I got to rush to search my next recipe. Till then happy heating 🙂
