Everyday Musings > The cooking gene

I love food. But I’m not so keen on cooking it myself. For the past month, I find myself cooking most meals at home, a feat for someone who once in sheer nervousness forgot how to make coffee. I could’ve copped out, said ‘I don’t have the cooking gene’ and probably got away because V is a fantastic cook, a kind human being and is partial to anything scientific.

The first day when we cooked in V’s apartment, I watched in horror as he took a pinch of this, a dollop of that, added a dash of something else, all from instinct. Like my mom and all talented chef-like people I know.

At home in Mumbai, cooking was a ritual. I used to stand in front of the gas and pray before I turned it on. V’s kitchen is electric, so it felt silly to chant over flicking a switch. No excuses left, I got down to it. I started reading about cooking to awaken my cooking gene.

Julia and Julia – I have been reading it for a while and then the cow’s hoof jelly bits got overwhelming and I stopped reading. It’s about an American girl Julia, who stumbles upon a book by Julia Child, a famous chef from the 1900s. Julia Child, an American, was a copywriter before she joined the secret service and then married Paul Child who introduced her to French Cooking and at the age of 34, she joined Cordon Bleu to learn how to cook and even made it to the cover of Time magazine as the Lady of the Ladle. What an amazing woman. I could see similarities. Ex copywriter, married, husband introduced her to cooking. Now, when is the Time magazine cover going to happen!

Nora ‘Harry met Sally’ Ephron recently directed a movie based on this book. Girl Julia sets upon a promise to cook all of Chef Julia’s recipes for a year. And it’s a pretty fat recipe book. Well, Chef Julia inspires Girl Julia to take up this madness. And transforms Girl Julia’s evenings of leisure into one of chaotic smelly cooking fests. And somewhere in chopping, boiling, cleaving, steaming, sniffing, Girl Julia finds herself.

V is pure veg, as is his kitchen, not even eggs, which I love and miss very much. I started with corn, the simplest thing in the world to cook. And made corn every day, in every form, till V pointed out to other vegetables. Sticky arbi, bhindi, lauki etc. Time to get help.

I found my Cordon Bleu in Vidhu Mittal’s ‘Pure and simple vegetarian cooking’. I love the way the dishes are photographed, the quality of the paper, the simplicity of her instructions. So every day is spent flicking pages and figuring what to dazzle V with. Stuffed mirchi, dahi baigan, masala bhindi. I was amazed at how easy it started to become. I could even make nice fluffy phulkas and say things like ‘it’ll just take two minutes’. Vidhu was my spidey web, my batmobile, my lantern, my knight in shining hardbound.

I don’t know if I have a cooking gene. I can’t cook as well as my mother or his mother, not even close to as good as my dear friends Ku, Pat or M who have oodles of it. But V inspires me to make a fool of myself and smiles and nods and says ‘wonderful’ as he eats anything I make. I may hold Vidhu close to my heart, but I think the cooking gene has nothing to do with instinct or books or recipes. It probably just has to do with love.