The Secret Ingredient - X

One small ingredient may change the flavor of a dish. The absence of salt or the presence of excessive amounts of any ingredient may spoil the entire effort put into creating a masterpiece. However, there is one ingredient that can be added in infinite amounts. The more you add the better your dish tastes. That ingredient has no upper limit and can not alter the dish for the worse. It is one ingredient that can be added only at home, by your near and dear.

When I was fifteen, I was preparing for my board exams. My mother brought a plateful of cabbage rice and placed it before me. I gulped a spoonful and relished the taste of the 'SECRET INGREDIENT' (I will call it X for convenience sake). I could sense that my mother had added X in copious amounts and thanked her for it. She smiled back and ate the cabbage rice and exclaimed that she had not added sufficient salt. I retorted that the presence of X, more than made up for the lack of salt. She smiled back and proceeded to add salt to the food and in the process added some more X to the food.

During my 'Master's Days', I would enter my apartment an hour before midnight. My room-mate would have prepared dinner for me and would leave it on the kitchen counter for me to eat. Though the dishes she prepared were meant to be warmed prior to consumption, I would taste a little and proceed to eat the entire bowl without warming it as the taste of X overshadow all other tastes. My room-mate added X generously and never gave a second thought about it.

Nowadays, my current room-mate and I, eat together once in a while. Sometimes I prepare the food and sometimes she does. Yesterday we added excess pepper to the soup we made, and the day before that we added a dash of chilli to the food we made. This chilli was unfortunately extremely spicy and left us with teary eyes. Yet, we enjoyed the dinner we shared as we both had added the ingredient X to the food we were preparing.

This Secret ingredient - X, is an ingredient every person possesses. It costs nothing and can be added to food in unlimited amounts. It will not spoil the food you are making and is completely healthy. You can not buy it or sell it. The only thing you can do is give it away or add it to the food in unlimited quantities. The best part is, the more that you add, the more you will receive. If your are worried about receiving too much of it and cluttering the storage shelf, do not worry as it occupies only space in your mind and heart and not in your shelves.

This ingredient is called 'Love'.

Kalyana Samayal Sadham - A tribute to my cousin

Sunday was one day we looked forward to. It was the precursor to Monday, yet we waited for Sunday Morning as it was the only day of the week in which an elaborate breakfast was prepared at home. Sizzling Hot and Crispy Vadai, Idly, Sambhar and Chutney were placed on the dining table as my two cousins, my brother and I gathered around it to grab the weekend treat and pile our plates. Our Mother, Grandmom and the household help had to constantly shuttle between the kitchen and the dining table to refill the bowls as the food would vanish instantly. Seated next to me on the table was my endearing cousin, Vaisha. She would forget the idlies, sambar and chutney and focus all her attention on the vadais alone. With a knife and fork, she would dissect the vadais into six radial portions what were approximately of equal size. She would then coat the vadais with chilli powder and use a fork to eat them. She was a person of perfection when it came to food. Some of the best gastronomic encounters that I can recall from childhood were with her.

I was a foodie who thoroughly enjoyed to eat, on the other hand, Vaisha paid more attention to the nitty gritty details. She was a natural who loved to experiment with cooking. At the age of  ten (I was eight then), we decided to make Chocolate fudge. We ransacked our fridge and found a bar of Amul Butter. We had a microwave oven that was only a week old. We fetched a glass bowl and melted the bar of butter. I being the taller one fetched a jar of drinking chocolate. The entire content of the jar was then mixed with the melted butter and our fudge was ready. Our grandparents and parents silently ate the fudge complimenting our new venture, without complaining about the waste of chocolate and butter.

Just as a child's scribble graduates to drawing with practice, Vaisha's (and mine) culinary skills matured as we grew up. A decade after the failed chocolate fudge experiment, we baked a chocolate cake together. This time our family actually liked the cake and did not compliment us for the sake of encouragement.

Vaisha has been more of a sister to me than a cousin. Our shared childhood has taught me a lot. When I see our childhood photos or taste my not-so-bad cooking, I realise that we have grown and have parted ways. However the memories we shared will always be an integral part of my life. As my dearest sister, prepares to take her wedding vows tomorrow, I feel a pang of pain as I am unable to partake in this important event of her life. All the important milestones in our lives from birthdays to graduation were celebrated with a feast and this is one feast, one celebration that I have to miss as I am thousands of miles away from home.

Cheers to my dearest cousin, Vaisha and brother-in-law, Ved. Hope you both have a fun filled and fantabulous wedding and life together.

The Sweet taste of Company

Have you ever wondered why restaurants have chairs facing each other rather than facing an inanimate object such as a wall??

For the first decade and half of my life, I never had to eat alone.While I always had my family for company for the first and last meals of the day, the mid-day meal was eaten in the company of my friends. My friends and I sat around in a circle, eating off each others lunch hampers. We passed the little tiffin boxes around and took a mouthful of each persons meal. We relished each others meals and stopped chewing only to complement each others mom for the food that they had whipped up for us. It was not only our mother, but also the mothers of all our friends who contributed to our well being.

The scenario at home was not very different from what it was in school. Every evening my family gathered around our old, yet sturdy dining table. The food was arranged at the centre of the table. My grandfather sat at the head of the table, while the rest of us just sat wherever we pleased. As we ate we would brief each other on the days happenings.

My dining situation during lunch completely changed the day I joined college. Most students were hostelites and took their meals in the college mess. I being a day scholar had the option of eating packed food or heading to a canteen that was situated about half a kilometer away from my class. I opted for the former and realized that most of my classmates who bought packed lunch, consumed it in class sitting among their friends. I, on the other hand had to sit alone as I was the lone She-wolf in the pack.  Once in a while when I felt extremely lonely I would saunter around the campus and chit chat with some juniors, green with envy as they dined with their friends. I spent the lunch hour, every day for three years in this fashion.

The food I consumed was the same that my mom had prepared prior to me joining college. She put in the same effort, yet the food did not taste as good as it had once upon a time. Food is generally enjoyed and appreciated better when you have company. I slowly developed an intense dislike for eating alone, until a batch-mate of mine threw the unwritten protocol to the winds and offered me a Sub from Subway. Until then I never liked subs, yet the sub he offered tasted great. This was not because of the sub, but because of the effort he put into getting me the sub. The fact that he sat across the table from me and shared a meal with me just made the sub all the more special. Soon my other batch-mates also started talking to me. I do not know whether it was because he broke the ice or whether they had changed overnight, but this welcome change made me enjoy the food I consumed much more. Food by itself is an object that provides you nourishment. You can feel full if you eat alone, but you will be satisfied only if you have company.

The only thing much more satisfying than a palette filled with food.... Is a roomfull of company....

Note : To the person who offered me the Sub and broke the glass wall, I do not know if you remember this. I am truly grateful to you for being the harbinger of change. Hats off to you.

Blessings in a Bottle

I was to leave to Singapore that evening and examined the things to be packed before I left. Among my clothes and other sundry items lay seventeen cylindrical PET jars, each weighing approximately half a kilo. These bottles had varying contents ranging from mild beige coloured powders to rich red pastes. To those who have not been through the ritual of coming home once in six months, the beige powder might look like beach sand and you may wonder what it is. The contents of these little jars are my lifeline for six months. It is these Podi's and Paste's that connect my gustatory receptors to home and make me feel less homesick.

These bottles consume about half of my luggage allowance and it is a real headache to seal them with cling-wrap and polyethene sheets. These bottles need to be nestled among my clothes and god forbid them from leaking. Lugging 8.5kgs of bottles from the airport is no mean task. Despite the difficulty, several conterparts of mine and I undergo this semi-annual ritual willingly as it saves us several hours of time and energy.

My room-mate refers to my stacked store of bottles as 'Magic potion collection', but I prefer to call them Bottled Blessings as these powders and pastes were lovingly made by my grandmothers and mom. My maternal grandmother makes my daily cooking much simpler by grinding all the dry ingredients required in any south indian dish into a powder. Her simple methodology is boil the vegetables, add some podi and add some water and Viola!! One Kozambu is ready!!! As I eat the moar-kozambu rice prepared using my grandmom's podi,Nostalgia envelops me and I feel the taste of the food that she lovingly fed me while I was back home.

On the other hand, my paternal grandmother makes Idly Podi, Thengai podi and other standalone podi's that require no additional work to be done and can be eaten with Idly's and other dry food items. This again takes me thousands of miles away back to Chennai as I reminisce the crispy vadais and idly's that she prepared for me.

When I tell people that I am a vegetarian, they usually assume that I have a bland diet comprising vegetables and rice, not realizing that my mom has provided me with a mind boggling melange of meat free food encompassing countries from India to Italy. My mom knows very well that south-indian food alone can never satisfy her little girl. Hence she prepares and buys spice mixtures which include the very Indian garam masala, the not so Indian cinnamon mix and the not at all indian pasta herb mix.

Everyday as I prepare my food, I recite the sloka 'Annapoornae Sada Poornae..', then I invariably open one of these seventeen blessings and thank Annapoorna in the form of my three deities in disguise for endowing me and blessing me with these podi's. These podi's give me good health and prosperity by ensuring that I eat properly.