In which I relinquish The Undomestic Goddess tag, albeit reluctantly

I have always hated cooking, cleaning and other domestic chores with the kind of vengeance that most people reserve for lower life forms, especially those of the reptilian variety. Don’t get me wrong, I love eating. It would rank among my serious hobbies to be mentioned on social media profile, if I thought I could get away with it, but ask me to rustle up a meal and you put your head into a hungry lion’s mandibles, after he’s been filing the dentures for more snap and vim when he gets down to cutting bone and gristle for his daily meal.
Ergo, I have consistently stayed far from the kitchen and hired a cook to rustle up the daily nutrition and it has worked thus far, with me and the family being fed not delicacies but the edible stuff. Occasionally though, I need to step into the kitchen, roll up the sleeves and plunge my hands into the hurly burly of cooking, which to me, is the equivalent of them chappies at Thermopylae guarding them gates against the Persian hordes. That level of bravery. You know.
Such was a day yesterday. Mince had been procured and cutlets were to be made. The mater, god bless her East Indian Catholic antecedents, is a cook non pareil and makes them cutlets so exquisite that one would probably request them as part of the last meal before trotting up to the gallows, if such a situation arose in one’s life. Cutlets were beyond the limited expertise of the cook, who could not quite comprehend my garbled explanation that she get to work on them in much the same manner as she works on aloo tikkis but she stepped back bravely from the mince and insisted she would be sous chef. As long as the chopping and prep is taken care of, I have realised, I can cook. And so I did. Made some wonderful cutlets that even I couldn’t find fault with apart from the fact that they were not as perfectly shaped as mom’s are. But am ignoring the shape and settling for the taste. The spouse, when asked how they were with the prongs of a sharp fork pointed at him, nodded enthusiastically to accept that they were edible and did not call for his indigestion medication post ingesting them. I feel emboldened. I shall experiment more in the kitchen. The family is giving each other worried glances and checking if there is enough bread and eggs in the refrigerator and dusting out the takeaway menus.
And, if all else fails, there’s always ready to fry in the freezer. And an assortment of sauces. We shall not starve.

About these ads