It Takes All Kinds To Fill a Kitchen

After years of watching famous as well as ordinary cooks in their kitchens (and also mucking around at the stove oneself), you come to the conclusion that there are several distinct kitchen personality-types.

There’s the Perfectionist. Every piece of veggie is cut into just-so pieces of equal length and breadth. A dish simply cannot be made if even one ingredient is missing. This person does not know the meaning of substitution. Were you to tell her/him to use green chillies because the red ones are over, you will get a look which says: “Next you’ll tell me to breathe carbon dioxide because oxygen is over”. Needless to say, the final outcome is some spectacular cooking, but they’re generally a pain to be around, and it’s best to show up only to taste their wonderful productions, and not offer to help them during the process.

Then there’s the other end of the spectrum, the Hit and Miss cook. This type hurls whatever is at hand in the general direction of a kadai or wok, and on some days comes out trumps and on some days produces barely edible food. These types are more fun to be around while they’re cooking, and can produce a super-hit item with a quite unconscious panache. But you have to be ready to simply empty the contents of the kadai into the dog’s plate and order take-away on one of their misfire days. Because of their chronic casualness, however, they can never repeat a successful dish. If you ask them to, they’ll look distressed, as if you’re asking them to remember and repeat the 14-times table.

The chronic recycler is another type you meet often. They will never ever give away food (and throw away? impossible!). The family will simply have to eat everything till it’s over. Some of them can get quite innovative and come up with novel leftover-makeovers, but they can also get a bit carried away, and offer you khatarnak recycled stuff. One of them recently presented guests with what looked like golden-fried batata wadas. Once you bit into it though, you realized that 2-day old rice had been mixed with curds, adroitly rolled into little spheres, dipped in batter and fried. Very innovative, but not recommended. If a family member ever asks them if they can avoid the leftovers and have something fresh, this type is bound to lecture about starving children of the world, etc.

Then there are those poor dears who like to think of themselves as experimental cooks. They assiduously attempt Thai, Chinese, Kashmiri, Mexican, Continental…but it all finally tastes amazingly like varan-bhaat. Their fatal flaw is that they simply will not go out and buy any special ingredients. Only anything available in their regular masala rack goes into these experiments. Guests are left to say ‘hmmm interesting’ and other such safe remarks, if they are not to hurt these hopefuls. If you suggest, while pulling tulsi leaves politely out of your mouth, that Thai basil is now easily available, they look at you and sniff: “See how well I could make do without it.”

There are those who are cookbook devotees. They can never really learn a dish, or put their own spin to it, or cook by ‘andaaz’ however often they make it. Each time, they must open the cookbook and simply go by the book. Even veggie khichadi is made by dipping every now and then into their pressure cooker cookbook, or some such. And if you were to suggest they just try to go by instinct, they look at you like you’re asking them to go out and suddenly fly a plane.

Liar-liar cooks. These are the ones who will buy kababs from outside, set them in a micro dish, and pretend they made them from scratch. Or they’ll go through elaborate lengths to convince you that they’ve slaved over the stove to produce Diwali goodies with their own lily-white hands. Don’t even try calling their bluff. They will simply embarrass you by lying some more, coming up with louder and louder proof that there’s no Chitale in their chakli or Karachiwala in their kachori or Joshi in their jamuns.

The something-from-nothing types are an awe-inspiring lot. Where you and I may see a couple of worried looking chillies, half an onion and a near-empty fridge, they produce a kick-ass pithla, a couple of bhakris, and maybe even some kheer thrown in, all in 10 minutes, while you’re hunting for the meals-on-wheels phone number or some such cop-out option. If you tell them that all the food on the planet is over, they’ll solar-fry you a batch of ants and you’ll soon be asking for more.

The late bloomers are a lovely lot. They’re usually men. Having spent the better part of their lives being something horribly sensible like engineers and breadwinners, post-retirement they simply blossom in the kitchen, much to their family’s delight. They source rare recipes, they have the patience to slow-cook meat or roast corn to perfection, they revive old nearly-forgotten or lost recipes from the recesses of their formidable 80-year-old memories, they potter around in Mandai and buy the pick of every season. If you ask them where they were all these years, they look at you with a twinkle in the eye and serve you some cleverly made fruit wine, or a sweet potato baked to perfection with the aid of something as basic as a thick tava with a well-fitting lid. If you’re lucky enough to have one of these in your family, cherish them and rejoice!