Cooking 101

In an unprecedented burst of enthusiasm, I decided to cook last Friday. I realized many things about cooking and being adept/ inept in the kitchen. But those are stories for later. Now, I need to jot down the dish I prepared whilst floating from whim to whim.

There were 3 medium-sized potatoes, cubed, and 1 onion, sliced.

Prettily frothing in a steel vessel were 3 tablespoons of curd (I used the curd set at home - it’s slightly sweet with higher liquid content than the variety one gets from the market). Added to this were a pinch of sugar, two teaspoons of salt, little mirchi powder, jeera powder, amchur, smidgen of haldi (for some color.) All this was mixed nicely with a spoon. Blending is not required, unless one is using very thick curd.

Then I marinated the potatoes in the curd. A tip here - it helps to poke the potato pieces with a fork so that it cooks faster and is completely flavorful. After one has sufficiently felt the liquidy coolness of coating potatoes by hand, cover the vessel and set aside.

In the meantime, heat some mustard oil and when it’s hot, add mustard seeds (all that mustard must be the Oriya lineage) and the sliced onions. An aside from the topic, but a little eulogy is required here. It is very poetic to see frills of onions get transculent; to lose their solid purpleness and succumb to a dreamy coat of brown.

Anyway, back to the sputtering pan.

Once the onions are translucent, snip three green chillies (with a scissor instead of a knife, because of the cute sharp sound and fine pieces.) Add the chillies to the onions. Once they are browned, pour the bowl of curd and potatoes into the pan. You may need to add a half-cup of water or whey to really soften the potatoes well. Check for salt and finally cover the pan and cook for fifteen minutes.

The dish was quite tasty...even though it has no name, as yet.