Our kitchens are full of reminiscences, some good, some funny, and some worth sharing. The kitchen is one place in the house where almost all of us spend some time. We either make meals or fill a water bottle and even make a cup of tea. The small, the big, the cheerful, and miserable, our kitchens are full of kitchen memories.
We bring you some of the memories worth sharing from the archive of our kitchen squad. These ladies are masters in their kitchen and it is worth reading about their first experience in the kitchen.
No one is born skilled, to be the master chef in the kitchen. You learn with practice and practice makes you perfect. Suman Aunty tells us that she was the pampered child. She never got a chance to cook a proper meal as they had a cook at home. When she got married in 1978 and was welcomed in a large foodie family, she had no idea what is stored for her in the box. She failed miserably in her first cooking stint, it was the traditional & customary ‘Sheera’. Her mother-in-law was strict & one that would not settle on anything mediocre. She had no choice and learned cooking with trial and error. Her cooking evolved over the years and now she is famous for her cooking skills among family, friends, and neighbors.
Our Sambar Masala queen Janhavi, has an interesting anecdote, she learned the cooking from her mother-in-law. She remembers, her mother in law presumed that Janhavi will be able to manage the basic cooking and planned for a trip to Bangalore. Janhavi planned to cook Sambar but she had no clue how toor daal looks like and instead, she used Bengal gram thinking it to be toor daal. Though she felt that the daal was not cooked properly yet she trusted her instincts and went ahead to make sambar. She recollects that her husband and sis-in-law relished the sambar without complaining, a perfect example of family union. Later, her mom in law came to know the blunder she made. Since then there is no looking back. Janhavi is a master chef, she bakes and cooks to perfection. She is a hands-on Chef.
Priya our kitchen queen from Maharashtra reminisce that she wanted to make a way to her husband’s heart by cooking a perfect sweet dish for him for the first time. She tried her hand on Puranpoli. A famous Maharashtrian sweet dish made using Bengal gram and jaggery. Her first attempt to make puran (the stuffing) was disastrous. She has a never give-up attitude and with the help of her neighbor, she was able to make her first batch of puranpoli successfully and since then there is no looking back for her. Priya has come a long way from a struggling puranpoli to 50 puranpoli at a go. She has immersed herself as a perfect example of a true kitchen queen.
Shweta is a computer engineer and was always a studious child at her home. Shweta only focused on her studies and never thought that cooking to become a part of her life anywhere in the future. She remembers that once her mother in law was making Poha and she asked her to fry peanuts. After a while, with tears in her eyes, she called her and said that she doesn’t know how much should they be fried as she could make out that what she did with peanuts was not acceptable at all as they were burnt to perfection. The time is the best teacher, she has learned to cook and prefers everything healthy. She is making a way to the hearts of many with her delicious badam milk mix and turmeric latte.
Someone has said that “Cooking is one failure after another, and that’s how you finally learn”. This is cent percent true, each story has learning to it. We would love to read about more first time cooking experiences and the kitchen memories, do share with us in the comments.
