Happy New Year

Happy New Year ye all! On a philosophically cheerful note, I pray that this New Year all my readers take one step closer towards achieving their hopes dreams, ambitions and aspirations.

In quite contrast to how it has been over the past 2 years, this year has begun with no travel in the month of January. That is quite a sharp contrast to how its been over the past 2 years where the year has begun with me sometimes in different cities. It is a change and guess change is always good in some way. February though seems to have a few trips and I am looking forward to that.

14th January was Makar Sankaranti and of course Pongal (duh!) and in all efforts to celebrate the occasion I decided to make Chakkarai Pongal(rice sweetened with jaggery). So I promptly called up my mom the previous evening, checked if I still remembered the process and it turned out that I did. So on morning of 14^th, I woke up early, boiled milk, cooked rice and then it was soon time for the last step i.e. for me to melt the jaggery in the 'kadai' – which I did which such nonchalance that any one witnessing my actions in the kitchen that morning would have thought that I have a parallel profession to rely on. Anyways once the jaggery was in the kadai, I picked up the morning paper and was happily ogling at Deepika and Asin. Suddenly there was smoke and before I could realise the entire kitchen was filled with smoke. I am sure that if there as a smoke detector the fire brigade would have been at my doorstep and the building would have been evacuated. I walked through the smoke like a hero in Hindi or tam movie where the hero makes an appearance after battling the villains in a burning house and coolly switched off the stove, opened all the windows and kept the kadai out by the window sill.

The jaggery had melted, blackened and had got caramelized. I complemented myself for being the cool customer in the presence of dense smoke, doing the right things of opening the window, switching off the gas and so on. Of course I overlooked the reason for existence of the smoke in the first place. But that is such a trivial issue.

Now that I had reaffirmed my ability to think calmly in potentially stressful situations, I took the kadai out and poured some cold water on it. More smoke billowed. And for a minute I was like – Why, What How? Then my physics 101 came back to me - cold water on hot surfaces would create steam. And steam with hot jaggery would be smoke. Hmmm.

But it did not end there. The hot black molten jaggery solidified instantly on contact with cold water and I could literally turn the kadai upside down and nothing would fall. Hmppf! I spent the next 20 minutes cleaning up the kadai with boiling hot water to get rid of the solidified remnants and was ready to restart the process. And this time, I stood right next to the stove with full attention sans distraction and completed the chakkarai pongal. And I must say that it was good - with sufficient quantities of ghee and cashew and elaichi. My roommate thinks it was a tad sweet but I rather take my own opinion when it comes to MY chakkarai pongal :)

I recounted my morning experiences to my mom and she was thrilled that I made chakarai pongal. But then she hastened to give me advice on how during cooking one should give full time attention and all. Before she could proceed, I added that, her place and role as the best family cook hasn't been snatched away just as yet; but she better beware now that she has competition. I told her that she was the Bhishmah pitamah of cooking in the family, but when that didn’t work, mainly because of the age connotation that epithet carries – I changed it to Sachin Tendulkar. And I think that allayed whatever little insecurities she had. I bet she doesn't agree to this theory but what the heck... it gives me an ego boost!