Back in the 1980s, my “America-returned” aunt was the first amongst her sisters to own an OTG. Every summer holiday I took to Hyderabad was punctuated by one big meal courtesy of that machine.
Sometimes it was homemade pizza – the pre-made base bought from a special shop, the sauce full of green chilli and oregano, made out of tomato purée, the cheese an inauthentic Britannia or Amul. We devoured it, one pizza per cousin.
One memorable day, she made pork chops, and we ate them as fast as they hit our plates – crispy and soft, brushed with a sauce that I can still remember but never recreate.
Exotic Curries
My mother had a brown notebook, the cover made of a floral fabric, a fat little thing that said “abroad” in its smug demeanor, and inside were all my aunt’s tips and tricks. Try as I might, I couldn’t persuade her to try those pork chops again, when it was just the two of us in Delhi, but out of it came what I called “macaroni” and what I later recognized as aglio olio, or the same pizza, the rich waft of oregano rushing through the flat, beckoning me with one slender finger.
But it wasn’t the brown notebook that caught my fancy. That was home-y, that was handwritten recipes, that was prosaic. What really drew my eye was a book called Exotic Curries, written, I imagine, also in the 1980s.
A slim, hardbound volume with full-colour pictures, it was the first cookbook I had ever seen, and what drew me was the dessert section. There sat this glazed white cake with white flowers on it, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I spent time pouring over the pictures again and again, doling out my reading time until I got to this cake, and I looked at it and the unintelligible directions till I swooned with the thought of the fondant melting on my tongue, the crumbly sweetness of the sponge. I never even thought of making it, this cake was beyond us then, and would probably be beyond us now.
The Foolproof Cookbook
I hadn’t thought of that cookbook, or my reaction to it, in years. I was one of those young women who took pride in her lack of skills in the kitchen. I made some attempts at cooking, but they were mostly to soothe my homesick soul –living alone since I was twenty-one, I wanted the simple things: a crisp dish of bhindi, perfecting my Cheese Maggi skills, and one day when I invented a fried potato with pickle thing which went into my first novel with great pride.
At the time, I was a member of the India Today bookclub, which sent me as part of my signing up period a book called The Foolproof Cookbook: For Brides, Bachelors and Those Who Hate Cooking. It was hardbound and explained each meal like a menu you would lay out: daal, sabji, rice or roti and so on. Better: it taught you how to make rice and rotis (although that is still a skill beyond me, when I sadly look at my map-of-Africa chappatis).
Premila Lal’s Indian Recipes
It was only when I moved to Bombay, and I grew weary of my cook’s limited skills in the kitchen – I wanted rajma the way I had grown up eating it and she insisted on a liberal dash of kadi patta to everything she made and called it “bhaaji” – that I bought my first cookbook at a second-hand sale. Titled Premila Lal’s Indian Recipes, it was an easy to use and fast book, all the instructions spelt out so succinctly, that in no time I had all the food I was dreaming of.
Flash In The Pan
Premila Lal travelled with me from flat to flat, the worn little paperback picking up food stains and dog ears, but it wasn’t till I was given a copy of Flash In The Pan by Tushita Patel that I realized there could be more to Indian cooking than what I had tried so far. Patel is a famous cook, and I have eaten at her house several times, and I liked that she had a little story with each recipe. Again: easy, concise, divided into sections depending on what occasion you were cooking for.
I still thought of cookbooks as a good way to come up with meal plans and give instructions to your cook. (I’ve been fortunate, even in my poorest years to have a good cook in my employ.)
I liked to cook by this time, but I made pasta or something easy and Western like that, and didn’t need a recipe book for. It was then that I glanced at my own OTG, a dented white creature with a small grill and an even smaller baking pan, and decided to start making my own dessert.
Big Book of Treats
I began with a recipe for cookies I had found on the internet, and the simplest things in the world, and before long I was cookie girl, caught in this new obsession, carrying foil packets of cookies to parties, watching with delight as people said, “You made this?” and finished it all.
That’s when I came to my last great cookbook. Baker Pooja Dhingra’s Big Book Of Treats with everything from banana bread to macarons. And all, she promised, could be made with Indian ingredients inside your OTG.
What a change from the white cake of my past! I baked my way steadily through Dhingra’s recipes, until my oven blew a short circuit, sadly just as I was getting confident enough to do the macaron section, and there it sits reproachfully on my kitchen counter, an upgraded spice drawer.
Recently, I went to visit my mother, and there at eye-level sat Exotic Curries. I’m going to ask her if I can have it, and I might spend some time looking at the other pictures, but I’ll stop at the white cake, and maybe one day I’ll serve it up and everyone will be amazed.
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Sometimes it was homemade pizza – the pre-made base bought from a special shop, the sauce full of green chilli and oregano, made out of tomato purée, the cheese an inauthentic Britannia or Amul. We devoured it, one pizza per cousin.
One memorable day, she made pork chops, and we ate them as fast as they hit our plates – crispy and soft, brushed with a sauce that I can still remember but never recreate.
Exotic Curries
My mother had a brown notebook, the cover made of a floral fabric, a fat little thing that said “abroad” in its smug demeanor, and inside were all my aunt’s tips and tricks. Try as I might, I couldn’t persuade her to try those pork chops again, when it was just the two of us in Delhi, but out of it came what I called “macaroni” and what I later recognized as aglio olio, or the same pizza, the rich waft of oregano rushing through the flat, beckoning me with one slender finger.
But it wasn’t the brown notebook that caught my fancy. That was home-y, that was handwritten recipes, that was prosaic. What really drew my eye was a book called Exotic Curries, written, I imagine, also in the 1980s.
A slim, hardbound volume with full-colour pictures, it was the first cookbook I had ever seen, and what drew me was the dessert section. There sat this glazed white cake with white flowers on it, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I spent time pouring over the pictures again and again, doling out my reading time until I got to this cake, and I looked at it and the unintelligible directions till I swooned with the thought of the fondant melting on my tongue, the crumbly sweetness of the sponge. I never even thought of making it, this cake was beyond us then, and would probably be beyond us now.
The Foolproof Cookbook
I hadn’t thought of that cookbook, or my reaction to it, in years. I was one of those young women who took pride in her lack of skills in the kitchen. I made some attempts at cooking, but they were mostly to soothe my homesick soul –living alone since I was twenty-one, I wanted the simple things: a crisp dish of bhindi, perfecting my Cheese Maggi skills, and one day when I invented a fried potato with pickle thing which went into my first novel with great pride.
At the time, I was a member of the India Today bookclub, which sent me as part of my signing up period a book called The Foolproof Cookbook: For Brides, Bachelors and Those Who Hate Cooking. It was hardbound and explained each meal like a menu you would lay out: daal, sabji, rice or roti and so on. Better: it taught you how to make rice and rotis (although that is still a skill beyond me, when I sadly look at my map-of-Africa chappatis).
Premila Lal’s Indian Recipes
It was only when I moved to Bombay, and I grew weary of my cook’s limited skills in the kitchen – I wanted rajma the way I had grown up eating it and she insisted on a liberal dash of kadi patta to everything she made and called it “bhaaji” – that I bought my first cookbook at a second-hand sale. Titled Premila Lal’s Indian Recipes, it was an easy to use and fast book, all the instructions spelt out so succinctly, that in no time I had all the food I was dreaming of.
Flash In The Pan
Premila Lal travelled with me from flat to flat, the worn little paperback picking up food stains and dog ears, but it wasn’t till I was given a copy of Flash In The Pan by Tushita Patel that I realized there could be more to Indian cooking than what I had tried so far. Patel is a famous cook, and I have eaten at her house several times, and I liked that she had a little story with each recipe. Again: easy, concise, divided into sections depending on what occasion you were cooking for.
I still thought of cookbooks as a good way to come up with meal plans and give instructions to your cook. (I’ve been fortunate, even in my poorest years to have a good cook in my employ.)
I liked to cook by this time, but I made pasta or something easy and Western like that, and didn’t need a recipe book for. It was then that I glanced at my own OTG, a dented white creature with a small grill and an even smaller baking pan, and decided to start making my own dessert.
Big Book of Treats
I began with a recipe for cookies I had found on the internet, and the simplest things in the world, and before long I was cookie girl, caught in this new obsession, carrying foil packets of cookies to parties, watching with delight as people said, “You made this?” and finished it all.
That’s when I came to my last great cookbook. Baker Pooja Dhingra’s Big Book Of Treats with everything from banana bread to macarons. And all, she promised, could be made with Indian ingredients inside your OTG.
What a change from the white cake of my past! I baked my way steadily through Dhingra’s recipes, until my oven blew a short circuit, sadly just as I was getting confident enough to do the macaron section, and there it sits reproachfully on my kitchen counter, an upgraded spice drawer.
Recently, I went to visit my mother, and there at eye-level sat Exotic Curries. I’m going to ask her if I can have it, and I might spend some time looking at the other pictures, but I’ll stop at the white cake, and maybe one day I’ll serve it up and everyone will be amazed.
