Before Covid came, I had never prepared a proper pasta sauce from the scratch. And after the Covid-era, I always prepare pasta sauces from scratch. I cannot imagine exposing my palate and my J-bag to the store-brought-monstrosity-in-a-jar. And before today’s kitchen miracle, I had only prepared the red sauce from scratch only once in which…
Tag: cooking
My kitchen disaster VIII – how not to cook quinoa
Covid came and brought a slew of wannabe chefs on Instagram. People who had not cooked even a day in their lives started posting atrocities such as noodle fritters, chocolate momo and the likes. In my defense, I had cooked for not just a day, but for years before covid came. It is a different…
My kitchen disaster VII – The sneaky farfalle/bow-tie pasta
A fine day during my B.Tech days, some 14 years back, I was watching a cooking show. It was an Indian show and the chef was cooking pasta. Till then, I had only known macaroni/penne/fusili as the only pasta shapes. But in that particular episode, the chef was showing a highly artisanal pasta crafted in…
My kitchen disaster – VI – in the journey of cooking German bought pasta
March 2020 – covid had just begun and I was in full paranoid mood of working from home and not letting anyone in my family go outside without a proper mask. Although my father rebelled against this rule fully by visiting the milk shop, the vegetables shop and God knows which shops with only a…
My kitchen miracles -II – the unusual pasta
This story seemed like a disaster once, but the more I discovered about food, the more I got to understand that many a times, our perceptions about disasters are wrong, they can be miracles too if we do not engage in self-criticism too much. And listen to our mothers, in the area that they are…
My kitchen disasters V – the overloaded Teriyaki sauce noodles
The covid time unleashed the hidden demon (read cook) within us. And disasters such as Maggi pakodas, noodle ice-creams and the likes came to the fore. Since I understand food and know how to cook, I can vouch that I did not cook any such demonic delicacies. But, some dishes that I cooked cannot be…
My kitchen disasters – IV – The curious case of burnt rice
Rice cooking is an art. I can vouch for this statement after cooking rice for the past 10 months. The perfect plate of rice is not so easy to cook. The rice needs to be fluffy, every grain separated from the rest in a non-sticky manner (unless it is sticky rice) and no under or…
My kitchen miracles – I
I usually keep the challenging-to-make dishes for some fine day when I will have plenty of time on my hand, when the unicorns will be frolicking and the rainbows will be illuminating the sky. Yes, the day that never comes! (This sentence just came to me, I hope Metallica does not sue me for copyright…
My kitchen disasters-III
“Ek to karela, upar se neem-chadha” This is a famous notion in Uttar Pradesh where the bitterness of bitter gourd is compared to the taste of neem. And when my dear mother started feeding me bitter gourd, I absolutely hated it! Hate is not a very strong word for the bitterness on my tongue, detest…
Cooking blunders
Yesterday, I was able to correct a cooking blunder and although I do not feel like a superhero, I feel it is worthwhile to share my experience:I usually add dried mushroom powder to sautéed vegetables to get that roasted umami flavour. But yesterday, while sprinkling the shiitake mushroom powder, a few tablespoons were accidentally thrown…
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