Project Dinner Impossibru

Sometimes I really worry about myself. Yesterday I was trying, fairly unsuccessfully, to bring a little order to the kitchen following the never-ending woodwork renovation and I discovered that I’m the proud owner of a brand new cookie sheet, pizza pan and pie plate and it’s the happiest I’ve known myself to be in a long time! I don’t know if I genuinely love cooking or am simply obsessed with food, but either way, I see a future with many chinned offspring and a husband too obese to love me like a man.

 A tiny voice in the back of my head is telling me to take a breather and de-addict myself from this nasty habit but this other thing in my head is holding a giant bullhorn and yelling “Keep going! Once mom gets back from her Europe trip, she’s gonna ban you from the kitchen anyway.” And then the tiny voice chimes in “But wait, she’ll be back with sooo much chocolate! You can’t let beautiful Swizz chocolate go to a waste like that, can you? You just GOTTA make chocolate chiffon pie when she gets back!”. And then the two voices bridge their differences, decide they have a lot of favourite food in common and hop along on a date leaving me alone, undisturbed and filled with more hunger for cooking, pardon the pun.

Until the detoxing begins, however, I have a rather crucial mission for tonight. Tonight is the Night Of Proving I Can Totally Own Dishes That Don’t Have Chocolate And Flour In Them to the world. Tonight I single-handedly whip up a dinner comprising of four different types of meat, dessert and the usual two paise type foods for a bunch of friend whose expectations I’ve been skyrocketing all week to make sure I don’t have to deal with leftovers later. Already I’m concerned that the menu is a tad bit over the top for a party of four confirmed and three potential guests but in all fairness, there were initially going to be five types of meat so I suppose this’ll have to do. Besides, my birds and animals are already pacing the fridge, well marinated, wondering when their time will come and it would be simply cruel to bring a sense of impending doom upon them and not justify it.

To balance out the preferences of the different palates that are going to be present tonight, I’ve come up with the perfect blend of cuisines and flavours to hopefully satiate everyone. The chicken wings will bring to the table hot and sweet Asian tang, the veal serves as a spicy Indian alternative, the fish cutlets reek of typical bland and deep friend America and the chicken bake will be my Italian warrior for the night, a well-packed blend of all these flavours and more. Also making an entrance for tonight’s show will be the meeker garlic bread, mashed potato, steamed veggies, fries and depending on the consistency of the bake, some plain pasta to cut the flavours a little. A pretty little cinnamon peach pie makes a grand finale out of the evening and we’re good to go.

For now I’m gonna get out of bed, start my day, buy some fresh fish and get up and about whipping up a storm. I hope my parents are fully justifying kidnapping my camera for said Europe trip because I know tonight would totally be worth freezing in time. A kitchen left to my mercy, loads of food to experiment with, an evening full of laughter and love shared with guinea pig friends; life just doesn’t get better than this.

Proof That God Loves Us

My daddy saves lives. There’s almost nothing in the world more beautiful than being able to say that; except maybe “My son saves lives.” I know wherever she is right now, my grandmother is a very proud woman. My father isn’t perfect, but in a world where we take every single thing for granted, he gives us reason to cherish every moment we’re graced with. My Abbu; it’s all in a day’s work for him; he saves lives. Wow.

Hulk Cookies

06.07.2012

12.20 p.m.

Ha ha ha! Guess who was on a suicide mission today! Twenty well planned and executed minutes paid off better than I thought! Say hello to the…..HULK COOKIES! The mean green calorie machines are finally here! And none of that eggless nonsense this time, no no. I gave our big friend the real deal.

 Ahh, God bless the Indian Railway system for being as tardy as it is; a train delayed by three hours is a true blessing to some of us.

With mom out of the house for a measly forty minutes, my time window to get things done and in order was uncomfortably small but I guess I’m pretty awesome that way.

• Word of advice though, when you’re planning to make ginormous sized cookies, give them enough place to spread out as they bake on the tray or you could end up with broken cookies that look like they’ve been bitten, well, by The Incredible Hulk.

•  Also, if it’s your first time working with food colouring, if the raw batter looks like the colour you want the end product to be, then you can afford to double the amount of colouring.

 
 For now, I’ll settle for unburnt yummy cookies the colour of a big green monster having a syncopal attack. 

The third batch is a charm after all.

Multitasking

05.07.2012

9.02pm

Today is a strangely satisfying day for me. I was pretty much sitting on the fence about whether or not to make a blog day out of it but I’ve just discovered that I’ve successfully bullied at least one person into following my blog on an acceptably regular basis so it’s only fair to give the people what they want. And no, the aforementioned person isn’t the single subscriber I’ve had for the past two and a half years. Although, come to think of it, my subscriber hasn’t really been following any of my recent posts and I’m only grateful for it considering the fact that she’s in the food business full time now and would send an army of cusses at me for the food disasters I’ve been brewing in my blissfully ignorant corner of the world.

I’ve been watching the same two episodes of Masterchef Australia for the past couple of days [probably the most amount of T.V. I’ve seen in months] and it has resulted in making me resolve two grand resolutions - I WILL successfully make Peter Gilmore’s 8 texture chocolate dessert at least once before I die and I will cook some elaborate seeming yet simple savoury dish before I leave for Pune tomorrow. And it has to be Italian; damn these Italians for making even their food so romantic that it doesn’t take long for the spices to woo you and make your heart and yearn for them.

Oh and before that, I decided to make some dessert of some sort for the trip considering my entire family was going and some of those old uncles and aunties are pretty heavy on the appraisal front; one always loves to get complimented, yes?

Cheesecake was completely out of the question; for one my family sure wasn’t helping me finish the previous batches [which ended up in me making milkshake out of the leftovers just this morning], and for another, train journeys don’t go down too well with dairy products. I had almost decided that The Hulk Cake was going to be The Chosen One for the week but ended up being too lazy to go buy disposable boxes to pack it in.

Which brings me to my final settlement *drumroll please* - COOKIES! Simple, sophisticated, a snack with a wide variety of flavours to choose from and toppings to attract; but more on that later.

I needed to get dinner out of the way first. As we speak, the luxurious flavours of tomatoes, honey, apples and Italian spices are dancing their way into the chicken’s heart, serenading it with every passing moment, many becoming one. Also, it doesn’t hurt that I added enough ajinomoto to give a horse stage IV cancer since I was running low on marination time. It’s almost time to test it’s mettle in the fire now.

11:43 p.m.

I just realized I had another batch of cookie batter to mix in before I could do much else so I had to run. So anyway, after browsing through thirty odd cookie recipes, eliminating each one on the basis of preparation time, ingredients available ready at hand, aunties’ and uncles’ allergies considerations and just plain moodiness, I narrowed it down to eggless spiced cookies and eggless oatmeal chocolate chip nut cookies [wherein egg is substituted with cornstarch].

• Apparently they don’t ask you to use brown sugar because it feels exotic, it’s finer too; which of course I didn’t learn till after the first cookie batter batch.

The oatmeal batch was a lot more fun to make, although I must admit it looks more like trail mix than cookie batter and is probably going to be my undoing this evening. The best part, however, was toasting the walnuts and chopping the chocolate into fine little chips; there’s just something about the woodiness of walnuts coupled with a whole naked giant slab of chocolate that has this ridiculous tendency to turn you on.

*****

So far I have burnt one batch of each flavour once, undercooked one batch and tasted none.

On the upside, however, the chicken turned out to be pure genius - tender and succulent, heavy with buttery flavours and simply satisfying to the palette. The apples and tomatoes were reduced beautifully, but not before imparting their freshness to the meat. The only thing that could’ve made it a shade more enjoyable is longer fridge marinating time; I guess the flavours couldn’t get the inside of the chicken to dance with them as merrily as the outside.

All aspects considered, I’d give it a 9.2/10.

The cookie suspense is killing me though. Argh!

06.07.2012

12:23 a.m.

Make that two burnt sets of oatmeal. I haven’t even started packing yet!

1:34 a.m.

Mixed emotions but one firm decision – no more cooking alternatives! If it says egg, I’m going to beat that egg and pour it in; if it says double cream, screw the fat and into the bowl with you! All these silly substitutes are seriously beginning to cramp my style. If egg allergy aunty can’t eat a cookie, well that’s just too bad; she was probably diabetic anyway. If diet uncle can’t eat some frosting, it’s just more cake for the rest of us carefree folk! No wonder the little white kids get their little Christmas tree cookies right at the age of five; they’re unapologetically omnivorous and willing to shell out a few extra dollars from their piggy banks even if it means they get some obesity into their systems.

Having said that, I’d rate the cookies a 6/10. Good flavour, decent texture but I think I prefer mine a little less burnt.

The list of things I want to perfect this summer gets longer everyday but I’m running out of throats to shove my experiments down and willing parents to buy me more ingredients; it’s a pity that true genius is never acknowledged in its own time. In the meantime, while I whine and sulk, a Swiss roll cake is next on the agenda and hopefully a fully functional farmhouse design before that. And an adequately packed suitcase for tomorrow before all else!