Cooking experiments : Episode 3

Well after being down and out for a day swimming around in loads of self pity , I decided to return to cooking to take my mind off all the issues. Also I am having this nasty cold and my eyes keep watering all the time. So really in no condition to go out and eat.

The items attempted this time is the plain old Dosa. I didn't bother with making the batter myself, outsource whatever is not a core competency :). Bought ready made batter from a departmental store.

Before I describe what happened keep in mind the following
(a) I am not in a good mood when I start of this cooking experiment
(b) I am tired and hungry as it is around 9.30 PM in the night
(c) Read about experiment-1 and experiment-2 to give you good idea of my cooking skills

So I heat up my rather old and battered looking non-stick pan. I pour couple of drops of Ghee onto the pan followed by the batter. Trouble strikes as soon as I start spreading it around. The batter won't spread around well. It is sticking on the the pan, and huge clumps are being formed all over. I had to scrape off the batter painstakingly and throw it away. I wash the pan and start once more. 10 minutes wasted, hunger increases to 1.2 x normal , temper to 1.4 x normal.

The brilliant researcher mind concludes that the batter is too thick and needs to be diluted. Attempt-2 is carried out with the diluted batter. It spreads around like a dream and I am thrilled to see the perfect round shape. Unfortunately it starts to go all wrong the moment I try to flip it over. The batter is stubbornly sticking to my pan ( Non-stick pan !! Ha, what a joke) .

Hunger is at 1.6x normal, temper at 2.5x normal. A few careful attempts to extract it using my wooden spoon yield limited success. Then I switch to brute force method. BIG MISTAKE, The Dosa disintegrates into several pieces. Some pieces are still sticking to the pan . Hunger at 2x normal, temper at 100x normal !!

I completely lose the plot. I don't swear in my everyday life, but man , I was impressed at the colorful language that came streaming out of my mouth. I had a good collection of swear words in stock in-spite of never having used any in public !!

I just rip of dosa from the pan and throw the pan into my sink. I am still steaming with anger. So I took the remnants of my dosa and put it directly on the fire. Watching it burn was so therapeutic , I felt my anger slowly burn away .......

Like a true engineer, I blame my tools. The "Non-stick" pan is the chief culprit and has been replaced with a brand new one. I am sure my next attempts will turn out to be perfect.

Watch this space , sometime in this decade you will see a success story