Brownie time ..

Tea cake, Chocolate cake, Raisin cake, Nuts and raisins cake, Cashew nut cake, Pineapple cake, Chocolate chip muffins and cookies, Black forest cake, Rum and Raisin cake … Hmmm, just about enough items in my arsenal to open a bakery !! Maybe one of these days I should do so .

I had been contemplating baking a brownie for some time. I have not eaten a brownie, or if I have, I have forgotten what it tastes like. I like undertaking these kind of experiments, because one can be very liberal in the interpretation of success :-).

I required a square cake tin for the same ( don’t ask me why, almost everyone says brownie should be made in one ), a brief trip to MK retail fixed that part.

When wifey was over here couple of weeks back, she was complaining about the lack of general purpose vessels in our kitchen. However I can proudly say that there is no way she could raise the same complaint about baking vessels. Muffin trays, muffin cups, rectangular baking trays, bread box, circular baking tray, hexagonal tray, I have them all !! I have no idea why, maybe I have a bit of blind-spot when it comes to baking ….

For the recipe, my US consultant stepped up to the plate yet again with this recipe on Hershey’s site. Only alteration was to use half cup cocoa instead of one-third mentioned. I did not bother with the frosting, in the past I have failed pretty spectacularly whenever I have attempted it.

All in all the brownie came out looking decent. Maybe more of a blackie than a brownie. It crumbled somewhat towards the center and it was not very easy to extract it out of my cake tin.

Nothing extra-ordinary about the taste, I don’t think it will be one of my favorite cakes. May be the walnuts spoiled the taste some what for me, I should have used cashews instead :(

Muffins and me

It is high time I launch my own bakery.

I was wandering in Forum Value mall the other day when I felt like eating a muffin( or a cup cake) . Strode into Cookie Man and ordered one, only to realize on piece is  Rs.60.  Imagine that !!! And it was not all that great either,pieces of it were under-cooked.

Later on I was in Hyper City when again I saw a pack of chocolate chip muffins, 2 of them being sold for Rs.50.

And to think I am giving away mine for free to the ungrateful lot in office !! Next time I am charging heavily for my creations …..

Whipped cream miseries

Definition of Whipped cream : thick cream that has had air incorporated into it by rapid beating

Sounds reasonable, so what is the big deal ???

The big deal is that once you keep whipping the cream, it turns thicker and thicker. There is a certain thickness level, which once when crossed WILL CAUSE RAPID CONVERSION OF CREAM TO BUTTER !!! So instead of having nice whipped cream to decorate my pineapple cake, I had BUTTER .

&^%$#*@

Needless to say, the icing had a slightly odd taste, completely masking the excellent pineapple cake underneath.

Icing and decoration continue to be development needs for me.

Sighhhhh, when will I learn all this ????

Its Biriyani time

After enduring one of the worst weeks in my recent memory in terms of up and down moods, I decided cooking may not be a bad diversion to undertake. Of course I needed something substantially challenging to distract me. Chicken Biriyani fit the bill perfectly.

Now I don’t cook anything remotely like this at home, hence I had to spend close to 30 minutes analyzing the recipe ( very detailed one too ) sent across by my US consultant. After a deep dive assessment, I concluded that a major shopping expedition was the order of the day. All I seemed to have at home was Rice, chilly powder and salt !!

And yes, I also had a few wilted out curry leaves in my fridge, some of them seemed to have a rather bright green tinge to them. Any of them salvageable, perhaps ? A closer inspection revealed without a shadow of doubt that the greenness was due to my familiar adversary – fungus. A deeper inspection of my fridge revealed several more life forms, at the mere sight of which many a human being might have fainted. The sticker saying “Danger: Men Cooking” is not stuck on my fridge without reason :-) Had to undertake a ruthless purging of my fridge before I proceeded any further.

Now this unexpected task being complete, off I went to the market. Chicken, biriyani masala, poppy seeds, coriander leaves, mint leaves, curry leaves, green chillies …. The list was endless. After 2 hours of zipping into multiple shops, I was ready with all the ingredients. A brief moment of panic occurred in between when I realized I had no clue what  the Indian equivalent of mint leaves was. The girl in reliance fresh was clueless. I had to invoke ‘phone-a-punjabi-friend’ option and was promptly told to look for Pudina.

I am telling you, this was one of the messiest dishes I made ever. The chicken had to marinated in some masala, onions had to be fried, tomatoes had to be added, cashew nuts had to be fried as well, some more onions had to be caramelized , rice had to be cooked, several other pastes involving all kinds of leaves, poppy seeds, ginger , garlic etc had to be ground .. Phew, a lot of work ..

But the master chef is not one who shies away from a bit of hard labor, especially if the promise of a spectacular new dish looms.

To be frank ( which I am not, I am Pradeep) I ran into some trouble while making it. I had doubts on how exactly to caramelize the onions [you keep on frying them for a long time, increase heat towards end] and whether it is ok to puree tomato and use it rather than use the small pieces, which I hate [finally used the puree]. I made the dish in the afternoon, so it would have been well past midnight for my US consultant. I tried my local consultant, but quite unsurprisingly she was found to be shamelessly sleeping like a log and unresponsive. Thankfully my engineering approximations caused no harm to the end product.

Took me well over 2 hours to make. Was it worth all the effort ? Well, you look and tell me ….

Ended up with a touch less salt. Always better to be in that position than land up with more salt !!

Tasted good to me… Fully dedicated to US consultant for the excellent detailed recipe.

Well, did that success help my mood ? I don’t know, I don’t care.

I have tasted success in first attempt, Yipppeeeeeeeeeee ….

Now that means, I have to find a new project. Wonder what I should try next ?

New venture

After the run-away success of PV cabs, PV bakery and PV kitchens, PV group is proud to announce the launch of PV wines. First samples are available for tasting for privileged customers, strictly on an invitation only basis.

PV wines is also actively seeking wine tasters to give feedback on these creations. As readers maybe aware, PV groups CEO is not exactly what you may describe as a ‘Spiritual’ person. Hence he is unable to comment with any authority on the actual quality of the wine.

PV group is exploring the option of kick-starting PV distilleries, interested parties may please contact PV :-)

Whining about Wine

My wine is progressing nicely, the color looks good, the aroma is ok , the taste seems fine.

Wait a minute …………. There is something seriously wrong with the previous sentence !!

What is wrong is the sad fact that I have no means to judge whether my wine is turning out well or not :-((( I don’t know what it should taste or smell like, all i have is a rough idea of what it should look like. Unfortunately that knowledge is quite useless as the color is naturally acquired when you make wine with red grapes. Yeah, I do sip a bit of wine around Christmas, but once a year is not enough for you to remember the taste !!

Looks like I will have to unleash a bottle of it on my usual Guinea pig :-) [ a.k.a North Indian cooking consultant / Punjabi bride ] What is definitely on the positive side for me is that my Guinea pig has absolutely no clue what it is supposed to taste like either :-)) I am sure my US based consultant could have easily polished off a bottle or two and given me some expert tips as well. But alas, that is not an option for me right now :-((

It definitely looks as if Whining is more of my specialty, not Wining !!

Yawnnnn …..

Shiva Sena is threatening to disrupt yet another movie, Muthalik threatens to disrupt Valentine’s day again and one more weekend looms for me with nothing to do ….

What else is new ?

Nothing much. I have been on almost full time PV cabs duty, must have covered 300+ kms over the past week to all parts of Bangalore.  Malleshwaram, KR market, BIAL , Forum value mall : you name it.

Also finally managed to kick start my home wine experiment, will know the results in 21 days or so :-) Hopefully it will come out ok.

Been feeling a bit low also of late. Though some people may suggest that I might as well add that to the “what else is new ?” list.

Finally mastered

Puttu-Cherupayar curry has long been in my list of items that I wanted to master. Casual readers of my blog might remember that I had not exactly covered myself in glory during my fist attempt

Every subsequent try, I was somewhere within the ball park. Either the flavor of the curry would go missing. Or the Puttu would either be in complete powder form or a sticky gluey mass.

After numerous trial and errors and consultations with domain experts, I can finally declare a Level-1 mastery on this topic !!

Puttu , I have realized is almost all about the water content in the flour. Too much and you have a lumpy solid mass, too less and it crumbles off to powder. Steaming time is also an important factor, but this is relatively easier to gauge. 
Cherupayar curry flavor comes almost exclusively from the ground coconut-cumin seed paste. Plus the seasoning with curry leaves, mustard and red chilies helps a lot !!

See the mouth watering samples below. This time I loved the taste myself :-)

Black forest cake and a Teetotaler

I was getting bored of my cake variations. “Change” was the cry from within and indeed from my guinea pigs in office !!

Black forest cake appealed to me greatly. Now, I am not a big fan of black forest, but the technical challenges were daunting. You have to make multiple layers of cake, create the icing and the ingredients are different. What is a Master Chef’s life without a few challenges ?

The initial challenge was the recipe. After 30 mins of intense googling, I found a couple of recipes that seemed manageable. However an obstacle of gigantic proportion loomed. All recipes required the use of Rum. I am strict non-alcoholic - a statement that is quite often met with stares and shouts of disbelief. “What ? YOU don’t drink ????”. As James Herriot might say, its a rum ’un :-) I must add I am not averse to an occasional glass of wine [ occasional = once or twice per year ], but that is where I stop.

Now how and where do I buy Rum from? Again some research showed me that there a liquor chain called Madhuloka which has presence in almost all the malls across Bangalore. The nearest one I could find was in Cosmos mall. So off I went in search of Rum.

The shop itself looked impressive and there was a decent crowd inside. Of course, I did not want to ask for Rum and have the salesman laugh at me. Because I don’t even know if it can be found in shops like these. Or else if Rum is colloquial term and if the liquor buffs call it something else. I don’t even know its color for God’s sake !!

So I did what I hoped a confident alcoholic would do. I walked around the aisles, inspecting a few bottles, looking as if I have been around a million times. Alas, no sigh of Rum. I found Vodka, Wine, Whiskey and Beer but no Rum. A second round of inspection followed. This time much slower, as if I am intensely debating what to buy. And success !! I found the light green colored Bacardi bottles in one corner. I picked the smallest one, I think it was around 250 ml

Smoothly proceeded to checkout counter, with mild beads of perspiration on my fore-head. My first ever purchase of alcohol !! And I am over thirty !! Is that good or bad ? Who knows :-)

“Just the one bottle , sir ? “ The man behind the counter asks. Oh boy, I must be looking like a raging alcoholic after all :-((
“New year resolution, buddy”, I am tempted to answer back. Instead, I take my bottle of Rum and quietly slip away. [PS : Quarter liter is not enough ?? how much do normal people drink ? One liter ? I am totally stumped ]

The cake itself was a rather painful affair, with a lot of work, the end result is shown below

Now the critics may say it looks as if some one ate cherries with milk and threw up on top of my cake. But with no icing tools at my disposal, this is the best I could do :-)

Stay tuned for more experimentations, this time hopefully with no alcohol involved !!

Rava dosa

In case you were wondering, The Master Chef is still pretty active in the kitchen.

The most recent grand success [ just a couple of hours old] being Rava Dosa. Just finished eating 5 of those :-). This time I followed an online recipe that I found from YouTube

Ended up using a bit too much of green chilly, actually this lot of green chillies I have is a bit hotter than normal. Whole mouth feels as if it is on fire, even after a few liters of water and plenty of sugar !!

What I love about this is that there is no fermentation time. Mix the batter and you are ready to go !!

Had some good success with a Black Forest cake too, more on that later …..

Master chef loses his golden touch

Well, the heading puts it rather mildly. I am having a pretty poor run of results in cooking. All started of with my birthday

Episode –1 : Killer Coconut
Dosa-Chutney is one of my favorites, so what better dish to have on birthday night ? Except for the small fact that I actually left the coconut that I grated the previous day outside the fridge by mistake. I had no spare coconut, so birthday night was spent as usual with a tall glass of cold water :-(

Episode-2: Old man and the porotta
Birthday was a washout but I was determined to eat something nice at least the next day. Went to MK retail, brought some chicken and gravy paste and made a Kolhapuri chicken curry. Kerala porotta(paratha) goes very well with spicy chicken curries. I eagerly opened my fridge to heat up some ready to eat porottas. To my dismay I realized that I had forgotten to stock those. Brain degeneration due to old age, I guess. So this time I had chicken gravy, but no porottas :-( Summary : No food

Episode-3: Revenge of the prawns
Resolve grew stronger when weekend arrived. Saturday saw yet another trip to MK retail, this time I returned with some frozen prawns, determined to make a dry type prawn masala. Marination of prawns went well, the masala came out looking nice and aromatic. All that was left was to mix the prawns in the masala and let it simmer for 20-25 minutes.
Happily I kept it in a closed vessel and went off to do some Facebook-ing on my computer. Returned back 20 mins later to find acrid smell and smoke spreading through the kitchen.  I had forgotten to put the gas on low flame :-((( All that was left was a deep black charred mass .. Siggghhhhhhhh .
Summary : No food

Episode 4: Return of the hogger
Thankfully that was Diwali day and I was saved by invitations from Daya and Chatter Box !!. Massive hogging sessions in the evenings offset the losses of previous days :-). Had a really nice time, bursting crackers, lighting Diyas, attending prayer , eating good food and having nice company on weekends for a change. Felt so happy when I got back home that I celebrated it by sleeping most of Sunday :) Life was indeed looking great !!

Episode 5: The final nail in the coffin
The next weekend arrived and I had to do something to keep from starving. Decided to fall back upon a tried and tested item – Appam. Now you may say that I should have seen it coming, but frankly I did not. Appam’s came out disastrous. They were refusing to spread on my non stick pan, and even when I could get the batter to spread, it was forming lumps all over !! :-(( This time I was so hungry that I had to eat up all the pathetic creations.

For the next 3 days my family is going to be here, so maybe a short break would help restore my confidence.

Silence of the cell ….. And a baking experiment

• Prolonged periods of cell-phone silence leads to depression

• Prolonged depression in turn leads to cell phone being switched off

Where does it start ? Where does it end ? Whatever the answer maybe, a sure-shot test to figure out my condition is to check if my cell phone is switched off :)

Felt like baking today [ Had no dinner, of course. I have fat reserves to hibernate for rest of the year :) ]

When I started off with the ingredients, realization dawned that I was a bit short.

I had only a quarter cup butter as compared to half cup needed. A quick glance at the essence expiry date told me that the bottle and my daughter were almost comparable in age :-(( I am still struggling to shake off the mental picture of an essence bottle in uniform sitting next to my daughter in school ….

I was also out of stock of my standard savior, cashew nuts. A lesser cook might have balked at this hurdle, but the Master Chef ?? Never !!

And hence was born the “masala” cake. A Hodge-podge of butter, sugar, eggs, condensed milk, regular milk, pineapple pieces, cardamom [essence substitute], maida and baking powder.

The end product looks like more of a sponge cake. Which suits me fine, because I had been on the lookout for a sponge cake recipe !!

How does it taste ? Well, that is really for the guinea pigs in office to tell tomorrow. I sampled a piece and according to me it is my best effort ever !! :-)

But then I have not had dinner, I may be biased because I have used the greatest sauce ever known to mankind ---- hunger.

I have to add that my new hand held Philips cake mixer is of great help !! Saves me lot of manual labor in mixing.

So that I can continue to build up my reserves for the long hard famine ahead ;)

He who burps the last, burps the loudest …

Kheer / Payasam attempt

Last Sunday was the so called ‘Friendship day’. The sheer variety of these “days” never ceases to amaze me. Father’s day, mother’s day, valentine’s day, friendship day ….

And tomorrow happens to be the day every single Indian male dreads : Raksha bandhan !! Thankfully this one has been never a big celebration in South India ;-)

A weekend experiment in payasam (kheer) landed in predictable disaster and violent temper surges. :-((

It started off quite well, the semiya payasam was smelling good and consistency seemed decent. I had a cup after making it and it tasted quite good.

But once I left if outside for couple of hours, the semiya somehow seemed to absorb lot of the liquid. The end result was a near solid lumpy mass.I tried to rescue the situation by adding more milk and boiling it further. That worked like a charm for a while. Only problem was that it returned to its original solid state once I refrigerated it. &*#&@

It just refused to return to a liquid form even after I heated it. The re-heating attempt happened late at night when I was already pretty hungry. So naturally I was on a short fuse and violently dumped the solid payasam down my garbage bin.

Yet another experiment bites the dust. I guess next time I should remember not to let the milk thicken so much …..

Kerala Porotta with Chicken curry !!

North Indians maybe quick to correct it as Kerala Paratha, but I insist. It is called Porotta in Kerala, I don’t care what the authentic name is !! :-)

Master Chef returned to kitchen today after a longish break. The immense relief from chest congestion after starting oral steroids greatly contributed to this early return. It is a 5 day course of steroids and has really helped.

Predictably, the return featured lots of ready to eat items. Porotta was purchased from MK retail, it comes in a 50% cooked state. You have to just heat it with a touch of Ghee. It comes out really soft and with multiple layers, just like the ones that I get back home in Calicut. 

I have heard that attempting to make porotta from first principles often results in a rubbery slipper like mass, so did not even think of making it from scratch !! :-)

Chicken tikka masala was the chosen curry, again made using the ready made Chicken tikka gravy paste [I think it was from a brand called Parampara]. You have to mix the paste well with water and curd. Sautee chicken pieces in ghee till they turn golden brown, add to the previous mixture and cook for 8-10 minutes till the gravy thickens

Tasted really good. I guess it had to , considering how minimal my inputs were to the entire process :-) I have enough curry and porotta to last for couple more days, whether my new found good health will last for that duration is a different question altogether.

All this has made no impact on the eccentricity of my sleep timings, 2 AM now and I am still up :-(

The mystery of undercooked pakodas

Well, it is 1 a.m in the morning and I’m blogging.

Why, you might ask ?

One of the side effects of battling a chest congestion & asthma is that your sleep becomes very intermittent. I have been so sleepless over the course of last week that I really crashed today. Woke up at 12.30 pm on Sunday, having slept for well over 12 hours !! Naturally I am a bit sleepless now after this marathon sleep fiesta

Now what has this got to do with Pakodas ?

Nothing much, apart from the following facts

(a) My ill health has reduced me from being a master chef to being a King of Leftovers. A sudden and dramatic degradation. Somehow reminds me of the following Malayalam poem :
Randu naalu dinam kondoruthane Thandiletti nadathunnathum bhavaan,
Maalika mukaleriya mannante Tholil maaraappu kettunnathum bhavaan. Non mallus can contact me for the translation :-)
(b) Due to reason a, I do not have any new cooking experiments to write about, hence this story from the vaults
(c) The name of my blog is Random thoughts, so it is natural that much of my writing will be so ;-)

Now pakoda is something that has constantly troubled me. The ingredients are simple enough. Gram flour, salt, and chopped up onions and green chillies.

The problem I have is that my pakodas always end up being a touch undercooked, though they are nice and brown on the outside. I have done some experimentation with oil temperatures, frying them in low flame, high flame, medium flame, everything !! Still they continue to turn out the same :(

Now could it be a problem with my gram flour batter consistency ? Possible, but I doubt it. It must be something to do with the way I fry them and how long they need to be in the oil.

Continues to be a mystery for me. 

Btw Bangalore has the classic pakoda weather now. Cloudy and windy with an occasional spattering of rain.

If only I could get them right ……

Happy Anniversary to me

6 years and still going strong :-)) Not a lot of those 6 years have bee spent together, but finally light is beginning to appear at the end of the long dark tunnel. Hopefully by next year this time, we will be a happily re-united family again !!

Even now, every time I see a dad and mom walking with their small daughter, I do feel a strong sense of pain. I guess this is a situation that I can never be totally in control of.

Decided not to go home and celebrate the anniversary as I thought it is better not to distract wifey during her final preparations for the practical exams

That leaves me with the ever challenging job of keeping myself occupied. Put on my master chef hat and baked a few chocolate chip cookies, samples below. Tasted very nice too

In fact looked so nice in the photo that several folks accused me of buying the cookies and taking photographs :-) 

I have finally decided to take the pains of writing up a recipe :-), you can find it below. Pretty similar to that of a cake

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup honey *
2- 2.5 cups of maida
2 eggs
1 tea spoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Lots of nuts and chocolate chips :-)) [ I just bought cooking chocolate bars and chopped them up ]

Mix the maida and baking powder and keep aside for 15 mins. Thoroughly mix butter and sugar. [I had used melted butter by microwaving it on low power for a minute or two]. Beat the eggs well with vanilla essence in a mixer and pour to the earlier butter-sugar batter and mix well. You can add honey also now. Fold in the maida and mix till the batter is thick. If it turns out to be a bit watery, add a touch more maida OR refrigerate it for 1/2 hour to get the water out. [ I employed both techniques , btw ;-) ]

Add a spoon or two of the final batter onto a baking pan [I formed a small ball with the dough and just pressed it on to the pan to get the shape]. It spreads as it bakes, so don’t put your clumps close together. Bake in a pre-heated oven ( 180 deg C) for 10-12 minutes, till outside begins to turn dark brown in color. As you take out the cookies, they may feel slightly spongy on top. Allow them to cool down and they become nice and crispy on the outside.

* Original recipe require 3/4 cup each of white and brown sugar, I had no brown sugar, nor do I know from where to get it in Bangalore. Hence used honey which was suggested as an alternative

Another cooking experiment

Let me start with :-(((, this is to represent how badly I am missing my family now. Maybe a familiar rant for some of you, even mildly amusing too perhaps. Ended up spending most of weekend with phone switched off, didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to see anyone.

Moving on to more pleasant things.

The master chef returns yet again with one of his magical mouth-watering creations. This time Paneer Tikka masala !! No idea of a recipe, so basically used the same one as for Chicken Tikka. I marinated Paneer in curd and masalas for couple of hours ( Tandori chicken masala, ginger garlic paste, chilli powder, salt) and grilled it in my microwave oven. Took quite a while to cook, close to 30 mins in my reckoning.

Turned out quite decent and eminently edible. See the photographs below.

I was just too hungry. So forgive the lack of decorations and garnishing :) The onions you see were actually part of the grilling process. I am not a big capsicum fan, else could have added that also to the grill

Hence [for this weekend at least] a resolution to the Pradeep-ian dilemna : To cook or not to cook, that is the question

Hamlet and an empty stomach

To be or not to be, that is the question

Well maybe for Hamlet that is the question, for me it is more like To cook or not to cook ……

As any normal human being, I am quite hungry and tired by the time I get back from work. But often I do not feel like eating anything and go to bed on a near empty stomach. Now why is that I don’t feel like eating ?

Quote : “Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions”. I am not a Dangerous man, hence I cannot logically explain my feelings, hence I don’t eat.

Can you ever have any doubt that I live by Cogito Ergo Sum ? ;)

My random thoughts are getting really random , aren’t they ?

Well , for the record, I am not drunk nor do I take drugs, lest your thoughts proceed in that manner !!

On a more normal note, I watched Barcelona annihilate Manchester United in yesterday’s champion’s league final. Not very unlike a Maruti 800 going head to head with a Ferrari !! There are indeed few better sights in football than that of Barcelona midfield going at full steam at the opponents.

On the personal front, I just feel moody and restless. All friends have ‘deserted ‘ [ pun intended in some cases ..] , so I end up mumbling to myself most of the time.

If not for Cogito Ergo Sum, how would I even know I exist ?

Or a better question right now might be , is there a point in existence ?? :-((

Does an empty stomach make you a philosopher may be another relevant question. Wonder if Socrates could cook …….

All righty, this is getting too random even for me. So signing off for now.

You win some, you lose some

66.67% success rate for the weekend cooking.

Thumbs down for my experiment with Chicken curry ( odd taste, chicken a touch undercooked) .

Tasted major success with my attempts at Aloo – Mutter curry and Chole-Bhatura !! Recipes , of course courtesy of my ever present consultant a.k.a driving pupil a.k.a chatter box !!

I can write a thousand words, this time I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Looks professional, does it not ? :-)

I am really happy with my weekend’s cooking effort !!

As a token of my gratitude ( for the recipes and expert guidance) ,  I baked some experimental ‘chocolate chip -raisin muffins’ for my consultant. They too have received rave reviews :-)

The legend of the Master Chef continues to grow …..

On stories and names

Inspired by the fake IPL blogger, let me also come out with names of characters that may appear in my blog in the near future.

Disclaimer : Any resemblance to any one living or dead is purely co-incidental. These are purely fictitious characters

Disaster, Daya, Lion, Senior, Windy, HBP(High Blood Pressure) , Senior, No-logic, Cucumber, Fat-drip and Chatter-box

Let us say No-Logic, Cucumber and Chatter box are of the fairer sex and Fat-drip is in the U.S :-).

So last weekend, Disaster, Daya, Lion and myself decided to have a bachelor cookout.

Bachelor ???, you might ask 

Well Daya and myself are not exactly bachelors, but for all practical purposes we can be assumed to be that for the next couple of weeks. Chatter-box was invited, but was busy with something or the other and No-Logic went on the usual weekend escapade to home. Windy was not yet a bachelor and so was not invited.

Intense discussions on menu followed for several days. Finally clear demarcation of roles and responsibilities was done. I would make Appam and Chicken Tikka, Daya would make fish fry, Lion would make egg curry and Disaster would make Dal. Saturday evening would be the time, and venue would be my house.

Saturday started off for me with purchase of chicken ( bone-less of course, bones are for dogs !! ) and appam mix. Kept the chicken marinated in a mix of lemon juice, curd and various top secret masalas for close to 6-7 hours :). Daya & disaster arrived with marinated fish and Lion too made his presence felt soon there after.

We were all set to start. The evening started with a magnificient display of chicken tikka by yours truly ( Hey, my blog, I will write whatever I want) .

Lion started with Egg curry and immediately started demanding ingredients which I did not have. Fresh green chillies, tomatoes etc .. A deep dive into fridge revealed some mildly rotten tomatoes and wilted green chillies. Lion was shaking his head as if he were the main chef of The Taj. After some severe sledging, he proceeded to reluctantly use the available ingredients and start cooking. Intense pressure was heaped up on him , with sarcastic comments flying thick and fast. Showing true Lion like qualities, he delivered under pressure with a very nice egg curry.

Daya proceeded to fry the fish in Goan style, and ended up eating half of the first fish to make sure the frying and masalas were in order ;). He also tried to use some un-named powder in my kitchen thinking it was rice powder, luckily we caught him in nick of time. BTW,  I still don’t know what that white powder is ……….

Disaster meanwhile just wanted to boil dal with salt ( and sugar !!! ) and add nothing else. After some not-so-gentle coaxing, he came around to making a version of dal that us normal human beings could consume. I must add here that Disaster has zero threshold for spices, show him a green chilly and he will start sweating like a pig !

There was nothing to say about the appam, except that the master chef’s stamp of class was clear in the soft fluffy creations ;)

Overall cookout v1 was declared as a grand success by all parties involved. Cookout v2 was also planned tentatively for the next Saturday, details of that to follow soon !!