My First Recipe

I was a normal little girl during my college days, who preferred enjoying life, chatting with friends and roaming around with them. The term ‘Kitchen’ was absent in my dictionary. It was Greek and Latin to me.
I was not interested in any of the so called responsible activities a girl is expected to do, in her teens like getting up early by 6 am (oops!! This is the most difficult thing I could ever imagine!), washing my own clothes, serving food (I taking proper food was by itself a great task, why include these foreign terms…), keeping things in their respective places (ridiculous! The house will lose its beauty when things are in their appropriate places – this was my opinion)

My mom would struggle hard to teach me the meaning of Kitchen. Once in a blue moon, I used to enter the kitchen to taste my mom’s recipes. Otherwise, I would enter a lot many times, to take a spoon of Horlicks, Maltova and snacks as it is! :)

My mom, the poor soul tried hard to teach me the names of spices used in the kitchen – tur dal, moong dal, cumin etc. To me , it was another semester (a tough one to clear!).Every time, I would confuse these dals. To me they were another toughest language, next to my Random Processes and Digital Signal Processing (at least they were better to manage :) ). I had an option to escape from these semesters at home (luckily!)

My parents felt very bad that I was not learning the hygiene factors that a girl who is about to get married, is expected of. Those were far high expectations for t his little girl (?!?) to handle. No one understood that, but for my friends, who were like me :). Every girl is expected to undergo a transition stage called MARRIAGE.I had to, tooL.

My parents were more worried about me, as to how I would handle the family with responsibility. My husband, in – laws were very understanding and supportive (at last I have few test specimens for my cooking. (?!?)

For the first time in my lifetime, I was asked to make a coffee (Sunrise / Bru) for seven people!.This was a very tough task for me. Since I had no other go and I also had TEST SPECIMENS, who would take anything I would prepare, I was motivated :) . I had put 14 spoons of sunrise (2 per person – what a calculation!) I had to invent my own ratio and proportions. Don’t ask me how the coffee turned out – I had already told you, they were ‘TEST SPECIMENS’.

Next day, I was asked to prepare idly (of course, they gave me the batter!).In my mom’s place I have seen mom preparing idly in idly cooker. Here, it was different. Here the idly cooker had some extra fittings to it. My in-laws were using a white cloth to cover the plates. Since I wanted to be a good daughter in law (!!!), I woke up early (had to :( ). People were sleeping. I wanted to experiment with the new idly cooker. So I did not wake them up. I used the cloth to cover the plates, poured the idly batter over it, closed the lid of the cooker and kept it over the burning stove. After few mins, there was a burning smell. Then I had a doubt – should I have added water to the cooker before placing the plates? (Good doubt at the right moment). I removed the idly cooker from the stove, poured some water in the cooker, placed the plates and placed it back on the stove. A sense of accomplishment overtook me since I had prepared idly (?!?), before people could wake up. Few mins later, my co-sister came into the kitchen to see the state of the idly. I thought it would be eatable, but it turned out the other way (It’s all in the game :) ).My in-laws were laughing and they prepared new eatable idly’s (How difficult is this task and how do people m manage to do this!).My idly got a new name from that day “Neruppu Idly” (Flaming idly’s.) Since they were hard, got burnt a little (?) and did not get boiled fully. I had invented a new recipe though :) .Do you want to try Neruppu Idly? :)