Saturday, February 23, 2008

Culinary Escapades!

Cooking is a routine for some while its an art for others. I would say that its an adventure for me! I started cooking about a year back and though quite a few dishes have come out pretty well, I have had my share of disasters too :-)

I had lived alone in Uk for a short while and was in the process of experimenting with different dishes. So once when I was trying to do stuffed okra, I let it get burnt. This resulted in a lot of smoke and as I was desperately trying to open the determinately stuck kitchen window, the smoke alarm started shrieking! Now I was living in a quite locality and it was around 10 in the night. So I succeeded in waking up the entire apartment and everyone was bewildered and panicky! Finally I somehow managed to put it off and pacified them!

The other day, I tried my hand at making gulab jamuns. Hope you know that gulab jamun is a traditional Indian sweet, made up of fried balls of flour soaked in sweet, sugary syrup. Its a pretty easy dish to make and so I decided to go ahead with it. Now I had no idea that the jamuns increase in size when fried-so I rolled them up quite big and when I fried them they doubled in size! I also didnt know that they need to be fully immersed in oil to retain their shape. So the part in the oil was nice and round and the part above was all oblong! Finally I didnt know at what point I need to stop heating the sugar syrup. I transferred the jamuns to the syrup bowl and left them to soak in the same cooking vessel. So the syrup got too thick- when I came to have one tasty jamun, I found to my horror that they had all stuck to the vessel! So finally I had to soak them in water and scrape and scrub everything off :-(

So all I learnt was How Not To Make Gulab Jamun!

But these instances have not reduced my urge to cook and I have been continuing my trials with a fair part of errors!

8 comments:

  1. Hey! Definitely a racking adventure. Cooking is lot more than an art. It is as difficult as rocket launching. Believe it or not I just got expertised in making Dosas and Potato fries after 2 years of coooking experiments. Dare to try others but I am sure it would be a disaster. :) Nice write!

    PS : I am not sure whether I am authorised to read/write here but then it has been a while for me since I read a blog. So just gave it a try. :)

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete
  2. LOL!!!
    Nice stuff Anne... But I am surprised that you didn't bring the entire fire brigade to your house!! LOL!!!
    But nice stuff. Cooking can be fun. Especially when we make mistakes and learn to laugh about it. :D
    Oh yeah, we should also learn from it.. ;) Hope you did... :D
    Keep the good work going Anne. Seems like you did find some TP writing to do after all.. :D
    Looking forward to more interesting stuff from you... :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Murali
    Its my first blog and its great to have ur comments. Thanks :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. do lemme know when u make gulab jamuns again (assuming you're a fast learner)..i'll definitely like to be invited..i just love them..

    ReplyDelete
  5. @Samudra
    Ya sure Sen! Though I thought u would b more inclined to rasagollas:-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hey Anne!Jus now came to know that u r writing blogs...Its too good to read something alike which happened to me exactly the same with gulab Jamuns.but,the only thing is i made it for the guest...hehehe..I am sure they had a rocky time.good experience isn't it?cheers.

    ReplyDelete
  7. hahaha! i have only tried the mix gulab jamuns-didt have the courage to start from scratch.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Confusedyuppie: This was also with a mix only. So now you know truly how pathetic I was!!! lol!

    ReplyDelete

I love reading comments! Please leave one (or many!). I sincerely appreciate it.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...