Friday, February 15

Photo Essay: Me Mum's cooking!

Ok, I am going to get into so many types of trouble for this essay. Lets see, my wife is going to get upset because I am praising my mum's cooking, my stomach's going to get upset because I will be cramping at the thought, my shirt will be upset with the drool, the vegetarians will be upset with the non-vegetarian food being cooked and so on and so forth. But, hey, it was GOOOOOOOD food. And when its grandkids wanting specific food, grandma went all overboard.

My mum's amazing, she has retired now, but she just retired as a full professor of geography, she acts on the stage, film and radio and has awards for them, she paints and sculpts, she was a very good classical dancer before the knees gave way, wonderful singer, she has got awards for her language skills and contributions to Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu and Bengali, she is busy gallivanting around the world (every year or so, she takes off to go around the world somewhere, her recent trip was to Egypt!), she cooks divinely. Oh!, she can ride, hunt and shoot.

She taught me how to skin and dress a rabbit and a pigeon! :). She is very well read and collects Ganesh figurines (a photo essay on that is forthcoming). She did the interior decoration as well as the architecting of our (and several other houses!), she knits the most amazing jumpers and even sewed my shirts and trousers when we used to be a bit tight for money. Very impressive, is me mum. And this year, if everything works out fine, we will write a book together. But that's jumping the gun, here are some of her culinary masterpieces.

So this is the jelly as little grand-daughter requested and I loved it, just look at that HUGE mouth and HUGE eyes.
And these are the prawns being prepared.
 
Golda Chingri (King Prawn Curry!)
 
Pulao Rice and plain rice.
Pineapple and Cherry Cake on the left, chocolate and loads of other stuff including rum and fruit Christmas cake on the right
Didu made a tiny chocolate cake just for me.
 
Baked fish, this is just yummy mummy for my tummy!

   
Roast Chicken, gosh, the entire house was permeated with absolutely divine aroma's all day long while this was cooking. The gravy at the bottom for those who wanted some stuff to go with the roti's. 
  
Three types of fish curry.
  
Boiled vegetables and she also made her own special mayonnaise. Yummy if absolutely terrible for my spreading waistline!.
This is one of my favorite breakfast dishes, sattu (made out of gram flour, i like it with some lemon, lots of jaggery and eat away!)
 
Cauliflower dry curry, perfect for travels or with roti's.
  
the traditional style of making tea, dump everything (tea leaves, water, sugar, cow juice) into a pan and bring to a ruthless boil, strain and serve.
Here's one of the full spread
And then there is my dad, the proud owner of 18 degrees in engineering, total absent minded professor. He spent 6.5 minutes trying to figure out why on earth the microwave wasnt working despite him peering all over and pressing every button (and some lettering as well). His nod to cooking is restricted to "warming".Then he finally figured out that it needs to be plugged in. Once that little problem was solved, then the 2 samosa's were warmed up and little Diya could eat them. He was so pleased and proud with his performance that we all had to admit that his "cooking" was magnitudes better than Mum's.
 
Full slide-show here.
 
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1 comment:

Unknown said...

Oh Hi Shonabhai, This is amazing - took me completely 3 decades back in memory. She prepared a Train shaped cake on your birthday.. I have never in my life seen another one like the one she made.
I cannot ever forget the daal chawal - so tasty when she mixed in one big plate and fed all four of us with her fingers - they were the most beautiful fingers one can have. Kakimoni is all Grace, beauty, fun, Talent, Energy, affection, competence, human rights, my mother's saviour and best friend, All bundled in ONE.
May God give her continued energy to remain forever like this!!