Cooking for Kitchen Jon Snows: Recipe #1

This one is for my parents,

"To my mother who handed me novels instead of kadhchis and kadhaais and my father who found his pride in my little feats in academics and co-curriculars. I have been a pampered kid."

Except for a few neighbors and some relatives, no one ever made me feel that cooking is something I MUST know. Especially my parents. And only their opinion mattered. After my engineering, my mother started feeling the need for me to grow up and start learning the art, for job would take me far and no one succeeds with an empty stomach. But MBA happened, and for another two years, I didn't learn anything in the kitchen.
A few neighbors have turned into most and some relatives into all. But now, my parents too want me to be able to cook little things to fill my Punjabi tummy which will help me focus and succeed in my career too. Again, only their opinion matters :)

So all the Jon Snows of kitchen, you can consider the following weblog either as an ego-booster or a morale booster, because like you, I know nothing (about cooking).

Recipe One: Alu Matar (curry), with Rotis

"Seeing the colors and understanding the smells is the key"

-my mummy                   

Step 1: Chop 1 onion and a few garlic buds (or ghiyakus them)
Add one tablespoon ghee or olive oil in the pressure cooker
Cook till onion turns into golden brown

Step 2: Chop or ghiyakus 1 tomato
Add to the golden onion and stir at medium flame

Step 3: Add 1/2 teaspoon dhaniya powder (coriander powder),
less than 1/4 teaspoon haldi (turmeric),
1/2 teaspoon red chili powder
and salt to taste
Stir well

Step 4: Chop potatoes (1-2), put them in water to avoid blackening
Add some matar (peas) with chopped potatoes
After rinsing, add potatoes and peas to the cooker with onion-tomato paste
Add about 1 glass of water




Step 5: Cook on medium flame till the whistle comes
Simmer  for 10-15 minutes
Before opening the lid, check to make sure no steam is left

                                   

Enjoy with non-round but self-made rotis :)

TV pe ajkal...

Let's talk about TV. Specifically, the Hindi shows, because I have no idea whatsoever about other languages' and would like to refrain from generalizing. 

I have a few questions, for which I try come up with some sort of answers. 

Firstly, I wonder why there are no shows about government, bureaucracy and politics? And before you say, "hey! who wants to see that?", let me tell you about a show named "Ji Mantriji". It starred Late Farooq Sheikh as the Minister and Jayant Kriplani as the Secretary of his department. This politician-administrative officer duo were part of a satirical sitcom that had political plot-lines and was filmed in front of live studio audience, aired in 2001. That, right there, has it all. Before the advent of Social TV (use of social media for and with TV), the only way to gauge real-time reactions of the audience was by filming in front of live studio audience. Also, the show had everything from SAARC and Commonwealth to everyday challenges and achievements of our administration, in a light hearted manner.

Still, if you are like, "dude politics is not my cup of tea", tell me, are you a fan of American TV shows like "House of Cards" and "Scandal"? There you go. They may be of different genres and have brilliant storyline and actors, but they are political dramas. And just to reiterate, "Ji Mantriji" had brilliant storyline and actors. 

                                                   
Next, why don't we have any talk shows? Not the ones on news channels. We did/do have "Koffee With Karan", "The Front Row with Anupama Chopra" and "Rendezvous with Simi Garewal". But they're mainly cinema-centric. Where are the all-round entertainers like Shekhar Suman's "Movers and Shekhars" or "Surabhi" hosted by Renuka Shahane and Siddharth Kak? The former had a monologue on popular events/happenings of the week, loaded with puns and punches and fun interviews of actors, musicians, sports-persons and leaders alike. While the latter was a cultural show with music, art and quizzes, and was featured in Limca Book of Records for receiving the largest measured audience response ever in Indian TV history. As someone who has an appetite for all this, today I have no desi option, but to tune into the US exports like "The Ellen DeGeneres Show", "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon" and "Late Night with Seth Meyers". 

And now let's address the elephant in the room. The daily soaps. 

Two days ago, on 3rd April, it was 28 years ago that IAF Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma had strapped himself in the Soyuz capsule to go to space. Our Mangalyan is orbiting Mars since 2014. We are the nation who has had a female President.  The biggest cultural export, Yoga, is from our country. All this and many more feats have taken India to heights and the world finally sees us more than the land of snake-charmers. 

And then Indian TV throws shows like "Naagin" and "Vishkanya" in our faces. I mean come on! Okay okay, the argument is that dragons and magic may not exist but we love "GoT", but please do you really think "GoT" and "Naagin" should be in the same sentence? LOL, I think not.

Things that I have learnt from our daily soaps are many:

• Be it day or night, the ladies have no bad hair days. Even when the protagonist wakes up from bad dreams, not one hair strand has moved. When I wake up, my head looks like the creatures of the night played tug of war with my hair. Also, make-up: same story.
• Family: Mothers-in-law are wicked witches. Husbands blindly love their moms. Or did not want to get married to their wives but didn't tell their moms as they didn't want to hurt mummy. The bahu, no matter how much educated, stays at home to do chores. The family has multi-billionaires, but it's bahu's duty to cook. And sweep floors. The dads have no say. Hell, they have no role. A bhuaji/buaji is always there to join hands with the dominating dadi in creating havocs for bholi saas.
• Every show has a character who goes to jail. Like our society is filled with aunties fit for imprisonment.
• Saree: Every lady sleeps, eats and washes in heavy sarees. Those kind that my mother saves for occasions like weddings. As a woman, I know the difficulty of handling a saree. And even if it's easy for some to flaunt, dhobi charges Rs7-10 per saree to iron it. So, who has all this patience and money? And vamps get to wear sexy blouses while the good girl has to put a pallu on head? 
• All shows start with a good theme. Evils of child marriage, single motherhood, a girl trying to pursue sports, etc. But everything boils down to getting married, saas-bahu and death-rebirth.
•  And people easily procure things like pistol and sleeping pills. Don't you need license and prescription for that? 
• The makers are not even putting any efforts to choose a title for the show. Play the retro hits album, choose a song and there is the title for my next show. Or an old movie. Like the iconic "Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi", where it all started, borrows its title from a movie "Saas bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi".

There is enough literature about how the 90s kids saw the best of cartoon shows. So I don't want to clutter the internet with more on that. 

Instead, I'll talk about the teenagers. Remember "Hip Hip Hurray"? Or "Remix"? Now we have sadder shows about relationships and infidelity, because these days school children are dating while us college/office junta is still single :P Remember robot "VICI"- the "Small Wonder" from the eponymous show? Now, we present to you "RAJNI"-the bahu, from "Bahu Hamari RAJNIKant". 

While I was growing up, MTV and Channel V had these cool VJs playing music on requests, solving love problems (beautiful Malaika and quirky Cyrus) and playing pranks (Bakra and Just for Laughs-Gags). Now there are as many music channels as the media houses, with no VJs. And that is because we have YouTube and Gaana.com and SoundCloud on our phones. So, poor music channels cater to TV viewers by reality shows. 

In the simpler times, we had "Antakshari" and "Sa Re Ga Ma", now we have have 10s of these, both for adults and kids. And dance shows- celebrity dance-offs, celebrity pair dance-offs, kids dance-offs, mom dance-offs... 

Mummy loved cooking shows and maintained journals of those recipes. Today we have cooking reality shows, again both adult and kids versions.

There is a lot more I would like to reminisce about, from spy show "Karamchand" to comedic "Shrimaanji-Shrimatiji", but in this age of micro-blogging I've already said a lot. But these two points I must:

1.    The only constant in Indian TV from then and now are the mythological and historical shows. They were addictive then, they are addictive now. It's good that Gods and our human heros like "Akbar-Birbal" still have an audience.

2.   There is Life Cycle curve for everything. The delightful imports from Pakistan like "Zindagi Gulzaar Hai" or the American TV series we all are addicted to- they all have a finite number of episodes, and a finite number of seasons. Reason- sometimes the story ends. This should be a lesson for our show-makers. If your show is good, you can get infinite re-runs, but please keep it short.