When you live on your own, one of the main tasks is preparation of food. If you live alone in any part of India, you may find homemade or near- homemade food outside with some research. I have known people who have lived in various parts of India for several years and never had to make their own food. But yes, outside of India and depending on the place, getting homemade food from an outside joint may be difficult. In such cases, you have to learn and rely on your own cooking.
When you start cooking your own food, the journey into your mother's area of expertise begins. These days, youtube can help with lots of recipes and food channels being available. So do video calls with mother or wife !!
I vaguely remember my 'cooking streak' started with cutting onions, making tea and instant noodles. Slowly I graduated to making Potato sabji, rice and dal in the steam cooker and egg preparations (Bhurji, omlettes, scrambled eggs).
The other day, one of my friends told me that he is going to UK for studies. He said he was worried because he could only make tea and instant stuff but no sabji. I told him - just learn how to make potato sabji and you can make sabjis out of almost all other veggies in the same way. He found the tip useful - he told me so and also because I saw him alive returning after his 2 years of studies !!
I'd say cooking is not difficult. Anyone with a fairly good sense of taste and estimation can cook a decent one time meal - Decent one time meal - here meaning that it can atleast be digested properly at the time without causing any trouble along the way !!
In the long run, or if you are going to cook for a long period of time regularly / everyday, the struggle is for the right consistency and the balance of ingredients while keeping the taste, texture and the nutritive value alive.
1. Consistency - The same taste repeats when you repeat the recipe.
2. Balance - Everything is just right. The right amount of spice, salt, sweetness - nothing in excess than is absolutely necessary.
3. Taste - It should be tasty no matter how much or how little you use of the ingredients in order to keep it at healthy levels.
4. Texture - An onion tomato gravy should have a gravy-like texture !! Raw / uncooked slices in the pulp of onion or tomato spoil the texture. Another example is uncooked dal in a curry. Or partially cooked chickpeas in 'cholle'
5. Nutritive value - For the sake of creaminess or richness, you cannot be heavy handed on the oil, butter or ghee. You have to maintain healthy levels of it if its in everyday cooking.
When I lived alone and cooked everyday, I struggled with Point no. 1, was ok with pt. 2, 3 and 5 and was strictly ok with Point no. 4.
All in all, with experimentation, trial and error, a certain level of understanding and common sense, you can manage to prepare almost everything.
However, it is said that even if you become a world class, michelin rated chef, you will always miss your mother's food.
Another belief, which I had heard when I was young and lately experienced it is that eating a meal cooked by someone else is always more tasty and satisfying than a meal which you have prepared yourself !! (Its probably because when you make it yourself, and it doesnt turn out as good as you expected, you feel let down mentally - knowing the amount of effort you put in making it.)
We Indians place a lot of importance on food. And rightfully so because we have the best of it in the whole world !! Westerners may call our food oily, spicy, extremely hot, too sweet and all the things that may defame it or put it in bad light.
But it isn't so at all. In fact, quite the opposite. The real Indian foods - 'real' meaning the 'home-made' ones are very nutritious and balanced - just perfect in those regards. These are perfectly 'designed and created' keeping in mind the weather, levels of activity and the availability of crops in those regions.
Prepared with fresh vegetables; perfected to an accurate proportion and recipe; fed to a child or served to a loved one with the preparers love and feelings; eaten with prayers, respect and reverence without wasting a mere morsel of it and then digested well due to the feelings of gratitude towards the food....our culture has covered all the science behind it as well !!
Our foods are in a later stage of evolution than any other cuisines and that is one of the basic reasons why we have to actually 'learn to cook' rather than just throwing in a lot of cut vegetables in a bowl and adding pinches of pepper, salt, dashes of this and that to it.........
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