Last week I went down with a bad back. After the initial shock had worn off I settled down with my current read on my kindle. I was just beginning to enjoy the experience when the cook called to say she wasn’t coming. That was the worst kind of spoke in the wheel of my happiness.
As I sat there feeling rather helpless, the children offered to take up the cooking. It might have been the result of a phone call from the sister, which turned them from busy-without-business-tweens to Santa’s hardworking little elves.
Of course there’s much difference between good intentions and actually getting down to work. After staking claim to each task and fighting tooth and nail for each one, H disappeared behind his book leaving N to handle it all.
Glad to have him out of the way, we made up the simplest menu of Egg Curry and Rice. No cutting, no chopping and no need for the dreaded pressure cooker. N, dear little, careful, meticulous N went to work and did a pretty good job of following my instructions to a tee. H appeared from behind his book (after much coaxing) to cut the salad and lay the table.
In the end we had a pretty decent meal.
While I prayed the maid would come back, an inspired H prayed harder that she wouldn’t, so he could prove his powers as a chef too. God, as they say, listens to the prayers of children. The maid didn’t turn up.
And so come evening, we chose another simple recipe – paneer in a ready-spice mix. The only tricky part was grinding the tomatoes which H said he’d manage given that he’s comfortable with the food processor (because he uses the juicer all the time).
They’re so very different, these two. While N is overly cautious, stopping at each step, confirming and reconfirming, checking with me and cross checking again, H blunders in full of confidence even when he hasn’t the foggiest idea about things.
And so it was that before I could give him a single instruction he had chopped the tomatoes, dropped them into the mixer and switched it on. Forgetting to put his hand on the lid. Yeah, you know what happened next. The kitchen looked like the site of a tomato tornado! H stood there, tomato pulp splattered on his spectacles trying to figure out the way to the kitchen sink.
I blew my top worse than any food processor and a rather remorseful H got down to retrieving the bits and washing and grinding them all over again.
Finally he did handle the paneer, completely on his own, while I managed the chapatis and we were good. He was so very proud as was I.
I told them to go write down the recipes in their recipe books and guess what was the first thing H wrote – “Never forget to take your hand off the top of the mixer while grinding tomatoes”!
So there, that’s my silver lining. Thanks to my bad back, the children took a small step forward in their culinary journey.
