I am visiting my friend in the country this week. I brought my sister along because she is visiting me in London. My small cooking escapade illustrates how I have tried to incorporate adaptiveness to the everyday mundane.
I brought farm fresh vegetables that were beginning to languish in my fridge in London, for a potential cook-in here to our gorgeous Midlands get-away. We ate out all day yesterday and it seemed fair we should eat in today. But I did not want to burden our host, my best friend from my high school days. Maybe this morning I could delight her with some South Indian fare. So I spontaneously offered to cook. I chopped up capsicum, carrots and onions and peeled shallots. I had to wait for tuvar daal and curry leaves which the girls were bringing in from the store. I usually cook a big batch so my friend and her partner, a Yorkshire man who loves sambar, have enough leftover for a couple of additional meals. Now, on her way to grandmother-hood, my friend is cooking and freezing for her pregnant offspring, a busy London based doctor who picks up the food on her trips for R and R at mummy’s. Maybe there would be enough leftover to freeze for the mum to be as well?!
This time I had to vary the order in
which I cooked the food. I chopped up cabbage for a nice side! Since there was lots of it, I was a tad nervous about getting the proportion of seasoning
spices right. Cabbage not cooked properly can be rank! I seasoned it
with mustard seeds, urad daal, green chillies, curry leaves, hing and salt. The
big batch got cooked no problem, as I had used just the right
amount of water to cook the cabbage then raised the heat to ensure the
water evaporated before I left it covered for some slow cooking. I
then sprinkled some dessicated coconut and left it covered till it was
ready to be transferred to a serving dish, just before we sat down to
eat. I was thrilled that forces beyond my control had conjured up a
perfect cabbage dish. I never take for granted how, despite my
imprecise approach to cooking, everything comes together for the perfect
outcome. Or maybe it’s my non critical acceptance that manifests as
perfection? In any event, the more I thrive in chaos and less I
strive for perfection the more creative and daring I get to achieve
surprisingly great outcomes. I highly recommend getting out of the
mind’s way!
Then came the hard part, a big batch of sambar in the instant pot. I usually cook the tuvar daal in the instant pot (IP) and set it aside, before cooking the vegetables in the tamarind water, also in the instant pot. This way, once the vegetables are done, the cooked daal goes in ready for the final mustard seasoning. All achieved in IP, no fuss, no mess. Today, I was under a time crunch. So I went ahead with step 2 and sautéed the shallots, capsicum, onion and carrot chunks in a little oil before pouring in the tamarind water, adding sambar powder, curry leaves and salt into the IP. I pressure cooked it with the 12 minute rice setting. When the tuvar daal arrived I could not yet open IP, which had not released the pressure, so I took two cups of it in a vessel big enough to be placed in the spare pressure cooker. I was adapting. People were hungry from all the cooking smells. This cooker, it seemed, could not deliver the cooked daal fast enough to be added into the tamarind water with vegetables. I waited impatiently and when we opened the cooker - a disaster awaited. I had predicted this outcome somewhat given the tuvar had not been given enough room to relax and expand, but had gone ahead and done it anyway! Now I had to wear my adaptive hat because the tuvar daal, my key ingredient for my much awaited sambar, was half cooked and nowhere near ready to go into the tamarind water with cooked vegetables. Some quick thinking was in order- especially given my hungry sister who had begun to nibble on salads (I perceived a form of psychological warfare here). I was the hold up. With some quick thinking, I poured the contents of the IP into a big steel vessel, transferred the half cooked daal into a larger vessel with more water, so it could breathe, and placed that in IP to pressure cook for 12 minutes. Through all this, I could sense my impatience and that of the rest, mounting at this imperfection. There was also a mess around me that I needed to clear quickly, especially given it was not my kitchen.
But wait there was more messiness to come. I decided to forebear through the chaos, maintaining focus and inner stillness, undeterred by the delay. Of course the audience did go to great lengths to reassure me that they were in no rush to eat! I forced open the IP with the daal, when it had completed the obligatory 12 minutes in the rice setting, by mercilessly venting it. Thankfully, the daal was now perfectly cooked and just needed some mashing. For the next move, I needed an abundance of confidence and nerves of steel. I had to take the daal out of the IP, pour the vegetable and tamarind mixture back into the IP and mix in the daal since I needed the size of vessel as the IP steel pot. All very clumsy, given the heat and sheer quantity. I also had no idea whether the consistency would turn out right. Alas, I kept the daal thick and in one bold move emptied all of it into the tamarind and vegetable liquid I had transferred to the IP . I brought it to a boil in sauté mode and breathed a sigh of relief that years of experience had not let me down. I prepared the seasoning on the stove with mustard seeds, red chillies, hing, methi seeds and curry leaves. Lots of chopped coriander had gone into the boiling sambar already. The final flourish with the seasoning gave me a sambar that ended up being exquisite. Taste, flavour, consistency - everything! I lifted the steel pot out of the IP and poured half of its contents into a serving dish - another bold move where all of it could have missed the mark and poured over the counter. It took confidence, an unshakeable belief that to surrender to the process with focus was all I needed to do - the rest would be taken care of by faith in my abilities, experience and a higher intelligence which took over when my mind got out of the way. Lunch ended up being a success. And it was all because I had focused on being adaptive throughout the process, and had deliberately not stressed over the outcome!
1 comment:
Loved reading this! Keep it up girl..
Post a Comment