Gastronomical Sojourn – The Learning Continues

I realize this is the first post of the New Year and it must be on a topic that is of interest to the world, one that world desperately needs in order to set itself in order. And for that very reason I would continue to discuss about my adventures with food; if only more of the warrior types became foodies, the world would rid itself of resource sapping wars. So here I start the brand new year with tales on my favourite topic – food.

Before I get on with my tedious tale, I think I ought to answer an unasked question in many of your minds – why the hell is this guy (i.e., me) boring us with his tale? The answer – well, if I don’t talk about myself, who will? I realize that I am no Gandhi, Nehru, Saddam or even the Empress of Blandings (pig though it may be, people, in particular one Mr. Wodehouse, wrote reams of literature about it) for eulogies to be written and odes to be sung. And I am talking about these because they formed some of my most embarrassing moments then but are now fond memories (I seem to have already reached the age of recounting memories instead of making them).

The responsibilities in the mess management during the UG days involved much more than setting a menu or baking a periodic cake, the responsibilities included ordering the required provisions from the vendors and also monitoring the items in and out of the mess stores – in one word, making the mess messier. It was the fag end of my 2^nd UG; exams were on, time scarce and study load huge. There was a practice at that time in the hostel (it must be there even now, I guess) of having dinners feasts in the week of exams – I think it was a way to reward the hardworking amongst us, only those few who had their noses to the books throughout the year would feel confident enough to enjoy the good meal.

Anyway, it was one such sundown and the menu for the night included batura (a deep fried preparation with maida). The cook approached requesting for 20 kg of maida and I hastened to the mess stores. I am not big on the regular study thing and I had loads of stuff that I hadn’t seen before; and chemistry being what it is, I never found the difference between what I read and what I didn’t, both seemed equally new. So I enter the store, hand the guy two 10 kg packs of maida and hasten back to the hated chemistry books. An hour later, a puzzled cook beckons me to the kitchen with trepidation. He silently hands me a piece of “batura”. First thing that hits me is that it feels more like a papad, and once I put it into my mouth – oh horror, its sweet as the sweetest cake.  Panicky, we head into the store and there we find a 10kg pack of maida standing gloriously in the centre of the room; I had mistaken a pack of icing sugar for maida and it was the icing sugar – 10 kg of it – that went into the preparation. Not that I am making excuses but how, in the name of all that’s edible, can one distinguish between icing sugar and maida.

Very briefly, we decided that sweet chapathis would be better than sweet baturas (atleast oil would be saved) and the nights’ menu underwent a slight modification. Suffice it to say that I was lucky we had exams looming and a long break after that, an hour of sour ear and sore hind side cannot but be called a lenient kindness from my friends.

Time went by and I learnt more lessons from burnt hands than sane councils, yet I avoided the “psyching up 300 guys” kind of lessons. It was not until the November of my 3^rd UG that the next major goof up came to be. November is the time when we, as students of Bhagwan, make and present a birthday cake to Him. Now, the birthday cake is a huge thing, both metaphorically and in reality, with the cake weighing close to a 100 kg and having a variety of aesthetic structures supporting it. The preparation goes on for close to 4 days with a set of 3-4 guys constantly hovering over the various aspects of the cake, the cake almost being a source of pride and symbolic of the passing out batch’s offering to their Master. It was time to bake “THAT CAKE” and three of us were in the bakery measuring out portions of stuff that goes into making of the cake. By this time, we had come a long way from the “stubborn cake that didn’t rise” and considered ourselves proficient in the art of baking.

After everything required was procured, measured and made ready, the process of putting together stuff in the right order started. Oil is one of the last things that enters the mix and it is a sort of balancing item, something that must be put to get the right consistency. Only God, in His omniscience, can know what went in my mind, but I lifted the can (from which oil had been previously measured out and set aside) and poured the entire content of the can in the mix. Now, you may well be aware that a standard oil can comes with 20 litres of oil and the cake required around 5 litres of oil; I had, in my excitement put in 15 litres (three times the required quantity) of oil in the mix. Not that I realized my mistake immediately, no sir, I was way too confident for that. We let the mix go round and round for about 45 minutes. After such a long spell of mixing, we were flummoxed to see oil still floating on top of the mix. Something was definitely wrong, we knew, but we weren’t able to pin point it even after much scratching of heads. The time was close to 1 AM and having no other option, we went and woke up one of our school professors, the same person who taught us to bake in our school days. Bleary eyed, he approached the mix and without batting an eyelid asked us “Do you realize how much oil you put?” Realization dawned and my friends couldn’t but help giving looks that could have frozen fire. The next hour saw the four of us, the teacher included, using ladles to extract oil from the mix. 10 litres of oil were put in a bowl and put aside, oil that acquired a sweet vanila flavour because of the thorough mixing done.

If, as they say, all is well that ends well, then the episode ended well too with a very tasty and visually appealing cake being presented to Swami on the 23^rd. A minor but mention worthy aside - the school kids had “sweet” puri the next day for breakfast, the cook inadvertently making puris using the oil that was put aside the previous day.

(The final part in the series with an indication of my current cooking acumen would come up shortly)