One more from Kitchen Klutz

God how I loved KK. She made it sound like fun although when something really bad is happening in the kitchen you get this horrible burning feeling at the bottom of your stomach. And then you realise that the burning is not just your usual attack of acidity but is happening on the stove as well.

This one actually happened. And my sister in law helped me flush it down the toilet. The tomato soup I mean.

I always thought I was a reasonably good cook. And then I got married.

Only after said event did I realize that making toast without burning it and boiling water for a tea bag didn’t count as cooking.  In fact, my husband did that better than me.

Back in those good old days when I was newly married and could get away with just about any crime in the kitchen with the simple words ‘I don’t know’, life was good. We usually had takeaway dinner and lunch from the neighbourhood restaurant and no one really minded that the little eatery had got a fancy canopy and had expanded tremendously since we moved to the locality.

Then one day, the inevitable happened. My mother in law came to visit us. Which was totally fine, except that I felt slightly weird ordering food from the restaurant when she was there. She knew I didn’t cook. But I think she thought that the moment I got married, some dormant gene in me must have got activated and I was now churning out all sorts of yummy dishes for her laadla beta.

Before I could tell her that the only work I did in the kitchen was hunt for take away restaurant menus, she put me on the spot by asking me if I could make tomato soup.

Where was a Knorr packet when you needed one? To make things worse, she added ‘I’m sure you can make tomato soup, dear. It’s the easiest thing there is.’

I kept my mouth shut. It was easy. She said so herself. Maybe I could wing it. She was visiting us for just a few hours anyway, and all she’d asked for was tomato soup. Well, no harm done.

I opened the fridge, took out a couple of tomatoes which we kept for salads or face packs and washed them in the tap water. From outside, I could hear the sound of the TV.  I tossed the tomatoes in a pot of water and put it to boil. Sometime later, I saw that the peel was floating on top and the water had started looking distinctly red.

Pleased with myself, I switched off the gas and strained the water into a soup bowl. But something seemed wrong here. I peered into the pot and saw that the tomato was all mushy. Maybe we had to put some of that mush in the bowl. Using a spoon, I ladled some of the bits and pieces into the soup bowl.

This still didn’t look like the soup we ordered in restaurants, so there was something missing. Salt? Pepper? Yes. I liberally sprinkled both into the bowl and watched. Would it transform itself into something thick, like soup?

Furtively, I called Sunita to ask her if she knew how to make tomato soup. Sunita was my younger sister by the way. She was out shopping and the sound of the traffic interrupted what she was saying. I could only hear the words cornflour and eggs.

I ended the call and thought for a moment. We didn’t have cornflour, whatever that was. But there were a few eggs in the fridge. I dumped the contents of the bowl back into the pot and switched on the gas. Then I broke an egg into a bowl and then dropped it into the boiling tomato soup. Was this the way they made egg drop soup? Yeah, I probably was an instinctive cook, I thought. I only needed to be let loose in the kitchen and things would rearrange themselves magically and emerge perfectly. I only needed my mother in law to make me aware of that fact. I thought of her a little fondly as she watched some soap on TV outside.

A moment later I turned back to the pot and saw that the horribly curdled mess in the pot didn’t resemble tomato soup from any quarter. Maybe it would settle down once I put it in the bowl. I watched with horror and fascination as huge lumps of egg fell into the bowl, along with tomato water.

This was no tomato soup.

‘Are you done yet dear?’ she called out from the living room. ‘Can you make croutons to go with it?’

Croutons? She asks for croutons? I found myself giggling nervously like a maniac as I wondered how I could salvage the situation. I could probably tell her that the soup was disastrous, but she’d want to look at it. And then she might relate it to everyone about how I cannot make even an easy tomato soup.

Simple solution. I’ll tell her that I was ladling it into a bowl and my hand slipped and everything fell inside the sink. Yes. Unceremoniously I dumped the contents of the pot into the sink and watched bits of egg float and then block the sink. So now my sink was all clogged with steamy red stuff and boiled egg pieces. And I had a mother in law outside waiting for croutons to go with it. There were two messes in this kitchen. One was the sink and the other was me. Any ideas on how I could get out of it?

 

Poor KK didn't have an enterprising sister in law like I did.