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.

I used to be the Kitchen Klutz

Sometime last year, some of us friends got together and started an online magazine called S*P*A*M (Society for the Prevention of Absurdity and Madness). We had a very short run because everyone realised that they couldn't spend too much time over something that didn't pay anything except maybe compliments. But while it lasted it was fun.

I was the Kitchen Klutz and I wrote this monthly column about my Misadventures in the kitchen. Each episode saw my alter ego the Kitchen Klutz mess up her kitchen and her food in adventurous ways while her husband looked on indulgently or rather, exasperatedly. I had a whole lot of fun writing that because for once a month I could be this complete idiot who didn't have to be apologetic about her lack of interest in culinary skills.

KK (as I called her in my head) managed to get even the simplest dish wrong. And she was completely fictitious. Oh well, most of the time. Dug up one of her Diwali adventures for a laugh. There was one about tomato soup and it wasn't all fiction. I'd better not put that up here if I want people to continue thinking that this is a food blog!

Having the extended family at my house during festivals is not my idea of fun. I’m not the best hostess to even the most well behaved houseguests but mine are slightly on the rowdy side, as it includes a pair of twin terrors, aged ten years old. Their mother however, whom I still don’t know how we’re related to, is a sweetheart because she happily pushes me out of the kitchen to cook and serve those endless meals. Really. She’s not a hologram or anything. I’ve checked a couple of times much to our combined embarrassment.

Another woman who is more adept in the kitchen would have felt her armour pop up when someone else invades her space but thankfully I’m not like that. I do not have these silly ego hassles about ‘my kitchen, my kingdom’ etc. Although her boys were wrecking my house, using crayons to draw awful murals on the bedroom walls, bringing in mud, sand, insects and amphibians to my bathroom, I was glad that I did not have to slave in the kitchen for them.

On second thoughts, I should have prepared one meal at least. They would have packed their bags and run away but my husband had called me aside before they came, giving me ample warning not to cook anything. Still, it felt odd for me to be lounging in the living room watching TV with the other guests, until it was time for lunch or dinner. But NR doesn’t seem to mind it at all. I’ve nicknamed her NR for Nirupa Roy, the quintessential mother of Bollywood films of the seventies. No prizes for guessing why.

But even NR felt the pressure when Diwali approached as my mother in law suggested that we have a dinner party at my house for everyone. She also vetoed my idea that we get caterers. In fact it was NR who vehemently opposed the caterers. See, I told you, she thrives on being praised and I saw her eyes go all sparkly when my mother in law looked at her, stroked her hair, and looked at me.

On Saturday evening though, I felt smugly satisfied when I saw her chasing her kids out of the kitchen. She looked a mess, with strands of her hair flailing around her face, a look of terror in her eyes and a blotchy apron that she had put on over her sari. I stopped smiling when I realised that I looked exactly like this when I ventured inside to make chapathis or rotis and not a four course dinner like she was preparing.

Uneasily I ventured inside. I couldn’t recognize my kitchen because of all the different aromas that pierced the air.

‘Can I help?’ I asked.

‘I have everything under control’ she said, trying to be at five different places at the same time.

‘Let me help you in something at least’ I offered magnanimously. Surely there was something I could do without messing up.

She looked around swiftly trying to assess which was the easiest task. Apparently news of my talents had spread everywhere.

‘Um, why don’t you remove the pulao on the serving plate? Garnish it with those eggs please? Then after we’ve had the starters, we can pop this in the microwave for a minute and serve it hot?’

It sounded easy and doable to even a klutz like me. I painstakingly shelled the boiled eggs and artfully arranged them on top of the pulao which I had removed on a pretty patterned serving plate.

‘Anything else?’ I asked, whipping around just in time to see those two brats setting off a firecracker inside the house.

When the screams and loud popping subsided, we went back into the kitchen and I wished I’d done more to help but she’d apparently taken care of everything.

Dinner started off on a quiet note although the smell of gun powder was still hanging in the air like a heavy curtain. When everyone had finished the chicken tikkas and paneer pakodas, it was time for the pulao. NR followed me into the kitchen to get the side dish for the pulao while I popped the pulao inside the oven. Just as I set the timer for two minutes, I wondered that the eggs were not in the same position as I’d arranged them before.

‘Did you rearrange the eggs?’ I asked NR who was ladling chicken curry in a bowl.

‘No’ she replied absently.

‘Then...’

We both looked up in horror and turned to the microwave. Her boys had replaced the boiled eggs with fresh ones!

‘Run!’

‘Duck!’

We both screamed as the microwave exploded.

*******************

They say Diwali is one of the most expensive festivals in India. Ask my husband. He knows how much it cost to get the bits of egg spatter, egg shells and pulao rain cleaned from my kitchen ceiling, floor and every possible place. Not to mention the twisted and broken microwave that he’s had to replace. And get the kitchen repainted.

The best outcome of this is that NR and her two boys have gone back. Mother in law purses her lips tightly whenever someone mentions NR’s culinary skills and my husband runs in the opposite direction when he’s confronted with egg pulao.

My kitchen, my kingdom, my microwave have been restored to me and we do what we do best. Reheat packaged meals.