Young adulthood entails a lot of things for girls – hormones, hot guys, female rivalries, sweet infatuations, regular rebellion, pimpled foreheads, fun and frivolity. But if you’re a Muslim girl, you’ve got one additional thing to master, aside from how to lie convincingly about why you got home past curfew on Friday night: culinary school.
Run from every dutiful mother’s kitchen, it’s a part time course that starts with how to slice an onion properly (very thinly, without stabbing your thumb through your tears). Then it proceeds to the easy stuff: baked beans, khuri kitchrie, pasta, fresh fruit juices, custard and jelly. Mum instructs, you obey, furiously writing in your first little recipe book while trying not to burn the rice. (That constitutes an immediate fail).
You receive your credits for this first course once your mum decides she can trust you in the kitchen with a can of Koo, and still come back to an intact house with no sign of burnt AMC pots.
Then you’re eligible for the serious food course: chicken curry, kebab chutney, battered chops, home made KFC, grilled steak, and every other carnivorous delight. If you’re like me, you start off by pulling your nose and squealing “ewwwww!” with every chop and drumstick you have to bludgeon, but you persevere. (You also finish a quarter of a bottle of liquid soap after every poultry-hacking session, feeling like Macbeth did when he cried: “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?”)
This course is tough to master because it’s not simply about cooking the damn dish. It has to meet your family’s prerequisites for perfection: the salt must be just right, there mustn’t be too much of oil, don’t over-cook the chicken, add more pepper to the steak next time, remember to garnish nicely. You keep all this in mind for the next time, and the next time, and the next time, until you attain the perfect recipe that meets your satisfaction. (It then becomes known as “your” chicken curry, not mummy’s).
If you’ve lasted this far without losing any fingers or blowing up the kitchen, it’s time for the final course, the mother of all credentials, the definitive skill that distinguishes chicks who can say “I can cook” from those who can say “I can cook anything.”
I’m talking about akhni, briyani, dhall and rice, and all those other special dishes that are reserved for Friday lunches and Eid day. Grandmothers reckon that if you can cook these dishes, you’ll make a splendid wife and you’ll have “no problems” with your husband. (Assuming of course, that men marry on the sole criteria of a perfect plate of fish briyani.)
Since I cook because I love to and not out of any fear of “problems” with my hubby, I’ve happily marked today as my graduation from culinary school.
It took 2.5 hours and two sinks of dishes, but the end result was a delicious pot of chicken akhni, served with vermicelli, papad, and dhai.
The epic Friday lunch, my biggest solo production for the palette to date. My grandmother would be so proud.
