Happy New Year Everyone!
Hi All,
I know the look of Married to a Desi has been changing a lot over the last month. I've been trying out a bunch of templates. But the problem is I upload one and then don't have the time to add everything in, and make all those small modifications! Suffice to say, the site is 'Under Construction'.
So, for all of you who have left kind words for me regarding the site, that is the reason why...
I'll be back shortly with a post on a delicious Lasagna Dinner that Shankar made for our friends Lavanya and Karthik during their visit here this past weekend.
Also thanks to all of you who have submitted entries for the Weekend Breakfast Blogging, the omelettes look delicious. There is still some more time to submit an entry (deadline is Nov 1). So please do send them in!
Happy Cooking!
Kanchana
Nags is hosting her very first event called "Show me your Cookbook". As soon as I saw her post I knew I wanted to participate, but a good cookbook did not jump out at me right away. I rarely follow cookbook recipes, relying heavily on recipes from my Mom, Mother-in-law, and all the great Indian blogs I follow. Whenever I have a craving to cook something and need a recipe, I head straight to the internet and start searching.
My brother in law Gopi has a fairly good collection of cookbooks and is strict about following recipes. I have never had the discipline or interest in doing that, and tend to 'create' recipes by looking at what is in my pantry and merging a few recipes together to use up whatever is in the fridge.
When I got married I didn't really know how to cook, and my husband Shankar and my mother-law taught me how do the basics. But I did try a few recipes out of the classic South Indian recipebook trio, Samaithu Par - Cook and See. I bought these cookbooks long before marriage on a trip to India in the hopes that one day I would use them to master South Indian cooking.
The dishes I tried from here were OK, but to be very honest the results from cooking lessons with my family were far better. Some people swear by the author, Meenakshi Ammal (who is of the South Indian Patti variety).
Cook and See - any South Indian will tell you its a must for your collection of cookbooks. Nags, I don't think your virtual cookbook collection would be complete without this one!
It's been a busy weekend, but still full of cooking. When I get a few moments, I will be writing all about my latest idly fiasco. In the mean time, if you get a chance you can check out some of my writing on The Well Fed Network, under their 'Cook Smarter' Section.
The website is www.cooksmarter.net, and my first article is titled Down South...India.
I will be posting some of MarriedtoaDesi's content, and some newer content.
Happy Cooking Everyone!
Kanchana
Hello all,
Some new work going on with my website, most recently my own domain name! Welcome to "marriedtoadesi.com". Please bear with me as I will be updating this site and the links.
(www.kanchspot.blogspot.com will still forward to this site, but if you can please update your bookmarks!)
Also feel free to give me feedback on the name...so far both positive and negative, but hey I'm interested to hear what you all think! My main motivation was to choose something that was easy to remember, and interesting enough to invite someone to come visit while still telling something about the content of the site.
Thanks for coming to visit, and keep checking back to see the updates.
Cheers!
Kanchana
This morning I read an article in the New York Times entitled "He Cooks. She Stews. It’s Love." that rung very true to me. It's about the recent phenomenon of 'alpha cooks'. I'm always endlessly fascinated with human psychology and the different ways that the genders interact with each other. The article talks about women in the kitchen who have become intimidated to cook by their alpha cook husbands. It's an interesting topic given that traditionally (in a lot of cultures), the role of the cook has fallen to the woman of the house. Seems like now with the advent of people developing gourmet tastes and learning all kinds of culinary skills from FoodTV, even men are into cooking.
The cooking is usually done by the women in both my husband's family and mine but the interesting thing is despite their resemblance to certain male stereotypes all the men are incredible cooks. My father, my father-in-law, my husband, his brothers, and his uncles all cook very well, and of course demand good food to be served to them. I think they learned to cook from eating the amazing food our grandmothers would prepare, and they learned from seeing food preparation around them and hearing people talk about it. I think it ultimately comes down to their highly developed palates for Indian food. When one eligible suitor came to visit me for the first time, I cooked some dishes to 'impress' him and try to show of my Indian bride-to-be skills. I made chole, mattar paneer, and rasamalai. I think the chole and rasamalai turned out pretty well, and the mattar paneer - lets just say I was on a health kick and decided that baking the paneer would be a good idea. Little did I know you are supposed to soak that in water afterwards, or some such technique, so it doesn't get rubbery. I still haven't lived that down.
After getting married (yes, he still proposed to me after eating the baked paneer) I was so scared to enter the kitchen, because my husband has a reputation in his family for being an amazing cook. He IS a great cook, so is my brother in law, and my sister in law is too. Don't even ask about my mother in law and their aunts, or my mother and my aunts. This was too much for me, little Kanch from Canada who never grew up in India, who couldn't possibly be expected to make a decent sambar let alone a full South Indian meal. Yes my friends, against the cultural expectations of a new Indian bride my husband would make me rasam sadham and bring it to me in a bowl. What service! Those were the days (lowered expectations really pay off!).
So anyhow after all of these humiliations and failings at cooking (there were many more such baking paneer experiments gone awry) I found my secret weapon. A 3 week cooking boot camp from my mother-in-law. And now my husband cannot complain as the recipes are just the way his mother makes them, and boy has being unemployed allowed me to practice a lot! Now I can whip up sambar and rasam like the rest of them. Having an alpha cook husband has actually been a real asset to me. In the beginning I would take serious offense to any 'criticism' of my skills (yes, i would go off and have a little cry every now and then). Now that I have accepted my role as student I really try to learn a lot from those who have some skills. And having a husband who can tell me what can be improved in a dish is a plus in developing great recipes and technique. Especially when I have never even eaten some of these dishes before!
Check out the NY Times article if you can. I really feel that learning to cook has given me a lot of confidence, and it is a great life skill. One of the greatest in fact. The confidence is probably more from my husband regularly asking me to prepare meals for him and requesting items too. Here's to cooking a nice meal for your alpha mate on Valentines Day, Cheers!
ps. Yes my husband is cutting bread he made himself, from scratch.
