Cooking with Love
A Personal Essay
The primary ingredient of any recipe should be love.
Breathe a small prayer before you actually begin cooking something elaborate, difficult, rare or painstaking. Say, ‘God, please guide my fingers and heart while I make this, because I love the person I am making it for, very much.’
Superstition?
No.
I find that all prayers, to whichever God we believe in, teach us humility and gratitude. These cleanse the mind, causing it to pause, and be more careful while cooking. So, I am more attentive while cutting the onions just so, and each the same size as the other. I know that when I crush the garlic and the green chillies together, the fragrance should permeate the room, but they should not be beaten up so mercilessly that they die of shock. I know that before I put in the curry leaves, I need to gently, gently, gently press them within five fingers, so that they just exude aroma, but not break the skin of a single leaf.
I know that beating up cake batter by hand, for that precious Madeira Cake everyone loves, should be done when no one is around to distract you with empty talk and impotent emotions. My ideal time for this is 4 am. I know hat after you beat up the butter, the sugar and the eggs, you need to know when the butter is close to flying when you blow at it, that the alien looking eggs, blend and merge with the grainy sugar, and that when you add in the flour/cocoa/chocolate powder/lemon rind/rum-soaked dry fruits, for whatever miracle you are creating, all of them should run into each other, drunk with their own poetry.
I know the feeling of sheer exhilaration when the cake rises or the meat is cooked to perfection. And the coconut milk, the gently, gently, gently mashed potatoes, the crushed ginger and green chillies and the curry leaves, and virgin coconut oil combine together to make the most ethereal potato ‘ishtu’ you have ever had.
I know how eyes widen, the nose twitches, the fingers itch and the tongue salivates when brought face to face with a platter of food, that has love as its base.
Humility fuelled by prayer and gratitude helps.
Always.
Old fashioned?
Perhaps.
But I would hate to live in a world where love becomes old fashioned enough to be discarded.
©️ 2022 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.
I am tagging one of DMTakeshi’s superlative pieces of poetry about her love for dance, and what dance does for her mood and her mind, and her movement:
