Lessons in Cooking
with a recipe for Aloo Gobi
Preamble
I want to thank my daughter, Nandini, for setting me up on Medium. I don’t think I would have done it without her help. She is my muse. She is also my editor. She corrects my errors and gives me advice.
(Editor’s Note: I am helping with grammar and formatting, but otherwise making minimal edits so you can hear my mom’s voice as I know and love it. The only inauthentic part is that she’s using my formal name instead of my family nickname, in deference to my childhood sense of embarrassment!)
Lessons in cooking
My mother was married off to my father at the age of 16 and had her first child (me) at 18. Later, at age 20 and 23, she went on to have two more children, my brothers Pappu and Baba. I cannot say that my parents treated me badly. Given the prevalent practice in 1950s India, some might say I had an exceptional childhood and youth. After all, I became a woman engineer, a member of a very exclusive club. I think there were less than 100 women engineers out of a population of half a billion in 1970s India.
My mother, being so young, raised us according to her whims, and sometimes, according to what she thought was the norm in her society. Things are much better now. Forty years or so ago, society was much different in northern India. In middle-class families, a female child was a bane. She had to be protected, to keep her safe. She had to be controlled, so that she did not do anything to dishonor the family. She had to be taught all domestic skills, so that when she was married off, her husband and her future in-laws would not have any complaints. Her spirit had be broken, so that she obeyed her husband and her in-laws.
That was the excuse that my mother made, later in life, when we were two old women. I would confront her for not treating me on par with my brothers. “I did not want to get any complaints from your future family,” was her common retort.
My mother did start my domestic training very young. I was her personal attendant. “Go put the laundry away.” “Go wash the dishes.” “Go make the beds. “Sweep the floor” — the orders would fly during the day. (Once I was put in a very embarrassing position. I had gone home during a college break. My mother’s maid had not shown up so she asked me to clean the house. Someone knocked. When I opened the door with a mop in my hand, my mother’s friend thought I was the maid.)
Actually I did not mind doing the chores at all. What I minded was that my brothers were treated like princes. They never ever had to lift a finger. I wanted equal treatment.
When my youngest brother was born, I was his nanny. I loved being his minder. He was my own living doll. I played with him; I dressed him in my dresses. When my parents were out, I would put my mother’s makeup on him. I just adored him. I carried him on my hip around the neighborhood, walking with a lean to one side, to balance him. He was a big baby and I was a skinny little girl. My brother and I stayed close for years. I was his little mother. I still have motherly instincts for him.
When I was around 5, my mother started me with kitchen chores. We did not get pasteurized milk. She would put the milk to boil on the stove and ask me to watch it and shut off the stove when it came to a boil. Once, she had forgotten that she had given me this assignment, and called from another room to do something with baby — maybe quieten him because he was crying. I left the kitchen to mind the baby. Meanwhile the milk boiled over.
Of course she was not pleased. The only reason I remember the incident was my feeling of injustice and the unfairness of it all. I was just obeying her orders.
Next came the chopping of onions and garlic. I took this very seriously. I loved art. I artfully cut onions into pretty pieces. Same with the garlic. When I was done, I proudly showed off my artwork to my mother. Instead of admiration, I got a scolding! I had chopped them to different sizes, but they needed to be of the same size, so that they could cook evenly. I still hold this lesson dear to my heart to this day.
I graduated to making rotis at 10 or 11. These are little flat breads that all North Indians eat with their meals. The first ones I made were dry and burnt. It took me months to get them right. Making them gave me good practice with kneading dough and using the rolling pins. To this day my touch with the rolling pin is light as air. I can roll out the flakiest and tenderest of pie crusts.
I started to make complete meals around age 16. This time it was because of my own free will, rather than orders from mother. I was to live with my paternal grandfather and my brothers when my parents moved to Nepal (on another diplomatic posting). I was to go to college for ‘pre-university.’
My parents thought we children might go wild in boarding schools. It would be better if my father paid for a small apartment and its upkeep. My grandfather had retired from his job. He would be our guardian.
My mother was a pretty good cook; my grandfather, a lousy one. He added bitter herbs, roots and who knows what to his veggies and his dals. His rotis were big and fat. I had watched my mother enough to know basic cooking. For more exotic dishes, I would get recipes from my neighbors.
Pretty soon I was cooking delicious meals every day before school.
My last main lesson came after I got married. I did want to impress my husband with my cooking skills. We were from different states. One of my friends who is a good cook is also from my husband’s state, Uttar Pradesh. She taught me the subtleties of cooking using different spices.
Punjabi food is tasty. But most of our dishes have the same base (onion, garlic, and ginger). In UP cooking, on the other hand, different spices are used in different recipes, making food more varied and nuanced. And of course, my bible was Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian cookbook.
I love food, as one can tell from my shape. Over years, I taught myself western cooking, baking, and the art of making Indian sweets.
Once my children came, I wanted them to experience some cultural rituals. We celebrated two festivals every year with cooking.
For Christmas, we baked a dozen different types of cookies, cakes, and confectionaries.
For Diwali, to keep some of our heritage alive, I made Indian sweets. I would make one dish every night for a week once the kids were in bed. Once Nandini wrote an essay which has a line I will remember for ever. I don’t remember the exact words, but its message was something like the following:
“Nothing makes me feel so warm, so cozy, so soothed, as when I go to bed at night with the air full of aromas of Indian cooking emanating from the kitchen as my mother cooks for Diwali.” Of course she said it much better.
Birthdays were big events. I would sew a beautiful dress for my daughter (my son did not care for the clothes) and bake a beautiful cake.
These are all memories now. I occasionally make a beautiful dress for my granddaughter.
One thing I always felt I lacked was appreciation from my mother.
My mother never once complimented me on my cooking or anything I did. Yet I knew she was proud of me. I would occasionally catch snippets of conversations between her and her friends. As a community elder, she would exhort her younger relatives to use me as a role model. What better compliment can there be?
I wish I would do a better job of appreciating the talents of my two children. I know at times I don’t express myself. Maybe it is in my genes. I hope one day, I will overcome.
Recipe for Aloo Gobi (Indian cauliflower and potatoes)
I chose this recipe to go with this story because whenever I cook it, I remember my mother. I chop the garlic and ginger to same-sized bits.
Ingredients (serves 8–10 as a side dish)
One medium or slightly smaller cauliflower
Two medium potatoes
4–5 cloves of garlic
one ½- to ¾-inch piece of ginger
1–2 hot green peppers according to taste (start with one pepper and add more after tasting for heat once the cauliflower is cooked)
1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice
1 ½ teaspoon of salt (again, add or subtract according to your taste)
½ teaspoon ground turmeric
2 tablespoons canola oil
a handful of cilantro (coriander leaves) for garnish (omit if you don’t like cilantro)
Instructions
- Chop garlic, ginger and hot peppers in a chopper or mince them by hand into small pieces.
2. Peel and cut the potatoes into ½-inch pieces.
3. Cut the cauliflower into florets about one half-inch to three-quarters of an inch in size. Use the very young leaves too. I also use the stalk. If it is thick and tough, I peel off the outer later and chop up the tender part inside.
4. Wash and drain the potatoes and cauliflower separately.
5. In a 12-inch pan, heat the oil on medium heat. Do the following to check when the oil is the right temperature. Watch the bottom of the pan through the oil. There is no pattern when the oil is cold. As it heats up, the convection current makes a zigzag wavy pattern. When it gets hot enough for cooking, the pattern disappears. When the pattern first disappears, it is at the correct temperature. If you wait a couple of minutes longer, the oil is too hot. If you wait longer, the oil will smoke and will burn.
6. Add the mixture of ginger, garlic, and peppers. Cook for 20–60 seconds, until the mix is slightly brown.
7. Add the salt, turmeric and potatoes. Stir every minute or so. The potatoes will get covered evenly in oil. Lower the heat by a notch and cook for about another 5-6 minutes.
8. Add the cauliflower. Stir every minute or so. Cook for 5 minutes. Turn the heat down to low and cover the pan.
9. Stir after 10 minutes or so. Cook until the potatoes can be squashed with the back of the stirring spoon, and the cauliflower is still slightly crisp. (If you overcook, the florets will start disintegrating and the dish will become mush.)
10. Add additional salt and/or pepper to taste.
11. Add lemon juice and the chopped and washed cilantro. Stir. Serve hot.
(Editor here again: I am so happy that my mom is sharing her stories and recipes with the world. Please leave her comments and recipe requests below to encourage her in this new hobby, which I hope will be easier on her joints than her endless gardening!)
Kulwant Pandey is a retired computer hardware engineer who enjoys gardening, knitting, sewing, quilt making, cooking, and reading. She lives outside Poughkeepsie, NY and is the mother of Nandini and Vidhu. Check out her first post here with a recipe for halva.
