Men CAN Cook: The Proof Lay In My Dad's Pudding!

 A few weeks ago, on a Recipe group I follow on FaceBook, a mother had shared a picture of something her twelve year old son had baked. Everyone was praising the boy but one woman commented that how nice it was that a boy was cooking and baking too....This absolutely got my goat, though I didn't say anything on that forum. We live in the 21st century, for heaven's sake and are we STILL saying that it's good if boys cook too? There can be no worse way to unnecessarily distinguish on the basis of gender than by singling out boys for 'indulging' in activities traditionally 'meant' for girls.

In our house, my sister and I ( yes TWO girls born in the 70s, another slap on the face of patriarchy and so proud of my parents for delivering this stinging one, pun intended!) grew up watching my Dad cook. Some of my earliest memories of my Dad stem from watching him make Chinese food every evening, post attending his course, to supply it to a restaurant in Mhow, in Madhya Pradesh, where the Indian Army had sent us then . This, of course, was eons before everything Chinese became an anathema to the world. Our playroom adjoined the kitchen, so that my mother could keep an eye on us, while doing the more mundane chore of cooking three meals a day! But this also ensured that I, as a three year old, had the best viewing point whenever my Dad was gliding around in the kitchen. Ajino moto ( Monosodium Glutatmate or MSG ) became a part of my vocabulary long before I could spell it and much before its hazards were known to the world and it was subsequently banned from our kitchen by my Dad! 

My Dad absolutely loved food and as a young, newly commissioned officer of the Indian Army, was often found in the kitchen of the Officers' Mess. He began garnering a lot of knowledge from experienced army cooks and they, in turn, must have been delighted that a young, newly minted officer was showing so much interest in their profession. Once the Commanding Officer of each Regiment where he was posted every three years, discovered that the new officer had a passion for cooking and was an extremely talented chef, the 'Mess Officer' duties were heaped on his head! So by day he was the Communications Engineer, ensuring seamless communication between officers, soldiers, units and regiments and during parties or VIP lunches and dinners, he was to be found in the kitchen, adding his own unique, signature touch to each dish. No dish left the kitchen until he had been satisfied that its colour, aroma, taste and consistency were exactly as they should have been. The menu du soir ( of the evening) would be artistically calligraphed on stiff card paper and would be placed at the head of the buffet table, during every party. Once, a friend and I sauntered into the Army Mess dining room for a peek at the menu, at a party where kids had been permitted. The first thing the eleven year old me noticed under the main course was ' Peking Duck'. I asked one of the servers to summon my Dad from the kitchen and, eager to show off my knowledge of Geography, loftily informed him that the capital of China was no longer called Peking but Beijing and hence he had made an error! He was highly irritated at being disturbed while he had been neck deep in kitchen supervision and told me no matter what the city was now called, the dish remained 'Peking Duck'! You only have to look up Wikipedia today to see how deep my Dad's knowledge of cuisine was and how ahead of his times he had been...Thirty four years after this incident, which stands out in my mind like yesterday, it is still 'Peking Duck', with Peking being used as an adjective!

As his interest in cooking kept on increasing, he wanted to add more to his already formidable repertoire of recipes. And thus began our cook book collection! When most of India had not even heard of pastas and pizzas in the mid 80s, my sister and I were often found flipping through one of his favourite books on Italian cuisine, 'Mama D's Pasta And Pizza', after we had run out of everything else to read! But more than any book, he cooked by instinct alone most of time, which I believe, is the hall mark of great chefs. Very few 'store bought' ground spices cut ice with him and he often roasted and ground his own spices at home, frequently giving me packets to use in my own kitchen. I remember once, many years ago, I had hosted a dinner for thirty people in our house in Pune. An aunt refused to believe I had made the chick peas myself and kept saying they tasted as good as my Dad's chick peas did! I was highly amused and said that was because I had used his home made chick pea spice powder. She remained unconvinced and felt I had secretly roped in my Dad to make this simple yet highly popular dish! 

But even my dad was not always infallible in the kitchen. A few decades ago, when I was a school girl, he was making a few kilos of chick peas for a party we were hosting in our home town, for my mother's extended family of fifty plus people. He added sodium bicarbonate for the chick peas to cook faster and something went terribly wrong and the whole dish hissed and fizzled and turned completely sour. My dad calmly walked out into our garden and tossed the whole sorry mess under the small mango tree. It remained there for many days and I used to often go out and gaze at it sorrowfully for many weeks (until it finally merged with the soil), because throwing out food is practically unheard of in Indian households...I have never ever used sodium bicarb to speed up the cooking process, so deeply did this incident scar me. On another occasion, when my Dad was posted to Pune and we lived in a huge colonial bungalow, we had invited my then newly married maternal uncle and his wife for dinner. They were fond of fish and so my Dad had especially bought fresh fish for them. But by the time he finished cooking it, he realized all was not well with the fish and being almost as paranoid as I am about food poisoning, he chucked it into the garden again! This time, our beautiful March and Spider Lillies flower Bed was the recipient of this rotten offering. I thank God every single day for turning me completely vegetarian twenty five years ago, so I never have to worry about rotten meat products or fertilized eggs! Yes, you guessed right, it was none other than my Dad who found a half grown chicken in what we in India call 'vegetarian eggs', while making a Spanish omelette....Enough to put me off eggs for life!

The tea and coffee connoisseur that he was, he went the extra mile to buy coffee beans of his choice, roasted them in the Gas Tandoor (oven) at home and then ground and mixed them in the right proportions. On the days when he went through this whole process, trust me when I say our house smelled much better than the pretentious Star Bucks or its more humble Indian avtaar Cafe Coffe Day, both of which burst upon the Indian scene decades after my Dad's gourmet coffee had entered our home. He specially ordered the tea varieties he used, either online, or by requesting kind friends from Assam to send him some. Then he blended them and put them in a jar labelled with his own name, 'Ajay's Tea', and woe betide anyone who touched that jar! He himself was more than happy to make tea for family and friends as only he knew how to make the perfect cuppa from that combination! Today, exactly two years after he has gone, the jar, still neatly labelled, stands empty in my mother's kitchen. No one dares to touch it even today...

In the early 90s, when my Dad was home on leave, our housing society in our home town, hosted a cooking competition. All the neighbours, who knew what a great chef he was, encouraged him to participate. He made a fabulous vegetable biryani ( a spiced rice dish infused with vegetables and yoghurt, topped with browned onions and saffron) and no prizes for guessing who won the first prize! All the home makers who had participated were agog and eagerly wanted to learn some tricks and skills from him. Yes, because in the 90s, it was truly rare for men to cook at home and even rarer to win prizes for it. Whenever my Dad was in the kitchen, neighbours walking past our house would be tantalized by the aromas drifting out on the road and would often stop and call out from the gate, asking if they could pop in for a taste of whatever was cooking! My Dad, ever hospitable like my equally skilled in the kitchen paternal grandmother, would welcome everyone...

When he visited us in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in 2006, he cooked a fantastic repast for my daughter's 8th birthday. Everyone who attended that party still fondly remembers the food he had cooked that day. His expertise did not extend to just cooking but also to laying the table in such a way that the food was showcased in the best possible manner . And to top it all, he was great at food photography as well so we have superb photos to remember those bygone days. 

Every single item here was lovingly prepared and clicked by my Dad for his grand daughter's 8th birthday party. 

He was very particular about the table being set perfectly and the crockery had to match and be complemented by the cutlery and the glasses too. He deliberately chose a common design for a dinner set he bought in the 80s, saying that if anything broke during our frequent transfers, it would be easier to replace! We use it in my parents' house on special occasions to this day! 

                                                   This dinner set is thirty five years old! You can also see my parents' collection of glasses and tea sets in the background. Every aspect of cooking and serving the meals truly interested him and food photography, long before Instagram came on the scene, was one of his specialities too. 

From one of the many dinners my parents' hosted before my Dad became ill. Every item was personally cooked by him and both my Mom and their skilled cook were always relegated to sous chef duties!

When my parents visited us in Nairobi in 2012 - 2013, I encouraged my Dad to host a cooking class in my children's school kitchen, organized by the school's Parent Teacher Fellowship, of which I was ( and am!) an active member. All the proceeds would be donated to our PTF fund, to be used for various good causes, throughout the school year. My Dad agreed very readily and we had a huge group of ladies eagerly signing up to learn to cook a few items which are a staple part of Indian cuisine. The venture was a massive success and we generated a lot of funds for the school that day, all thanks to my Dad's skills. We also hosted a dinner party for friends in Nairobi ( yes, seems like a dream in these times, inviting friends over and actually sitting next to each other without masks!) and one of the items my Dad made was rice and corn croquettes. I still vividly remember his fingers, which had been adept at pressing a gun trigger all through his army life, now gently moulding cooked rice and corn together into lozenge shapes, imbued with finely ground coriander and chillies, before deep frying them...needless to say this appetizer was a huge hit later that evening. I then encouraged him to submit the recipe to an international Cook Book the school PTF was publishing and so it was that a recipe of my Dad's appeared in print in Kenya! 

                                                                  That's the recipe book! 

                                        And here is the recipe if anyone would like to try it....

On of my fondest memories is from March 1989, during the Indian festival of Holi, in Gauhati, Assam. My parents never participated and locked themselves in the house along with us, but that particular year my Dad allowed us to go and play with colours with our army and air force gang of kids, probably after we had begged long and hard. When we got home, after a long day of smearing colours on each other and soaking everyone with coloured water, we saw the most perfect, pale yellow, lemon souffle waiting for us on the dining table. My dad urged my sister and me to take quick showers and then come and try the treat. We needed no further bidding and soon we were back, freshly tubbed and scrubbed. The first mouthful of that sweet, light, frothy, lemony goodness was enough to induce food ecstacy and had me craving for more...Such was my Dad's expertise in recreating even this very colonial dessert. For him, cooking was all in a day's work and the proof did, indeed, lie in his pudding. 

And yes, the title for this post was inspired by a cooking show my Dad loved to watch in the 90s. It was called 'Yan Can Cook'! So apologies, Yan! I replaced you with Men! 

 

My Dad, as a newly commissioned officer, that's when he first began taking a keen interest in cooking!