Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Random thought in the middle of the night: Digest 4 - Weigh your words

Aren't Gubernatorial and Ombudsman very FAT words? No, I dont mean long but fat. Every time I hear these two,they sound positively corpulent.

Wonder why.

Are there any others? Or skinny words for that matter?

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

White Noise from the Cynic Kitchen or Aubergine and Tangerine

A few times a year, usually when the MIL is out of town, I seem to be taken over by this Mad (Cooking) Scientist.

Maybe my palate revolts against the Maharashtrian food ( And cabbage. I dont know why,the but there seems to be a cabbage sitting in my fridge every fricking day. I don't like cabbage. The hero doesn't like cabbage. I don't even remember buying so much of it. But somehow, there it is smugly sitting in the fridge gloating at me every morning. Hmm). Or maybe there is a domestic goddess (Perspherone?) who comes out only seasonally. So the last few days, we have been eating very interesting food.

I have realized that my cooking is what can charitably be described as whimsical (Others might call it chaotic). I usually start with the most minuscule but exotic sounding ingredient and then chuck in whatever I happen to find in the fridge to accompany it. The current flavor of the season ( pun unintended) is Cayenne Pepper. How can one not like the sound of that? So have been adding it liberally to whatever gets cooked in the house. And giving the resultant output vaguely West Indianish names. Calypso Paneer, Jamaican Curry, Kingston Prawn...ahem, no, got carried away with the last one. Half the fun of cooking new things is naming them.

I go to this rather interesting shop in the area which has all these fascinating sauces - nam pla, tamari sauce ( I used to think that was a hip version of tamarind) to just gawk at them. (No I don't buy them. This fellow only stocks these huge half-litre vats and they are bloody expensive.) Also I don't have a clue about what to do with them.

That's the conflict which I have with Aubergine as well. Any vegetable as blah as brinjal should not be allowed to have such an interesting alter ego. I see Aubergine recipes, and I get sorely tempted to try it too. But then I go to the greengrocers and what do i see? Brinjal. Its very demoralizing. Hmpf. I think Ill just write a song called Aubergine and Tangerine (Sounds like Ebony and Ivory no?)

And, just for the record, and before young manu asks, there have been no disasters so far.Hmpf.