Culinary Disasters!!

Experiences of a first time cook in the kitchen.

Culinary disasters!!
‘The way to a man’s heart is through the stomach’ they say, true, but I would like to add the way to a woman , child or anybody’s heart will follow the same route… Indeed a satiating meal, followed by a scrumptious dessert will make anybody happy.

So, as a new bride, setting up a kitchen and whisking up a palatable meal, posed as huge challenge to the then 23 year old me. I was always my Mother’s helping hand in the kitchen, yet I was never truly interested in the goings on. Only when the responsibility of setting up home and hearth descended upon me, did I realize the missed opportunities. Many will identify with the beginning of my culinary journey that I will share with you now.

 (There are exceptions to the likes of me though-people like my mother and brother have an inherent talent for conjuring up delicious fare from
the simplest of ingredients.)
Neo-matrimony is, well….spicy and tasting (testing, pun intended)time for patience and taste buds alike.
 Married five months, we purchased our OTG and I was more than
eager to try out or rather repeat all the baking I had assisted my mother with. Hubby dear was gone for a month in another town with some official business. His colleague and  a dear friend of ours, was to join him for work there. What better opportunity than this, I thought, to send some homemade cake for hubby.

I set to work with the most basic, tried and tested cake I used to bake. Feeling rather proud about putting the food processor to use as against the manually operated egg-beater in my mother’s kitchen. 'It’ll all be done in a jiffy', I thought pleased as I was placing the cake dough in the OTG. When the set-alarm rang I was expecting a golden brown fluffy cake to be ready. But alas!it was but a spectacle of ruins in my OTG!!

Just then the  door bell rang  too! I opened the door to find hubby’s friend,who had come to pick up the goodies. Now, our residence being a 1BHK, the OTG was in the living room and to my horror the transparent door of the OTG, displayed an inflated grotesquely cracked pancake!!
Our friend walked up straight to this horror and remarked.” Not bad for a first try…this is the first time I’ve seen a moon-crust cake!!” So saying he proceeded to cut a slice from the piping hot disaster, like a cordon bleu proclaimed, ”hmm… ok, look, why don’t make something else for him, my departure has been postponed, I’ll be flying out tomorrow. I’ll come again in the evening”. Yet he polished off some more of the thing and left. His comments only added insult to injury… I was devastated, how could my tried and tested recipe not have worked out?!!
I gathered my wits and started afresh, chiding myself at having wasted so much of sugar and flour… this time I around I wasn't the complacent ‘I bake flawlessly’ proud. Paying attention to detail, I baked a heart shaped cake and it came out perfect… I felt relief. I had baked a perfect cake in my own Kitchen, without anybody else’s assistance WOW!

 But my joy was short lived… our friend-the courier, spread the news about the 'MOON crust' cake that I had baked to other colleagues, and Lo! all of them with their spouse in tow, started trickling into our flat to taste the disaster or ‘new-kinda moon cake’ as they were all calling it! I wanted to wring this courier-friend’s neck at that point of time!!!

Now, I couldn’t have laid out that disaster to be sampled by the crowd. Very hesitatingly and sadly I brought the heart shaped cake. It was welcomed with “OOhs-AAhs” accompanied by jibes about being in the ‘extended honeymoon period'. I felt like my heart was being sliced out as each person cut a piece out of that heart shaped cake! Stop being melodramatic I told myself… They all must have guessed my state of mind and did not eat any more than half of the cake. I packed the rest and handed it over to the friend. Thankfully the friend did not go around hunting for the original ‘moon-crust’ disaster,my secret was safe.He then quipped,"hey what incentive do I have ? I’m only a courier? I’ll eat a bit of it too en route".
I wasn't one to be bothered by this statement, given that the cake no longer retained its romantic shape. But I realized that my anger for the friend had dissipated too. 
Even Though I was busy at office myself, evenings were lonely and with hubby away for a month all these people brought in cheer laughter and gossip too Their teasing and ragging felt good, a sense of belonging to a fraternity.

 It has been 15 years since that episode and I now bake and ice colourful theme cakes on demand from my kids and others and when people praise them, I remember my first baking disaster and
feel blessed. Thank God for perseverance and patience and encouragement  from friends and family, I could achieve what I had only dreamt of.