First day First show!

Hello Dear readers! Today, I too, am joining the bandwagon of food bloggers and feel so happy and excited about it…What do I want to blog about? Well...as I began my culinary journey 4 years back, I met some generous people who shared their experience and secrets with me. The first major event that happened along the way was meeting Louisa aunty. Aunty did not just teach me simple recipes, as I was a working woman, but she also instilled a genuine interest in food and cooking in me. Our discussions usually were over the dinner table and almost always about the food! She gifted me a blue diary one day, so that I could note down everything about dishes in it. Now the diary is filled with many recipes associated with interesting anecdotes and interesting people who shared them. Then I met the second significant person on the way…my colleague and one of the best friends Jayashri ma’am. I used to usually share my lunch box in office with her. Somehow the food she cooked always seemed finger smacking good. She made the short lunch time a sumptuous party affair that we looked forward to everyday for the delicious food and the variety! She taught me some amazing techniques and secrets of the local cuisine. She taught me the most important lesson of the kitchen, that is not to waste anything and ways to make use of left over’s. Her involvement and ever patient attitude made me fall in love with cooking and experimentation. The third important person who came along the way was my Hubby. His love for not just food but only good food, sharp memory of the taste and ingredients of a dish as well as the patience and willingness to help me get a recipe just right…his thorough enjoyment of eating and swift change to good mood when palate was satisfied; made my journey ever more interesting and challenging. Until then food was just meant to fill the stomach in my view. I was very fussy about what I ate and hence what I cooked. His involvement and constant support in every idea I conceive and everything I do, helped me reach here. Lastly I met another person who changed my perception of good cooking to a great degree. She was my neighbor, another Jayasree aunty. Amazingly smart ways of reducing the time for cooking some of the luxurious dishes and yet making them taste yummy, is a very strong forte of Jayasree aunty. She joked in the beginning that she was ‘shortcut aunty’…but I was awed and inspired at the same time when she served such wonderful dishes for any number of guests in a jiffy! She shared her secrets wholeheartedly and even wished that she could pass it on to our generation…the “genZ(oom)”! She inspired and helped me to start this blog, although I had done twice by myself before in vain…because then, I was not sure what I wanted to blog about. After meeting such wonderful people, now I have reached a point in this journey, where I want to share my experiences, some tasty recipes and all that I learnt, the tips, the techniques, and lessons with you…the reader, who is just like me…loves cooking, but does not like spending too much time in the kitchen! Who wants variety, wants to entertain guests, wants to play the perfect host to the hilt, wants to find ways to hearts through cooking…but doesn’t want to make it a tedious, serious and lengthy affair. I also want to talk about preparing food that will surely win many hearts with very less efforts. The bottom line is this…How to reduce wasting efforts and time being a working woman…and yet how to get the same authentic taste and look at a minimum of expense. I want to talk about ways to make cooking comfortable; and the food…Comfort food…and Jayasree aunty plays a huge role here.. Come join me… Today for beginnings,I will tell you about the simplest way to reduce time of cooking. That is, by using, the gadgets we have to the maximum extent, like the mixer or blender and pressure cooker. Many of us are under the wrong impression that cooking in the cooker mashes the food due to over boiling or it loses taste. We also assume that chopping of veggies is better than using the blender for purpose of taste. Hence the pressure cooker is reserved to make rice and dhal and blender for chutneys, powders and batters. If used in the right way the pressure cooker and the mixer give the desired results. 1. Whenever you want to make a sabji with veggies like cauliflower, beans, peas, etc. first boil them in the pressure cooker. if you dont want them overboiled then switch off just before the first whistle or after the first whistle. Save the water as vegetable broth for dal, soup or the gravy of sabji.And then add the veggies to the masala, the curry is cooked sooner. 2. When there is no time to chop the veggies like onion, ginger, garlic, chilli,tomatoes in the everyday cooking, just put them in the blender and coarsely grind them for one to three sec. This way there is no excess watery puree. in my next blog, i will share a recipe i cooked using these time saver clues. See you soon, Renu