Indian Cooking: Relying on memories and senses

I have been dabbling with cooking Indian food again. What a gift to be in this mindset where I want to cook Indian food for the joy of cooking, exploring spices, and eating my creations! 

It has taken a long time to get here due to a traumatic experience and making peace with it, over and over again. Forgiving everyone involved including myself because I held onto the pain that never belonged to me.  

Growing up, I watched my mom cook. I was always too impatient when she would try to teach me, I wanted to eat what she cooked.

Anyways, last week I tried to make my mom’s stuffed bhindi (okra) recipe. She gave me the recipe years ago. At that time, I asked her to break down the measurements of masalas (spices), she shooed me away while saying, “A little bit of this, and a little bit of that. You kids are always relying on measuring instead of trusting what you know.” I found a similar recipe on the internet that gave me a baseline of measurements for the spices. I had to add more spices to create the scents from my memories. I relied on my sense of smell and taste while mixing the dry spices for the okra. When I started to cook, the spices wrapped me up in a warm blanket of memories. When I sat down to eat, there was a textural difference between my okra and my mom’s. I think she overcooked it a little bit, so I shall make that adjustment next time.  

On Saturday, I decided I would make Indian street food: pani poori (pani=water, poori=deep-fried hollow spherical shells, fits in hand), there are plenty of other names for this dish such as golgappa. The poori is cracked open from top or bottom and filled with potatoes, spices, tamarind chutney, and dipped in spiced pani, water. The poori holds everything including the spiced water, hence why it is cracked from one side only. My mom rarely made this, something about it being labour intensive. 

Well here I was making this while on a 5 hour digital detox. I refused to look at the phone or laptop to see what I was missing. I definitely missed some key ingredients like chickpeas and onions. However, when I realized the onion was missing, I used dried onion powder which enhanced the taste a little bit - fresh would have been better. Again, I relied on my sense of smell and taste as I made this. There were some other small errors made. I am happy to say, I had enough pani pooris to last for 2 meals and I am ready to make it again. 

During the stage of my cooking, I learned that if I stick to Indian dishes my mom made, I have a high and edible success rate. I have been dabbling a recipe a week since the start of July, and definitely had some failures. Mom didn’t make those dishes, and I had no data on what the process should have looked like. I had to phone a friend, then got frustrated and gave up. 

I am still thinking about where I went wrong in those dishes. I got a few tips from some friends and plan to incorporate those next time.

When I reflect on my childhood, some of my happiest memories were with my mom grocery shopping at national grocers, the smaller Asian and Indian shops, and watching her cook. My mom would quietly and lovingly move around the kitchen every evening to prepare fresh dinners filled with love while a recorder with mantras played in the background to infuse the food with divinity. 

I am half way there! My grocery trips aren’t the same. And, my cooking will get better in due time. Cheers!