Culinary Escapades!

Cooking is a routine for some while its an art for others. I would say that its an adventure for me! I started cooking about a year back and though quite a few dishes have come out pretty well, I have had my share of disasters too :-)

I had lived alone in Uk for a short while and was in the process of experimenting with different dishes. So once when I was trying to do stuffed okra, I let it get burnt. This resulted in a lot of smoke and as I was desperately trying to open the determinately stuck kitchen window, the smoke alarm started shrieking! Now I was living in a quite locality and it was around 10 in the night. So I succeeded in waking up the entire apartment and everyone was bewildered and panicky! Finally I somehow managed to put it off and pacified them!

The other day, I tried my hand at making gulab jamuns. Hope you know that gulab jamun is a traditional Indian sweet, made up of fried balls of flour soaked in sweet, sugary syrup. Its a pretty easy dish to make and so I decided to go ahead with it. Now I had no idea that the jamuns increase in size when fried-so I rolled them up quite big and when I fried them they doubled in size! I also didnt know that they need to be fully immersed in oil to retain their shape. So the part in the oil was nice and round and the part above was all oblong! Finally I didnt know at what point I need to stop heating the sugar syrup. I transferred the jamuns to the syrup bowl and left them to soak in the same cooking vessel. So the syrup got too thick- when I came to have one tasty jamun, I found to my horror that they had all stuck to the vessel! So finally I had to soak them in water and scrape and scrub everything off :-(

So all I learnt was How Not To Make Gulab Jamun!

But these instances have not reduced my urge to cook and I have been continuing my trials with a fair part of errors!