Cooking Up A Storm The Indian Way

No cooks were harmed in this episode. Some onions may have been sacrificed, though.

The Staybridge suites became a congregation point for all project-hopping Indians visiting Lincolnshire, Chicago. It was a little cosmos of little diversity and some part unity. We met folks of other nationalities, but most guests were Indians.

Our experiences with some compatriots left much to be desired for the unity to be harmonious, but that’s another story for another day.

It is with the bearable Indians that we made a plan to cook up a storm with some Indian food recipes. In India, food habits and cuisines change every 200 km or so. And everyone is fiercely proud of their own cooking.

Our biggest challenge was shortlisting a main dish that everyone would agree to help cook and also eat. That task took a week after poking fun at each other and some bickering about the quality of ingredients available.

Hot prawn ( read shrimp) curry was the perfect solution to whet our spice-hungry appetites. And because Jaydeep volunteered to be the head chef, we settled on his Bengali Style fish curry. The guy owns a restaurant in Pune called Fassos. He had to know how to wield a saucepan, chop n cut and tell the bland from the hot.

And we also assumed he could plan ahead.

But as plans go, the anticipation of the feast was too tantalizing to agonize over tiny details such as assembling the ingredients. Tasks to buy authentic ingredients of good quality were claimed but never recorded. 

On the day we promised to cook up a storm, we found ourselves nowhere near the curry, which our noses could already smell.

Everyone thought someone else was keeping track. And it seems we waited for all the grocery stores to safely shut for the day before we realized that turmeric and onions were missing.

Blame partly lay with the girls for being gullible enough to trust a man who said he would cook and then for expecting him to be prepared with the proper ingredients in precise quantities.

Our chef looked miffed for not being given the ingredients, and cooks can kill. So they reluctantly took up the responsibility of procuring the missing items.

Our hopes at this late hour rested on the Indians staying at the hotel. And yes, exactly. They were the unfriendly ones who, uh, had not been invited to sample the prawn curry.

We knew a couple of girls staying across from our rooms. Calls to their quarters went unanswered. “Don’t these girls have decent curfew times?? Do their mothers know they are out frolicking at this late hour? Tsk tsk!! Girls these days!” Grandmotherly talk over, we were now trying to remember the other Indian faces.

Someone suddenly remembered that there was a quiet South Indian couple who stayed in a room overlooking the hotel courtyard. We needed to find out their room number. To locate them, someone placed a call to the hotel front desk. The woman’s name is Shridevi, and they have a little son, we told the girl at the reception. When that did not help, we indicated that Shridev’s room overlooked the courtyard. Perhaps that’ll help?

Now suddenly, rooms overlooking the courtyard had no one but Indians in all of them. We asked her to go down the list of last names so that we could pick. The poor girl was tongue-tied, pronouncing the entire list of Indian last names. We could not recognize a single name that she said. 

The search for our countrymen with the elusive item ground to an abrupt halt. We later heard that the girl at reception could not talk properly for some days after this episode.

The mocking and teasing that would follow such abject failure were too agonizing to imagine. It had all the makings of a street brawl. The girls began the search with increased fervour

rather than fight when hungry

.

It seems a middle-aged gentleman has checked in on the second floor. His room was next to Shadab’s. Now, Shadab is a guy who minds his own affairs. He had not made friends with this aged guy but noticed the unmistakable smells of Indian cooking emanating from his neighbour’s room. That was our clue.

Shadab was selected for the scouting mission. A critical intro call was necessary beforehand. You couldn’t just turn up and ask for onions, could you?

Prajakta’s convincing skills came in handy. She used her most pleasing voice ever, and suffice it to say, the availability of the turmeric and onions was confirmed. Off went Shadab to fetch the precious stuff. We asked our chef to proceed with his preparations now that the ingredients were on the way. Yum!

Shadab was back with his precious cargo and immediately set to go out again. Something wrong, we asked? In return for the desirable onions, his quiet neighbour turned benefactor had successfully bargained half an hour of Shadab’s time to sit and chat with him. Shadab left, promising to be back in time for the meal. Well, you win some, you lose some.

The curry was bubbling away. The golden hour had arrived!! Plates ready, eyes sparkling with glee and stomachs growling, we could no longer stay away.

Prajakta and I heated some parathas (bread) for everyone, and doled out ladles of curry. Divine!!

Before anyone has taken so much as a bit, Jaydeep casually said to no one, “You know guys, if only we had some green chillis, this curry would have turned out so much better.”

He only escaped with mockery that day because the curry was deliciously divine. But for our remaining time in Lincolnshire, Chicago, I do think a murder was written in our collective destinies.