Four BetterButter users share their funniest kitchen experiences that changed the way they started cooking.
Meenakshi Kapur: A Rs 8000 Smoothie
I’d just started taking interest in cooking and would help my mother out in the kitchen. I thought I was quite the ace and so I decided to make myself a smoothie. Perhaps the most expensive smoothie of my life.
This is how I made it: Pour some milk, fruit and ice into a good blender. Then, using a stainless steel spoon, add about a tablespoon of almond butter. When the phone rings and go answer it, leave the spoon in the blender. Cover and blend on high, forgetting to remove the spoon. Hear a clanking sound and then smell the dearest blended burn out.
Rs 8000 for the blender. Rs 50 for the spoon. Rs 200 for the ingredients. That’s how you make the most expensive smoothie of your life.
Moral of the story: Keep your phone on silent while making a smoothie or make sure that a family member stands with you while you decide to experiment.
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Chetna Parikh: A stone-age Cake
The kitchen was always my mother’s domain. There was an invisible line across the kitchen door and I was barely ever allowed to enter.
In class 7, I decided to bake a cake, which had been my teacher had taught us in class. We didn’t own an oven so I decided to use my brains and come up with a make-shift solution. I poured the batter into an aluminum pan and placed it atop of an aluminum kadhai that I’d filled with sand. And then turned on the kerosene stove.
Ofcourse I didn’t consult my mother but I did give myself a pat on the back. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The cake was completely burned. It looked like a slab of cement. And when it came to cutting, my family used a screwdriver and a hammer to break it. And then tasted it.
A part of me was laughing and another part was so touched that they tried the cake. But moreover they even presented me with an oven a month later to encourage me.
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Zeenath Amanullah: Watery Vegetables
As the only girl child, I was raised in a protective household. Not that I ever gave them trouble – I was an ace at academics and sports and even helped out with household chores – which is perhaps why they favored me plenty.
Except when it came to cooking.
So can you imagine my plight when I got married at 20, that I was the eldest daughter-in-law in a household of 12 members. And while my mother-in-law knew I couldn’t cook, she’d often forget and hand out tasks to me on an off. One such morning I was asked to make Turai or Ridge Gourd, a vegetable I had often watched being cooked.
I decide to hazard a guess rather than asking and ended up pouring a whole glass of water onto the ridge gourd, hoping against hope that it would become like all the curries we often made.
My mother-in-law kept checking whether the subzi was ready, and I kept telling her it wasn’t. When she finally decided to check for herself, she asked me if I’d added water to the dish. She looked at me and laughed, and then told me that because this vegetable has a lot of water content, we never add any water to it.
I was so embarrassed that day. But at least today I can laugh at it because now I realize how much I have achieved over the last few years and how I have overcome my weakness. Cooking is now a big part of my life. It is my strength, my happiness.
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Francisca Guerra: Rice Rice Baby
My mum-in- law is a very systematic and a disciplined lady and my husband had warned me about her thorough discipline. Thus, after marriage I was on guard all the time.
Before I got married, since my Mom was a teacher, I used to make the rice for lunch everyday, so I was used to cooking a little bit.
After I got married, my mother-in-law asked me to make rice for the very first time. I wanted to do my best, so I kept checking on the rice. Unfortunately in my nervousness I ended up making very mushy rice. I tried everything to salvage it. I added cold water. Discarded old water. But finally I decided to go to my husband for help.
While he had no idea how to cook, he saw how nervous I was and calmed me down and then together we cooked rice all oven again. This time it was perfect. While my mother-in-law was happy, it was only later she learnt that I had made this big mistake. Somehow she seemed very annoyed about it and didn’t really have a good impression of me.
But 12 years later, I am happy to report, she actually appreciates my dishes and gives me a 10 on 10 on nearly everything.