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Showing posts from September, 2016

Cooking up a storm - Cookbooks and our existence

Recipe books are books after all. And very sensual ones at that. It wasn't long back when cooking was still pretty much an exotic hobby to me; by extension, reading a cookbook wasn't really an option I found worth weighing. It was the same with cookery shows - I found them dull, except if the chef in question was kind to the eyes. Things changed gradually when I started staying by myself and the hostel/daily cook's food started tasting like grease. Browsing recipes started eating into my time for binge-watching series. My lunch box to the office started emanating alien odours - not wholly unpleasant, but certainly other-worldly. My colleagues started commenting on the shade of my dal and the abundance of salt in the curry. Mom used to describe elaborate recipes on the phone, and repeated them in case I had already forgotten the first step by the time it was time to serve it hot with a sprinkling of coriander.  It was around this time that I realised that cookboo