My Culinary Enterprise

It's been a long time since my last post and I am a rather sporadic blogger. So I tend to surprise myself this time. But this has been the best part of my life and a big learning curve. Okk I tend to go long on the philosophies and bore people.So let me cut the crap and get to the goddam point!!
During the past twenty-sumthin years of my life I ne'er felt the desperate urge within me to learn the oh-so-complex art of cooking. With Mom doing the needful, I never had the misfortune to go hungry at any point of time. My mom's an awesome cook!!! And then there would be times when my mom would have to be away. That's when Dad would get to the rescue act.So till I entered the "hallowed" grounds of a nondescript village near one of the most polluted cities in the world "dedicated to the service of" making life hell, I never had any problems in this regard.
But then we all got a taste of the KGP mess. The food is just awesome. You'll simply keep licking your fingers!! The chapati is but a hardened form of papad, the kheer is some sort of complex mixture and the vegetables..well you just have to keep guessing which of them is in your curry. Not to mention of frogs and lizards and other stuff that seem to spice up the food. It was then I learnt the art of skipping meals. If bathing is a luxury, breakfast is an indulgence. And we always crib about the food awaiting the turn when we could make our own food.
Well, my call got answered pretty soon actually. Now I am living in an entirely new place where the cost of having food outside everyday is rather skyrocketing expensive and hence cooking seems to be the only plausible solution. And so what to do when you are in such a quandary? Well I should have probably asked Mom to teach some dishes just for survival's sake. But such sense did not prevail and I ended up with no idea at all of making anything.
Now both my room-mates have done cooking at various stages of life and do not have any inkling of the Indian way of life. So it was a big surprise to them that I did not know any sort of cooking at all. They were ready to help me though in this arduous task to be able to cook up something decent for the remaining part of my stay. The eternal procrastinator that I am though, I kept myself away from this task till it was no longer possible. Finally my room-mate Andre told me to go on with a recipe which caught my fancy. After a long deliberation,mostly with myself to prepare something which was wholesome and quick, I hit upon Fried Chicken.
I found the recipe on the net and also found it to have the least number of ingredients. Andre encouraged me saying it is very difficult to screw this one. So I set off to the grocery store to buy all the things I needed for this adventure. Having got all the things, I set off. Not trusting eye-estimation at all, I diligently went about pouring ingredients to exactly the right proportions. For example, 1 cup for me meant exactly 1 cup to the brim of the measuring cup. My rather too accurate measurements resulted in the fact that things eventually began to run behind schedule.The preparation time given was way less than the time to get my things ready. Andre could not help chuckling to himself looking at my helplessness. Finally when it was sure that on my own it would take ages to complete, he offered me a much-needed helping hand.
Now I put the chicken in the oven to fry. As I always feared I forgot to note the time when I put it in so that I didn't know when to get it out!! After about 10 minutes when I checked, much to my chagrin, Andre told me it was under-cooked and told me to put it in for some "more" time. So saying he left for some work which he had to tend to. And I, all to myself, didn't know how much time was "more" time. As a result what happened is that when I checked in the second time the chicken had turned to an awful black colour. So now I had a burnt chicken for dinner :( But hungry I was and somehow decided to finish it off, the way it was. And so ends my first experience with cooking. Let's just hope it tends to get better in the next few days!!