Live: Anatomy of a Foodie

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This morning, as I was cooking up some interesting stuff, I got to thinking about what makes me different from the millions of people who cook because they have no desire to eat ready-to-eat food from a supermarket, or those who cook because they have to support a loving family.

And, after some consideration to this question, the answer came to me in a kind of epiphany. A foodie is willing to experiment.

And that's it, basically. 

Today, I began to make a pasta dish from a ready to stir-fry vegetable pack and a pack of free range egg noodles. I had some left-over stir fry sauce and I am thinking, like, well, that's all that I need to make myself a good, edible meal. 

But, wait! How can I make this dish interesting? My first thought was to add a tadka of Indian masalas. How would that work, except that it would change a Chinese dish to an Indian mix? I had to think of something else.

Now, before I continue, let me add that, for me, the final look and taste of the food matter, but it's the whole journey from purchasing a food item, to storing it the right way in the fridge, to cleaning, cutting and preparing the various ingredients, to cooking them the right way, to storing them in the right containers to serving them at the right temperature, in the right plate/bowl - to finally putting the food in one's mouth - this entire journey is the full experience for a foodie. 

So, what did I finally do? I had cooked lamb kidneys about 2 days ago, and had partaken of about half of it that same day when I was working a "long day". The remaining half of this masala item was still waiting in the back of the fridge shelf. I brought it out, diced all the kidney pieces and the potatoes into smaller bits, and added them to the noodles-stirfry sauce-vegetable pot. Stirring the entire mix one more time, I finally came out with a Chinese stir-fry vegetable noodle lamb kidney pot!

This is what makes a foodie: the love of eating transcending borders and making the foodie try out new things at every step of his food journey. For me, I am always experimenting. At a Sainsbury store the other day, I was browsing through the aisles and noticed that there were many things that I had never ever had the pleasure of trying. Now, don't get me wrong. I experiment, but I still stay focused on thinking ahead. I won't, for example, buy pork meat in any form. Nor will I aggressively try new stuff. I remember a day when I went to a frozen foods store known as ICELAND. It stores mostly frozen food. Now, on that particular day, I approached a freezer with meat from exotic animals. I was literally amazed by the variety of meats - there were the usual kinds such as lamb, beef, pork and fish; there were also a few more familiar things like partridge, quail, venison and squid. But then, there was a slew of stuff that made me almost puke. Alligator meat, crocodile meat, hare meat, and even meat from an armadillo! Most of these were in the form of burger patty, but I simply stepped back and snapped the door shut. I will experiment, but even I have a limit, so, not those, please. 

Here are a few things I made in the last fortnight or so: The first is a stir-fry I made last week from noodles, moong sprouts, bell peppers and black bean sauce. To this mix, I added chopped, cooked pieces of chicken tikkas that I had purchased from an M & S food store. The result was delicious!

 This second is the Bohri traditional dal-chawal palidu. I will post the recipe for this in a subsequent post. I added drumsticks to the palidu (this is the gravy-like stuff in the green bowl), I think this is a favourite dish for me and I usually end up making it about once in a couple of months. It takes a little more effort than the stir-fry I have shown in the photo above.

This is the lamb kidney that I was speaking about. It turned out so good that I literally licked my fingers after having the first half of it with lachcha parathas. 

This, the final one, is a preparation that I made from halal chicken, a rogan josh paste, some tomato and fresh onions. It needed no other spices as the rogan josh mix had everything in it. I was pleasantly surprised when I first tried the item with some brown rice while working a night shift at the hospital. It was remarkably tasty. 





Which brings me to the end of this post. Tell me, friends, what experimentation do you all do when you start on your own food journey? Do add your comments.