Isn’t it strange that as reports come in of fewer meals being cooked at home in the US, there are more cooking shows on television? Sociology studies say that family dinners that everyone in the home are willing to eat have become more difficult and stressful to provide — for lack of fresh produce, a struggle between spending quality time with the family and producing quality food and other reasons.
That part is completely understandable for those of us with no interest in action in the kitchen. However, what is hard for the same people, who do not like the mostly unappreciated task of putting a nutritious meal together, is to understand how all those cooking shows, foodies’ reports, secrets of street food around the world and other television programmes are watched so eagerly.
A lot of people watch these reality shows and find them enlightening, thought-provoking, innovative and entertaining — despite the fact that some of them probably haven’t peeled an onion in the last decade. So, what turns them on when that display of food appears on screen? And what makes me turn my face away each time I see those exotic ingredients dropped onto pristine kitchen counters for rapid action to be taken?
No, it is not just because they highlight sticky snails and wriggly squid in the marketplace — that later appear on menus and plates with exotic names like escargots and calamari. It is because, unlike so many others who actually get inspired to take action when they watch cooking shows, I have no interest in the exhausting process that converts ingredients from one largely unappealing look to the other mouth-watering one.
Long, long ago, there were moments when I too got a sparkle in my eye at the prospect of producing a pudding to die for from the bare bones of a loaf of bread and some cocoa or preparing a giant pilau (rice dish cooked in a seasoned broth) that would feed the regiment (and I mean that literally) from the meagre rations of the day. Challenges of that sort — with guests landing up unexpectedly and expecting to be fed — were taken up regularly. With barely a moment’s notice, every creative cell in my body went into the rapid planning and preparing of those meals. First, I had to quickly recall what was stocked in the kitchen cupboards and what had been stashed away in the fridge for a rainy day. Then, in between attempts at polite conversation and trying to make everyone feel at ease — and welcome — in our humble home, I had to flit in and out of the kitchen, wielding chopper, egg-beater, spatula, ladle and other kitchen implements, chopping and stirring and sauteing as if I had eight arms.
Of course, some intrepid visitors followed me in as well — and good naturedly helped out — since they’d had their share of almost identical situations in their time. Someone would skedaddle over to the neighbours and borrow a couple of extra potatoes to ‘bulk up’ the stew, someone else would whip up a dip and arrange biscuits around it to pretty up the table ...
All those kitchenmates were positive that I would miss the frenetic activity and that camaraderie of the kitchen when we retired from army life — and sure, I miss those kitchenmates — but definitely not the kitchen ...
And that is why I cook mostly under duress now: When the freezer, the fridge and the larder are bare and the weather is too inclement to go out for a meal or call in one.
Could that be why no one ever barges into our home the way they used to in the old days? And should I have thought of this solution earlier?
Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India.
