a chumbak dinner

Chumbak is Nepali for magnet. But, the way I mean it here, it's derived from Hindi and means very, very kissable. And that is exactly how dinner was.

So because by the time the sun sets, we've already prepared so many meals at our house, none of the ladies of the house are particularly thrilled about making dinner. And that is how I got trapped to make dinner.

It's not like I don't like making food, but much like anyone else (or anything else) I need something to kickstart me before I can transform all the potential culinary energy into kinetic energy. And I always get really excited if I can experiment with food and make something that we've never eaten before but when it comes to making the same old daal-bhaat-tarkari everyday, I turn into a sad little thing. Eating it is fun though - I have new found respect for my mom and her mom.

But today, Nana was being a nuisance. She said she'd help me by making some stir fry, but she turned her back towards the kitchen and began to watch TV. I loved playing the mom and was constantly yelling and complaining and being a total nautanki while she was completely distracted by multiple episodes of Hitler Didi. Balla, balla I got her to make her share of the food.

chop! chop! preparing everything from scratch is more fun
than having someone else prepare it for you

In all my experiences of cooking, I've come to realize that simplicity is the best ingredient for great tasting food. Often, keeping things raw is also a great way of cooking. When I was a kid, my parents used to make fun of me, saying how I should have been born a cow since I love raw vegetables so much. Even now, I try to keep cooking to the minimum.

All I did to make this pasta was take a handful of almonds and chop them up, then went to my trusted pot of basil (the only plant in my garden that I have a relationship with - basil is like a phoren version of tulsi and it has such an intense fragrance when picked fresh and chopped up and sprinkled on anything), plucked some wilted leaves (my plant is getting old, I need to save the seeds and plant a new one for next year).

Going with the feel is so important in food. My brother, who used to make great food from before I knew how to handle a spoon, once told me that you just know when to put in the next ingredient into the food. The way he nimbly chopped the vegetables, picked them up and put them in the frying pan, it felt like he was doing some sort of interpretive dance - without any worry about the result. The food he made had no name, culture or identity but whatever he made always tasted delicious.

Being intuitive - it seems - is the most important skill you can have while cooking. And cooking seems like such a great way of practicing our intuition.

this stuff tastes soooo yummmmmmmy!

My gut said, "Garlic!" and add I did. After whipping it in some olive oil, salt and pepper and tossing the pasta into it - ke bhannu ra. 

Whenever we make spaghetti at home and we're seated at the dinner table eating, Mummy (my grandmother) gives out this loud burst of a giggle. All of us look up from our plates, and we see her struggling to twirl the slippery strands of spaghetti on her fork again and again and again and again. She's barely done with half her dinner when the rest of us have cleaned up our plates. It's like it's a joke the universe is playing on her that she's still trying to understand.

So to spare her, we've started buying other kinds of pasta. And that is how we arrived at a meal that looks like this.

the chumbak plate (with some chinesey stir fry Nana made)
got demolished in five minutes
(yep I don't eat, I hog!)

The darkness in the picture must paint a somber mood to the dinner, tara batti nabhaako desh ma yestai photo matrai khichnu mildo raichha. But does that really matter if everyone was well fed with warm, happy bellies?