Passing judgement is our national pastime

It occurred to me recently that I have been cooking regularly for 25 years now. We will not include the teen and tween years which included the feverish making of rasmalai and gulab jamun and cakes.

- NISHA SUSAN

We grew up with so much criticism that years later we still second-guess something as simple as the taste of our cooking.

(ISTOCKPHOTO)

That, as my friend Mridula has remarked after closely observing her three children, seems to be an evolutionary adaptation of preparing to leave the nest. (It is amusing and completely plausible that in humans the hormones prepare you to feed yourself but malfunction and embrace carbohydrate chaos instead.) I am marking my 25 years from the time I figured that if I want curd rice at 9pm, I'd have to make it myself. This passage of time has surprised me because I am used to thinking of myself as little more than a novice. How has this happened?

In the last couple of weeks, I have made scalloped potatoes, muhammara (a Middle Eastern dip), biscuits, biryani, berry loaf, caramelised cabbage—apart from the ordinary currency of dosas, sandwiches, rice, eggs, dal and chicken curries. I have assisted one of my children in making black-bottom cupcakes. I have undertaken a personal challenge of finishing most of my dry goods before allowing myself to be seduced by new masalas. I am trying to figure if it is really possible to (and whether one is morally allowed to) put zucchinis in brownies as my neighbour says she does. I have cooked at fairly short notice an all-vegetarian, all-Korean meal for three.

Despite this ongoing engagement with the math of money, convenience, tastes, health and adventure, I hadn't registered that the novice stage is long over. In my head, I am still that person whose curd rice is not quite meant for public consumption.