Back to my roots cooking

I like cooking, but it isn't my hobby. I like the idea of creating something from scratch, I like the challenge of creating something that I haven't done before, but in general, I look at cooking as a means of surviving (because you have to eat).

I like simple foods. Western food in general is way more simple to cook than Eastern food, one reason is that there are very few spices involved. Also, the process is much simpler. You can bake, or grill food which are not possible for Eastern/Indian food. Salads or simply steamed veggies are looked down upon by eastern connoisseurs. Striking the right balance between flavor and seasonings is difficult. And that is where Bengali cuisine enters into the picture.

It is true that I will be biased towards Bengali cuisine, but now after actually sampling food from (almost) all over the world I can say for certain that if I were to give a choice, I would still choose Bengali food as the best. I am not a big fan of spicy Indian food though. Also, if you make every gravy taste the same with onion, ginger-garlic paste and tomato I think that would be very unpalatable. There was a capsicum (bell pepper) recipe I looked up that had onion, garlic, ginger, tomato, coconut and crushed nuts. I could not understand what would the final thing come out as. Nowadays I see Bengali recipes like that too in newspapers. Putting ilish in a yogurt sauce itself if pretty devastating. And then if you add your own stupid concoctions to that, it just becomes a sacrilege. Before you cook something, you need to think what your end goal is. Putting every spice on hand in your food reminds me of my dorm-days, when I sprinkled garam-masala in my daal.

The best foods are the simplest ones. The ones where you actually get the taste of the main thing being cooked (unlike paneer. I still don't understand what is there to like in paneer. That blob of thing always tastes like soggy paper. It's just the gravy that you get to taste.) along with a flavor of the different spices. Adding spices to food is like adding colors to a painting. The colors need to be different enough to stand apart, but they also have to complement each other. Yesterday I made a shrimp dish called "chingri machher paturi". All it needed was mashed up shrimp mixed with shredded coconut, a little mustard oil, sliced green chillies, turmeric and salt. The process of "cooking" was to flatten out that mixture on a fry pan and heat over fire for 10 mins. That kind of food is what I like most and in order to really find those, we need to go back to our roots.

In the villages, they would try to save fuel as much as they could. So many dishes can be cooked in parallel with others. There is one where you smear pieces of fish with spices, wrap them up in banana leaves and immerse the small packages of fish in already cooking rice. By the time your rice is ready, your fish pieces are steamed as well. There is another similar one where you basically bake eggs in the heat generated while cooking khichuri.

It is true that we can't get banana leaves these days as easily as they could in the villages. But, if you think about what purpose that is to serve, you can easily come up with your own substitutions. I use Reynolds Aluminum Wrap in place of banana leaves and though I don't get the smoky smell of the leaves, it still serves my main purpose of wrapping fish or making a shell for baking eggs. Also, with these cooking in parallel, you will be saving a lot of time, money and energy :)

So the next time you invite people over, instead of making an elaborate fancy dinner, try to surprise them with a traditional home cooked authentic Bengali meal.

PS: Recipe for chingri paturi can be found here. I really like this lady and her own recipes (as well as some of her guests'). Also like the fact that she is so inherently Bengali.

Breaking the silence about miscarriages

Being ashamed is a normal human behavior. When we realize that we have done something that we should not have, or said something bad then we feel ashamed. There are valid reasons of it and when done for the right reasons, it is a good thing. It shows that we are sorry for our actions or words. How do you know your expected behavior? That is what society teaches us. Arguing loudly in public is not considered a good thing, burping at a restaurant is impolite... good manners and right behavior are taught to kids. However, sometimes society holds us responsible for things beyond our control and without even thinking if that is a valid reason to be accused of, we still feel ashamed.

One such thing that I was thinking of recently is a miscarriage. I am not an ignorant person, but even then I had an idea that miscarriages are exceptions. I saw people all around me having babies, Facebook is quite literally flooded with baby pictures. Friends' babies taking their first steps, first birthdays, etc etc. So I obviously had the idea that things go smoothly. Yes, I have heard about difficult pregnancies, but then also the babies turned out fine. So my guess was with advanced medical care that is becoming more and more affordable, pregnancy is just a normal phase of life.

Didn't I know about miscarriages? Yes, I did. Mainly from Bollywood movies where the mom with a big belly gets into a car accident or falls down after being chased by the villain and loses her baby. Instinctively we associate the mom's actions with the miscarriage.

Until I faced my own, I didn't know that a whopping 1 out of 5 pregnancies end in a miscarriage naturally. Yes, I wanted to emphasize the naturally part. It is like nature's way of throwing an exception and exiting the method when it knows that the pregnancy is not viable. Then I wondered why I did not know that. As I did not consider the miscarriage "my fault", I told people around me quite truthfully when they asked me why I was not replying to work emails or why I did not show up at work for three days. Then the amazing thing happened, people started telling me about their miscarriages. I was so surprised to know that this is such a common thing!! The doctor was right when she said, if you really understand how the chromosome pairing happens, you'd wonder how come there are so many people around!

Now I am coming to the main point I started with - why is it still a taboo?

The reason is IGNORANCE! People don't know why this happens, so they put the main blame on the woman. The woman assimilates the thing as her failure. A failure to serve the purpose a woman was meant to. This is crazy, but it is how things are perceived. So a woman doesn't tell people that she is pregnant until her first trimester is over. She thinks that if she has a miscarriage then it will be harder to tell people after giving them the happy news of her pregnancy. It is easier to keep quiet. The second thing is some people feel that they will have a miscarriage if she talks about it. I have read in baby forums where other expectant women are saying - "I didn't want to read a miscarriage story now that I'm in my first trimester." Why would it be scary? If you read about some illness while you are healthy, would that scare you? It's like saying, "I don't want to read about people having malaria or typhoid now that I'm healthy." Someone's experience of a pregnancy loss should not scare you, the knowledge should only empower you. I was thinking if all the women who now told me that they also experienced similar losses would have opened their heart before, how easy would it be for all of us.

Out of ignorance, people blame the woman. I have been asked this question by well meaning women, if I was doing any physical activity like running or jumping that could have caused this. One lady said, "you didn't even look pregnant. You were just continuing your life like normal." I still don't know what it is supposed to mean. How could I "look pregnant" at 5-6 weeks? And why would I change the way I behave just because I am pregnant? I repeat here again, unless you intentionally smoked or took drugs or ate uncooked seafood, don't ever blame yourself for a pregnancy loss. In early pregnancy chromosome pairing occurs and a mismatch there is the most common cause of a miscarriage. You can't stop that and you actually should not. There are other physical causes too which can be fixed like thyroid problems or other stuff like that. Whichever way, it is not your fault. Bearing a child is not a test of femininity that you need to pass.

Knowing that a lot of others have gone through this really doesn't help that much, but it only gives the idea that this is very common. Even when I am typing the words, I feel that throbbing pain inside me. So I won't tell anyone that you can get over it. Maybe people can, but at this time I haven't. So I can't advise that. Our hormonal changes would become our enemy too. And, believe me, nobody will understand what you are going through. I repeat that, NOBODY.

We need to understand the scientific reason behind this all. Like we know that conceiving a baby depends on a slim probability. If you don't conceive the first time you try would you feel horrified and think that you failed? No, right? Why? Because you know it takes time. Similarly, if you did conceive the first time, there is no reason to think you are superior that others. It is tenth grade statistics. You had no control in it whatsoever! Similarly, we need to know that miscarriage also involves this statistics. Women who have multiple kids will tell you that they had miscarriages (or more miscarriages) compared to women with a single baby. If your first pregnancy is viable and you don't plan to have any more kids, you would never know how many miscarriages you could have. Another thing for early miscarriages is that many people don't know they were pregnant yet. At 5 or 6 weeks, women with not a regular menstrual cycle will not know if they have miscarried or it was just a late period. Also, in case you are wondering that "this was a fertilized embryo, which had all the information it needed to become a human being" (I thought that personally), let me tell you, there are many fertilized eggs which do not implant on our uterus and get flushed out during our regular periods.

Even after knowing all these, you may still feel an illogical sadness. Something that defies all logic will tell you - "but that was your baby". I know that feeling. As a rational being, I feel very stupid thinking in this way. But that is the sorrow I will have to learn to live with. It is my pain, it is my sorrow. Maybe I will never get over it, maybe it will make me stronger, maybe it will change my way of thinking about many other things...I have no idea. I will just have to give it some time.