If you live in India, give up on your cooking ambitions and head to the nearest restaurant. The meal there is going to be quicker, cheaper and tastier than the mouth watering concoction you think you will be able to cook.
If you lived elsewhere, you couldn't have gone anywhere better to learn about cooking. Believe me. When cricket is a religion, Sachin is God. Just so, when cooking is a religion... you know the rest, don't you?
Ok, let us cut down on some egotism and concentrate on the cutting and chopping. Peak performances can be achieved only when there is a pressure to perform. So if you are going to cook for yourself, there is not going to be any pressure. Therefore invite your boss and his boss for dinner and tell them to skip lunch that day. But never tell them what you intend to cook. What you intend to cook is not always what ends up on the table and it is not on your hands.
The first and foremost lesson for any kind of cooking is to have a Plan B: Always have a plan B. Buy a maggi before you set foot into the kitchen. Following that, unplug the smoke alarm. Smoke alarms are useless devices that go off even when you light a match a mile from them. When you cook there is bound to be some smoke. Don't be bothered about it until the flame under the frying pan leaps onto the top and torches the roof of your kitchen black. When that happens, you should call a fire brigade. So keep your phone ready with the fire brigade number keyed in. The corner stone of any cuisine is onions and tomatoes. Normally, cook books will instruct you to chop them. There is a big possibility that you will chop one of your fingers. Now that is not bad. But not everyone is non-vegetarian. So keeping the herbivore species in mind, use a mixie and crush them all. This is all vegetarian and it saves some time. Since this will be your first time cooking, your imagination would have run wild and you would have bought every conceivable ingredient from the shop. But what you would not have done is cut open the packs before you started the process. But never mind; try and tear open the sachets while the cauldron of broth is spewing smoke and reducing visibility. You are bound to spill half the contents when the sachet splits into two. But never mind that too; because in exactly 3 seconds, the flames from the bottom of the pan is going to move to the top. So your next action to stop the flames will be to pour some liquid onto the pan. Avoid pouring oil unless you wish to understand what the expression 'adding fuel to fire' really meant. Next is the salt lesson. Do not forget to add salt. Just after you have added salt, you will always feel that you should add one more spoonful and after much deliberation you eventually will. But the last spoonful of salt will turn your meal salty and there is no way of getting over the last spoon temptation. When you have arrived at this stage, your meal is ready.
After-note: Never boil ladies-fingers unless you are making a jelly for dessert
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