Mamta's Kitchen - A Family Cookbook
Cookery As Therapy
I don't know whether anyone else has this feeling, but I find it very therapeutic to cook: it helps me turn off the stress of the working environment.
Additionally, after a day of tedious meetings, reports and disputes at work, it's good to look at this site and think about something much more positive.
So, thanks for the site, Mamta, Kavey and Pete: it's an island of sanity and interesting discussion.
Phil
I find cooking therapeutic too and it helped me through the dark times - 6 years of darkness to be exact.
Slightly off topic to what the thread is about, but last night I cooked a chicken vindaloo and some onion bhajis. Then I went to the shop where the other half works and I thought people were looking at me a bit strange, then later on I got a right ear wagging.
"I don't know what you have been eating or what you have been cooking but you really stank when you came in the shop tonight. I smelt it, Sue smelt it, and all the customers smelt it, you really stank. Everyone that kept coming in was asking what the smell was..."
Ohh err.
I think the message here is that the next time I cook anything pungent with garlic and onions in it maybe I should wear old cloths before I start and get a shower afterwards...
If I'm feeling 'low' I know the best remedy is to go to the kitchen, methodically chop up all the ingredients for one of Mamta's curries, probably with the radio on, and having eaten it with all those serotonins flowing around one feels at peace with the world again.
I've said for years that I find cooking relaxing... takes you away from the stresses and strains of day to day...
As for cooking smells.. yup.. don't wear your sunday best.. and remove anything from the kitchen that might pick up smells.. we even have to stop the dryer or it sucks in the smells and puts them nicely into the clothes... lol
Steve
Cooking aprons are available at:
http://www.mamtaskitchen.com/apron.php !!!
You are most welcome Phil :-)!
Yes cooking is definitely relaxing for me, especially when I am experimenting.
Smells are worse if you have been cooking with garlic. I close both doors of kitchen into the house, put exhaust on, open windows, before I cook. If I am cooking a lot for a party, I cook in the morning, then have a shower and wash hair. A Chinese friend of mine used to cover her hair with a shower cap and wear a old fashioned shop assistant type of coat, like a doctors coat! Now she has Alzheimer?s, so she can't cook, bless her.
The funny thing is that people in my family in India don?t smell, perhaps because they never cook with garlic. Also, the houses and kitchens are all open, windows and doors and all, so the kitchen never smells either. People who work in shops with deep fryers also smell, like a chippy, you can tell them a mile off! Our coat rack is next to kitchen, so I have to make double sure that the door next to it is ALWAYS closed. Even then, most coats go in a rinse every couple of weeks. Thankfully my washing machine and dryer are in another room.
Talking about serotonin reminded me of chilli news from yesterday Winton. I read that when you eat really hot chillies, it makes you loose weight (by increasing metabolism) for the next 2 hours! I am going to drink chillies every 2 hours for the next month ;-)! I will be thinnest person around with a dead stomach!
Ah June, the smell of the stone ground masala is altogether different, very soothing. I remember grinding on them when we were young, before the days of mixers and choppers. Their surfaces had to be chiselled every few months, to keep them rough. An article in the Telegraph about Gordon Ramsey?s recent visit to India featured these, along with ?his? Indian recipes, which will probably make him thousands of pounds, and nothing to the poor people who he picked them from! Such is life! And June, your son probably gets plenty of restaurant food when he is not at home and I am not surprised that he/children prefer it if you cook at home, especially when you are a good cook.
Hello Mamta
"I am going to drink chillies every 2 hours for the next month ;-)! I will be thinnest person around with a dead stomach!"
Well you certainly will be buzzing around in some form of ecstatic, thinner and healthy state:
Chillis are good for Vitamins A & C, increase your metabolic rate (for weight loss,) make you happy (releasing endorphins and serotonins) and help regulate blood sugar levels and relieve congestion.
How do you intend to consume the chillis? I think some sort of yoghurt smoothie is necessary.
Perhaps "a curry a day keeps the Doctor away" - but not you Mamta!!
Mamta,thanks for the compliment. I really enjoy cooking, especially trying new and different receipes.
BTW I still have my mothers grinding stone. Even though I have not used it in ages it is still here. Told the kids it is an heirloom hahahahhaha .... they were horrified.
I think if I was not working full time I would grind the masalas. Mind you since using your site I do not buy powdered spices anymore apart from turmeric. The taste of freshly ground (coffee grinder) whole spices is heaps better. I have trouble getting fresh or dried turmeric from the Asian spice suppliers.
June
Smell of Onions/Garlic on your hands - use "garic soap"
hope this link will post -
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/6-Garlic-Soap_W0QQitemZ270363507194QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_3?hash=item3ef2ebb9fa
(if it doesn't appear as a link you will need to copy and paste it back into your browser address bar)
I kept seeing these in the supermarket but wasn't sure what it was for.. I know it sounds obvious when you think about it... Didn't know if it was supposed to look like a clove of garlic and was just an ornament, or if it was made with garlic in some way etc...).. one week they were on special offer at something like ?1 so I bought one..
Don't ask me how it works, but it does !
It appears to be just a soap bar shaped piece of stainless steel that you rub around your hands and fingers as if washing with normal soap (so under running water of the tap).... and the smell goes !!
it even works when I rub it on the chopping board and the smells go from that as well !!
Steve
there is an awful lot of science in these answers. Hands pick up odours because the smells are not very slouble in water, not sufficiently to be wrenched off the proteins which comprise the skin, anyway.
The same thing happens when we marinate meat. Most aromas are more oil liking than water liking, so any flavours stick to the 'oil-like' parts of the protein. It is a cooks fallacy that 'flavours are absorbed', to any extent, anyway, there isn't enough time!
Smells in the kitchen arise because the aromas are volatile (or else we wouldn't be able to smell them!). Some are driven off from the cooking by evaporation and some are carried away by bursting bubbles of liquid. So to reduce the loss of the aroma (and therefore the flavour) cover the pan, and reduce the heat so that the contents are only just simmering. You might find you use less spice, too!