The confused case of the Non-spherical Gulab Jamuns

As the headlines should go: After a prolonged hiatus, the venerable Pettai Maami returns back to Blogosphere amidst much crying and pleading of her co-bloggers. Yes sirs and ma’ams…she’s back..and not alone this time, I’m afraid. Somewhere around the turn of 2009, Her Highness tied the infamous knot with an equally crazy Maama and has stepped into the next level of insanity. She has been busy shifting gears and trying out various forms and shapes a roti would come out and hence you can imagine the apathy of her fellow human beings

This post is dedicated to the brave heart, the guy with a golden heart, the mard of Hyderabad…Pettai Maama..

Considering my lack of culinary skills have already flourishingly been advertised all the blog, let me come straight to the point.

Day 1: I should probably name this as “Day 11” as I had conspicuously been avoiding the initial ten days by not going inside the kitchen with P.Maama and have been running rations on maggi, subway, swathi tiffins etc. P.Maama’s pleading voice finally reached and I had to enter the terrifying world of cooking. Not that he knew it any better than me, but as he had already said yes to a couple of other household chores that I couldn’t do either, I wasn’t left with anymore options. “Just take care of cooking, I’ll do all the rest” said he. I thought I was getting the better end of the bargain and well….. So, day 1 was making a list of the much needed items that were meant for survival.

Day 2: I go inside the kitchen and look around. Come out of the kitchen. Call my Mom and say “ Um…Hai Amma, so how do you make rice..no no..i need the exact measurements…. You are referring to the white colored rice right?? And dal?? Oh…is that how you make sambhar?? Um…which one are you referring to?? I’ve got like a 5 different types…should I use normal water or mineral water… and by 1 spoon..do you mean 6 pieces of the dal??....wait wait..tell it again from the start..i didn’t note it down.” and so went the conversation for 4 hours. Lunch time came and went and it was finally 5 pm when we had sat down to eat. The dal/sambhar (whatever you want to call it as) turned out in a murky brown color and the rice…well..lets just say that the sambhar kanji was made well.

Day 3: This time, I started cooking from early morning and added a new item to the menu- Karimidhu/ Sabji. Due to the earlier day’s debacle, P.Maama had gotten hold of the phone number of a mess nearby, just in case if there is a need of a back up plan. The karimidhu ended up not seeing the daylight and was given a very hushed up funeral.

And so flew away the days of experimental breeding…oops…cooking. About a month after we had moved to Hyderabad, I got a call from the miss.bengaluru and her better half saying that they would be visiting soon. Aha…Guests at last..of course I wouldn’t make them leave without trying out my yummy food..would I?? so, the conspiracy started, and Me and P.Maama decided to make Gulab Jamuns :D, thinking its never too late to try out something new!!! I was thoughtful enough to not to mention it to the visiting sirs and ma’ams.

So, we opened the gulab jamun packet and it said that we had to mix ‘so and so’ gms of the powder with ‘so and so’ gms of water. Well..the dough we were supposed to be making ended up being too gooey and so P.Maama had to run to the store again to get another packet of it! We finally managed to making a huge boulder of the dough, inspite of the fact that my little and thumb finger weren’t budging out of it. The same story happened to the jeera again and it ended up being too much for what was being required. We were already running out of time and we still had to make small golas out the dough. We had no idea what size it was to be made. So, it was decided to make it to the size of what was given on the cover of the powder packet.

Finally we started to fry these golas, only to find them bubbling up even huger and ending up to the size of cricket balls!!!!!!! We realized that it was never too late and started reducing the size and frying them again. I didn’t even bother to notice the huge hairline fractures or discoloration from red to black or the smell of the oil burning. I just wanted the whole fiasco to get over and dumped all the fried jamuns in the sugar syrup and ran away from the area.

Few hours later, our friends arrived and I just couldn’t help but thrust them a bowl of blackened gulab jamuns and praying that both of them would forgive me for making them eat it. The evening went on smoothly with neither of them commenting on the jamuns until it was their time to leave. Sir PV nicely asked “so, hows the cooking going??” P.Maama obediently said “ Man, shes just the best. Makes amazing food in the whole world!!!” AM smiles indulgently and compliments me on the same. PV couldn’t help himself and asked me “Am sure… You do make yummy non spherical Gulab jamuns!”. What followed was me vehemently defending my lovely jamuns and ended up pelting PV with the golas which neatly bounced off his face!! AM quietly dragged him away murmuring something about a train to catch and P.Maama helped me clear up the rest of the jamuns. After the debacle, neither did AM return for a visit nor did I even try to touch the jamuns which are now safely stored in the fridge

Aside this fact, all you guys are invited anytime to our house, and I assure you, you will be served P.Maami's trademark Gulab Jamuns ejjactly like the ones she first made. :D :D