FOR FOODIES AND THOSE WHO COOK....BE PATIENT IN THE KITCHEN

Be patient in the kitchen, don't come on too strong
TURN IT DOWN

Whether you're cooking an elaborate dessert or a simple fried egg, use the smallest flame for best results
Last week, just a few days before my 12th wedding anniversary, I made what I believe were almostperfect mushrooms -aromatperfect mushrooms -aromatic, fried slowly to golden crispness in small pools of butter.
We ate them with some wonderful rosemary bread baked by the husband, and a colourful confetti salad of sweet corn, finely diced peppers, cabbage, carrot, pomegranate and toasted sesame.
Everything turned out so well that we felt fine china and a bottle of wine were in order! As we put out the special plates and good cutlery and poured the wine, we couldn't stop `tasting' our creations and congratulating ourselves.
Through the meal and after, I couldn't help wondering what had made that food so perfect. Where do we go wrong at other times? What is it that our other meals are missing? And then it struck me... patience! Not only is patience a virtue, when it comes to the kitchen, it is an incredibly important ingredient.
I first began thinking about patience as an ingredient when I was conducting my beginners' cooking class for men last month. All the guys wanted everything done fast. They loved working with the chorizo, cheese and meat.Most of all, they loved the induction plate, because it sped things up.
Even here at home, when my husband first began to bake, he was always in a hurry, never looking at recipes, unwilling to take the time to beat sugar into cakes or wait for yeast to work.
And Billy Law, the so-called dessert expert recently eliminated from MasterChef Australia, always forgot to factor in patience and ended up ruining some of his creations as a result.
This impatience is not unique to men. Even in dishes made by my mother, one of the finest cooks I know, you could always sense impatience because it had caused her to forget something.And my cook Kavita is always getting into trouble with me because she never browns the onions properly for dals and curries.
Mushrooms, curries, meats, cakes, elaborate desserts, even instant noodles require ladlefuls of patience. Add noodles too quickly to water not boiling properly, for instance, and you'll be left with soggy, flavourless mush.
Whatever you cook, and whatever utensils you use, every dish and every ingredient needs time to do its job.Think about it, even something as simple as salted cucumber takes a few seconds. Sprinkle salt and eat immediately and you will taste grains of salt distinct from the cucumber.Wait a little, and the salt will draw out the juices and melt into them for a perfect marriage.
Some of the cooks I admire most share this quality of patience, and it makes them shine. Take my housekeeper Shobha. She is not terribly fond of cooking and, given a choice, I suspect she would not do it at all. But once she has taken it up, she always turns out impeccable dishes, beautifully presented and perfectly cooked.
It has taken my husband and me a while to learn to be patient in the kitchen, but everything we cook today is better for it. And we've discovered that, with a little patience, it's not that difficult to cook food that people will love, even if it's just a simple fried egg.
This week, for instance, I made a fried egg that the husband complimented me on because it was so smooth, sans bubbles and craters. Always use the lowest flame possible and you will always get a perfect fried egg, I explained to him. An omelette cooked on a low flame too will always come off the pan beautifully golden, rather than with that detestable brown underside.
A gentle flame always yields better results.
I guess, in that sense, you should treat every dish like a relationship.However short your tryst with it, you must give it time for best results.A flame higher than medium-low is the culinary equivalent of coming on too strong or overreacting to the little things.
Too much heat and you are in danger of ruining everything; the ingredients will shrivel, oil will splatter, stuff will burn.
Instead, just wait it out, and you will strike gold.
- Rushina Munshaw-Ghildiyal HT6N1111