Noodles, simple easy-to-make dish which brings radiance
on the faces when they eat it at home…home-made with little changes as per
individual taste…all because of its Made-At-Home tag coming with no prior
preparation and no going out and coughing out a good amount from the pocket.
As this
dish comes up an anecdote also comes to light all because of its close
association with this food.
To make noodles is easy:
Take some noodles, any make, I’ve
used Tops vegetarian noodles. There is the direction on the packet, handy for a
first timer. A container of water sat on the fire and some salt went in before
the water started boiling.
Waiting for
the water to boil and in that time span let me tell you about my Uncle/Mama and
his Noodles story. Once we went to a Chinese Restaurant…quite a long time back…two
sisters, our young Bro and Mama…had gone for lunch. Mama didn’t like the dim
lights there and went on muttering, “ki ondhokar, karor mookh dekha
jaach-che-na (It’s so dark, can’t even see each other’s face)”. It was
difficult to stop him but to change the topic we told him to tell us about his
Desh. His Desh means…then East Bengal and now Bangladesh. He loved to tell us
about his Desh and all the beautiful places and the waterways…how they
travelled from one place to another by huge boats. Little brother had by then
ordered some mixed noodles, chicken and prawn and a plate of prawn fried rice.
Back to my cooking. The water had
started boiling, added some oil to it and then let go the whole packet of
noodles into it. A little stir now and then…4-5 minutes and then tested one
noodle to see if it was done. Another half a minute and drained the noodles on
a colander.
As I took out the carrots and
capsicum from the fridge, my anecdote continues.
Soon the
food was served. Seeing the plate of noodles, Mama cried out quite loudly, “kee
re saap diyeche khete, Chinese-ra ja bolte ta khaee. Aami kintu saap khabo na,
tomra-o kheoo na, Didi ke bole debo tomra saap khecho (Mama was annoyed at seeing
the plate of noodles. He thought it to be snakes cooked and served for he knew
Chinese people ate snakes. He threatened to complain to Ma about us eating snakes).
We laughed but there was anger also for Mama was making a laughing stock of all
of us before other people present there. Somehow he stopped and after much cajoling
tasted the dish of snakes (as per his version), and enjoyed it. “Baah! Khoob bhalo
saad, tai na (Wow, tastes really good isn’t it)? This time his question did not
irritate us but made us laugh out loud LOL.
In the meantime it was time for
chopping some onions into thin slices, carrots cut into thin strips and capsicum
cut very much like the carrots.
Make egg scramble of 4 eggs and put
it aside.
Poured about 1 ½ tbsp of oil in the
cooking vessel. Then added the onion and sautéed for about 1 minute.
Added the carrots and some salt to
taste. The salt helps in cooking and softening the onion and carrots faster.
2 minutes then in went the capsicum
and a stir for 1 ½ minutes.
And next the noodles and a good mix
with the veggies in there.
Added some soya sauce and hot and
sweet tomato sauce and mixed well.
Added the egg scramble and again a
mix-n- match process to end it.
Each one
carried their plates and sat before the television to enjoy the programme that
was going on.
Whenever I
cook noodles I’m reminded of the snake story of our favourite Mama.
But this
preparation comes mostly when rotis/chappatis are not wanted dinner.
© gouri
guha 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment