The first dish that I cooked - my all-time favourite Curd Rice

Hi Friends

I am back to the blogging space after a long hiatus with the hope that at least this time I would cling onto this pastime for long.

This time I am goingto share the experience of cooking my first dish. I and my better half (well this blog is special in another way because I am introducing her for the first time :) to all of you. Her name is Manimozhi Nangai. Other details later...) decided to meet up at a friends (they are a married couple - Murali and Divya) house for lunch along with another friend who was recently married too. Mani planned that the guys should cook lunch and threatened the friends' wives over the phone that they would have to bear the consequences if they ever intervened into the kitchen affairs.

I have never put my culinary skills to test not because I wasn't interested but it just never happened. While I was pondering about my contribution for the lunch it struck me that I should choose a dish that I could make singly no matter how good or bad it was. Only then I would get a good idea of how 'kitchen-friendly' I am. And guess what I made a very safe choice and that was the ever green Curd Rice

So at the outset I decided that I would make the dish special by adding some ingredients instead of serving the bland plain curd rice. I went shopping and got Cucumber, Carrot, Cashewnuts and seedless grapes. My friend's wife had told me that they had pomegranate in their home and I hate raisins. So I eliminated both from the shopping list

I started peeling the cucumber and cut it into pieces. The cucumber pieces were little larger than I expected and though I wanted to cut the carrot into pieces I decided otherwise and paid heed to Murali's suggestion of grating it. Once the rice was ready, I started mixing the curd and added little salt to it. I repeated the process for few minutes and added the salad of cucumber and carrot. After adding the seedless grapes I realized that Pomegranate was not available in Murali's home. In that disappointment I forgot to add the cashewnuts too :-(

But at the end the curd rice came really well and though no one appreciated it (even after me asking for it blatantly) it was the most eaten food item in the entire lunch menu. I really loved the way I had made it and I convinced myself that the others liked it too. It was a little short of salt but since I consume very less salt I was OK with it. This has definitely been an inspiration that I should try my hand out at the kitchen because apparently the grade shows that I am indeed 'kitchen-friendly'. Thanks to Mani for making it happen :-)