a pinch of this and a dash of that

It was at a potluck lunch at a friend’s place that I met this lady. She is my friend’s cousin who has been in various foreign countries for a few decades now. She loved the food and periodically asked for recipes of this or that dish – particularly my rasam. Now for most South Indians this is a basic dish that doesn’t generate a lot of enthusiasm. When babies are first introduced to rice they start with bland lentils and then graduate to rasam which is their first introduction to all the spice that would follow them wherever they go for the rest of their lives. A child that starts its initiation into culinary world with the mild taste of pepper, daniya, jeera and chillies will never be satisfied with any other kind of food around the globe – his palate is ruined to the softer cuisines – all of them taste like mud after his tongue has grown to delight in the sharp taste of tamarind, chillies and pepper.
And so, when my guests ask me for a recipe of rasam I feel let down. When the menu contains dishes I have laboured over – like paruppu usili or avial or poricha kootu, they single out the easiest and simplest of them all and sing its praises. It is at these times that I wish I had just cooked rice and rasam and served it with some roasted papads – an unthinkable insult to a guest in a Tamilian household unless they are sick or something!
Anyway this story is not about Rasam. So what is it about? I am not very sure myself.

May be it is about Spoons. You must be thinking that I have kind of lost it – talking about camels first and now spoons. What is there to talk about spoons? I did not know too, until I started giving her the recipe for rasam.:
‘Soak a little tamarind in water’ I started.
She asked: ‘How much is a little?’
‘About this much’ I said making a small ball with my fingers.
‘But I will be using a paste. So how many spoons should I use?”
“ok. Perhaps two small spoons” I said
‘you mean coffee spoon or moka spoon?’ she asked.
I hadn’t even heard of these in my entire life - I use the same kind of spoon for tea, coffee, sugar and sambar powder!

In our house, we use our fingers to eat. Always have. So spoons have never been an issue. All the spoons in my mother’s kitchen were of different sizes – they had come as free gifts along with purchases of coffee powder, soap powder or even talcum powder. We never considered them as measures- my mother knew how much of the ingredients she needed for the dish and she used the spoon to scoop them out. We could use a ladle to take out salt ‘to taste’. The back of the ladle or spoon or even a spatula served fine for ‘a pinch’ of something. Your eyes knew how much you needed for the dish and the implement in hand was just a tool not a measure. Spoons of different shapes and sizes were also convenient for serving spicy stuff like pickles – so as far as our house was concerned spoons were smaller ladles that fit nicely into spice containers ; and their size also made them convenient implements to shove food into your mouth if your fingers were not available for the same; and very useful for feeding someone else – babies and sick people.

Way back in the early eighties someone gifted me with a fine cutlery set and I was rather puzzled about the assortment of spoons, forks and knives of different shapes and sizes. And a friend enlightened me on the purpose of each. Having traveled a bit since those days and dined at some fancy places, I do know a bit about the mysteries of cutlery at the dining table. But I still find it difficult to reduce my recipes to teaspoons and tablespoons.

At least I am better than my grandmother’s recipes. She and her mother filled the house with the heavenliest aromas when they cooked and their dishes tasted ‘just so’ every time. But ask them for a recipe and they would act like you asked them for the combination of the lock to the royal mint. Or they would give you a recipe that sounded like a list of ingredients printed on packaged food these days:
Add sambar powder, hing and salt to tamarind water. Add vegetables. When it has boiled enough, take it down and garnish.
‘No paati. Tell me the ingredients first’
“I already told you’
‘ok. I will figure that out. How much of each?’
‘Kannthittama podu’ ( meaning use your eyes as the guide to how much is needed for the dish)
‘That doesn’t work paati. tell me, how much?”
Then she would take the tip of her thumb up to a line on the ring finger or pinkie and say ‘this much’
‘But Paati your fingers are bigger than mine’ I’d whine
“ya so adjust accordingly”

In any case how was I to write down a measure like that!
Or she would say ‘watch me next time I make the dish and learn’ which would be an ordeal because you were not supposed to touch so many things in the kitchen or you were expected to wash your hands every time you touched something. And she would be so quick around the kitchen that if your attention wandered a bit she would have added something to the dish which you would have missed. I used to really think that she was being mean and did not want to part with her secret recipes. But only years later I understood that it is very difficult to reduce a recipe into teaspoons and tablespoons of ingredients.
That is why I have great respect for people like Tarla Dalal and food bloggers like Nandita and Vandana who give exact measurements for each ingredient in a recipe. Now when my son or daughter-in-law ask me for a recipe I simply give them the URL to these blogs. And this is where I finally directed my NRI friend - to check with one of these food bloggers for the recipe. Thank you Nandita and Vandana.

Now I understand the importance of teaspoons and tablespoons in our lives. How would we eat anything even half decent were it not for these? But I still do not understand why a teaspoon isn’t good enough for Coffee or Moka. Do you think my bottle of nescafé might explode if I used a teaspoon in it? or would my cup of Moka curdle? Or would it just be another unpardonable social faux pas? Anyone willing to enlighten this philistine?