I’m Priyanka, lawyer turned storyteller turned obsessive cook. Welcome to my Passive Aggressive Kitchen.
It all started when I came to Dartmouth for my Masters. My (then) neighbours and I got together each night to cook dinner and more often than not, we spent a lot of time arguing about the right ingredients to add, or the right way to cook a dish. We are all South Indians, but have different roots and hence the difference in cooking style. That first kitchen in North Park saw so much action: pies, quiches, pizzas, thupka, manchurian, and more. Each time we went to Hannafords, we picked out new ingredients, to try out new cuisines. If we were not cooking to experiment, we were cooking to evoke nostalgia: grandmom’s rasam, mother’s chicken curry, grandfather’s dal and on went the list. We shared our family with each other through food and became each other’s family in a new place. This was the kitchen that got me obsessed with food, so much so that it became a subject of my thesis. Over the past few years, I’ve learnt a couple of things:
- I’m obsessed with lime;
- I (like my mother and my grandmother) do not use measurements for my ingredients. I tip over the box of cumin powder till it feels just right;
- Eyeballing measurements DO NOT work when baking; and
- Did I mention my obsession with lime?
Simply put, the kitchen is my happy place. It is the place where I feel at home (unlike the socially awkward sense that hangs over my head like a dark cloud). It fills me with a sense of joy that I know gets transferred to the food I cook. I sometimes pretend that my ingredients are talking to each other, I talk to my oven, and sometimes even my handheld mixer (I dunno, he keeps giving me mixed signals.)
I started this blog to show everyone that entering the kitchen is not a chore, even if you are a student struggling to get through to the next day or if you are working all day (we’ve all been there!). Let the kitchen be your escape and I’ll show you how to enjoy it!
From time to time you might see some guest posts. These are my family and close friends. You see, I’ve had the fortune of being brought up in a family of cooks and being surrounded by people who are as passionate about food as I am and they all have great recipes to share.
So take a look around, explore, and see what you’d wanna start cooking.