Why don't you become a chef?

They just have to ask me that. Every time. And I'm flattered. And well, honestly, I LOVE it when I'm praised for my culinary skills. I love cooking. Its so so so relaxing. Therapeutic, even.

My roommate is a lucky girl. Chocolate-covered luck. Her ever-so-sweet "Daaaaady" sent for her birthday, a 3.5 lb slab of Hershey's chocolate. 3.5 lb of chocolate. "It's gonna take you months to finish that off. You know what you should do? Take it to school and give it away. That'll make sure the chocolate doesn't stick around as adipose.", I said to her on a lazy Saturday morning. "Aah.. don't you worry. Won't take me more than 10 days." she quipped.

Cut to Sunday morning.

Dear roomie calls out to me,"Praj I'm fed up of this chocolate. Make something out of it please please please!"

I love it. That call. "Please cook up something exotic for me?!" is the ultimate, one hundred percent, foolproof pick-up line that works ON me. That's the only one that works. Pity, no one's used it yet. Not as a pick-up line. Sigh. Men. Impossible. Synonymous.

Anyway, getting back to the chocolate slab. Well, as excited as I was, about this new project at hand, I started looking up some of my favourite food/recipe blogs (links on the right!) for inspiration. Erm..well.. more like, for a recipe. (Yes, yes, easy way out blah blah.. yadayada..) Now, when I'm looking at recipe blogs, especially the well-illustrated ones, with crisp, colourful photographs, and a decent family story before the recipe, its like a time warp for me. I lose all consciousness of the task at hand and just flow with the recipe. I can smell fresh asparagus when its just mentioned. Yes. I'm obsessive about food. I also go on tangents; so long that the main issue seems like a tiny dot. (More about my various mental, neurological [they're different!], psychological disorders in later posts).

An hour or so later, roomie hollered. "Praaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaj!" and I jerked back into the world. Alright. Something had to be done. Soon.

I decided to risk it. No recipe. Follow your instinct. Jo hoga dekha jayega. I chopped, sifted, blended, ground, whipped (basically, all possible action verbs one could do in the kitchen. Oh wait.. didn't do all :P) for an hour, licked the cake batter off the mixing spoon (It's amazing how deceptive cake batter can be. It always tastes good; even if the cake turns out to be a disaster.) and shoved the baking dish into the oven. And waited; nervously.

45 minutes later, my roomies floated into the kitchen, like Jerry floats on the aroma of cheese. (Jerry of Tom and Jerry. Duh!) "Aah, get it out of the oven now!" And so I put on my cookie-monster mittens and took it out. It looked alright but I couldn't figure what was going on inside. (So tempted to metaphorically pick on Mr.Wrong). And as I got back from my time warp, well, what do you know! It turned out amazing. Perfectly decadent. Sinful, I'd call it. Just like the dense, slightly-mushy-gooey, perfectly sweet chocolate cake.

I live for these moments. And yet, I know that I don't want to be a chef. Too much therapy will make Praj a lunatic :)