Learning life skills is the new item on menu and I am all raring to go. Forget the noodles, roast and the occasional helping out in kitchen; I am really pathetic when it comes to cooking. If I myself didn’t know that till now, well yesterday was a day of reckoning.

I finally got the go ahead to do a fish fry. Confidence was brimming since I got loads of experience in the frying part from previous helping. But this time around it was different. The finer points of cooking skills, like cleaning, cutting and masala mixing was also tested. The one word that could describe the whole process is ' Frightening'. The fish looked like it came straight from a post-mortem after the cleaning. Well that is how my brother described it anyway. After the marinating part, one could attribute it to a “cover up job of a murder victim gone astray”. I hoped the looks wouldn’t hamper the taste as much as the appetite. But that was not to be so. The masala didn’t set properly in the meat and finally we had to eat some raw pieces of garbled fish that would have put even prehistoric man to shame.

Never to give up that easily, today was the turn of chicken. The pieces were already cut properly by the butcher. So one job less to mess up. My mom having finally learned a painful lesson not to pin too much hope on me gave a hands on teaching of how to do 'broasted chicken'. The marinating, the mixing and the frying went pretty well. I even got ingredients right. I may have over fried a couple of pieces but guess what - not only was the whole stuff tasty, but it was also my first successful endeavour in the kitchen. One more thing to brag about in the blog. Chao :)