Samar time in the kitchen

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The words, they have been flowing like a torrent from the confines of this writer’s mind. And then one day providence struck this journalist and writer — and the words morphed themselves into ingredients that demanded his immediate attention. That was when editor and journalist Samar Halarnkar turned his nimble fingers from the computer to showing his prowess in the kitchen in what he calls the “jugaad cooking.” Now, he brandishes the knife and degchi with equal aplomb. And taking his experiences to the able-bodied foodies around the country, he recently released his forays in the kitchen (which are a part of his ongoing foodie column of anecdotes of a cooking husband) — The Married Man’s Guide to Creative Cooking and other Dubious Adventures. The book is a delightful cornucopia of recipes that will interest any foodie.
“It all started when my mom would ask my brother and me to help out in the kitchen, chopping onions and stuff.” So when Samar went to college, he recalled those chopathons and tried to imbue some taste into the hand-to-mouth existence of a student. “When I started working, I always loved food but the salary those days didn’t really help us students. I started cooking on a hotplate under my bed. And it was all trail and error,” he says.
Today, he thinks the highest compliment is from his three-year-old daughter Alia, who is thrilled everytime she hears that her “poppy” made the dish.
When someone suggested making a book about his travails in the kitchen from his columns, he thought it was a great idea.
“I love the process of roasting the seed and spices and discovering India’s culinary history and my family culinary history. I found a Marathi book that my family were resettled pirates and part of Shivaji’s army,” he explains.
On men who can’t cook, he does not mince words, “Men in India are quite helpless in the kitchen, and the coddling continues from mother to wife. It’s the Mera Raja Beta Syndrome. The Indian male’s attitude to women is dismissive and superior and my theory is that it all starts in the kitchen.”
As a full-time father, he holds fort at home while his wife works. The man who wrote Nirvana Under the Rain Tree, an early chronicle of the Internet revolution is now set to work on poverty and hunger-related articles, an “anti-thesis of what I do,” he laughs! And while he does not get time to research much,, the kitchen rejuvenates him for the developmental writing ahead… add a wokful of flavours and this full-time father can’t wait to try out new recipes and tweak it according to his tastes.