Culinary Tales: Cooker cake? No thanks!’

‘Ah, this smells so great’, I thought to myself as I turned the stove off. Living alone in a tiny, sleepy and very judgemental town by the name Pollachi, taught me how to stay indoors as much as possible, away from the ever-roving eyes of the neighbours. I would rarely step out to eat and even if I did, I had to walk three kilometres to the closest restaurant. So, I decided to start cooking at home instead.

It was a routine — I’d walk to the grocery store, pick up the supplies I needed for the day and walk back — I invariably had a menu sorted in my head. On one such day, I had planned to make yam kofta curry and jeera rice followed by a chocolate ‘cooker’ cake. Yes, there is a brand that makes an instant cake mix, which if youadd eggs and milk to, can be baked in a pressure cooker. I began chopping and peeling, cutting and dicing, sifting and stirring and finally the kadai with the curry, and the cookers, one with the cake and the other with the rice, began bubbling and boiling away. My elaborate meals were therapeutic in many ways for living in such a small town away from everything and everyone familiar to me was changing me every day as a person. Cooking helped me and gave me purpose to wake up each day and distracted me from my loneliness.

So, after setting the table waiting to dig into the dishes, I turned the gas off. The curry was delicious; the rice had come out fluffy and just perfect. But then there was the cake. I distinctly remember pouring the batter into a vessel and setting it into the cooker, but to this date it remains a mystery how the batter remained so without getting cooked even one bit, despite three whistles and simmering for 20 minutes! So, cooker cake? No thanks!