I learned something about myself this week. Or perhaps I didn’t learn it as much as I accepted it. Either way, the fact remains that I am a survivalist cook. Actually, if I am being completely honest, my pessimism isn’t confined to the kitchen: I manage the entire house as though today is the last day anything familiar or functional will be available in the shops. I hoard cleaning products, stash away clothes I buy knowing that I won’t need them for months and when I cook I make enough for full tummies, leftovers and freezer reserves. Show up at our house whenever you feel like it and I can guarantee there will be lasagne, in some state of preservation, available to eat.
I wasn’t always this way. Quite the opposite, in fact. I remember one apartment I lived in in Beijing where my fridge boasted little more than a pot of yogurt and some walnuts on any chosen day, on the basis that eating out was cheaper than buying ingredients. My first apartment in Yangon came with only a single-hob camp stove (no oven, no microwave). I lived there for a year without ever buying more than one pan and could fit all my basic staples into one cupboard. Again, I mostly ate out and, when I stayed in, I bought whatever fuss-free sustenance I spotted in the nearby supermarket and made do. That I don’t remember buying crockery might also suggest I didn’t have much of that either.
Fast forward almost ten years (from my Yangon place, that is, more like 15 from those Beijing days) and I have cupboards groaning under the weight of imported Waitrose essentials (mint jelly, bisto gravy granules, oxo cubes), a fully stocked, double-door fridge and table settings for eight. Of course, some of this advanced adulting can be put down to the fact that I met Dylan in my first year in Yangon: an encounter which upgraded my life in more ways than simply forcing me to buy more pans. But it’s not Dylan’s fault that I cook like there’s an apocalypse coming tomorrow.
I apportion blame for my prepper mentality evenly between COVID, the Myanmar coup and living where we live. I doubt anyone emerged from COVID without having hoarded something at some point but, with my COVID experience having been intersected by both a military coup and a newborn baby, I think perhaps the emotional scars of self-preservation are taking longer to heal. What I learned about stocking up and locking down during early COVID, I then applied to life under the coup. I’m not saying that disappearing deli meats were the biggest of my worries during those months but, having learned the value of home comforts and familiar routines as a coping mechanism for COVID-induced isolation, it was very difficult to imagine life without the simple delight of a ham and cheese sandwich, especially given that I was suddenly responsible not only for my own wellbeing but for Jasper’s too. During COVID and the coup, my father-in-law, Tony, went one step further than my collection of British pickles and freezer full of parbaked croissants: he bought a chest freezer and kept us in brussel sprouts, lamb shanks and ice cream for months.
And then there’s the ‘living where we live’ factor in this equation: a factor which multiplied the challenges of COVID and the coup by the power of Myanmar and which is now at work multiplying my day-to-day life by the power of India. As I have written before in an earlier blog post, I expend a lot of energy trying to ‘fight against the culture of Mumbai at the same rate as I am trying to embrace it’ which, in simpler terms, means hoarding Crunchy Nut Cornflakes when I know we should be eating khichdi (kedgeree) for breakfast. Again, I didn’t used to be this person. Back in my Beijing days I lived by an edict of ‘I didn’t come all the way to China to eat a beef burger’, whereas now I find myself more of a ‘Ooh what I wouldn’t give for a beef burger’ kind of person. (Reminder: beef is illegal here. I will not be acting on my fantasies.) The reason that living where we live is partially to blame for my over-buying and over-catering is that the ingredients I want to use to make the dishes I want to eat are not consistently available. So when I see them, I buy them. Even if I have no immediate need or space for them.
I am fully aware that if I immersed myself deep in Indian culinary culture we would be eating delicious, home-cooked local flavours for every meal and I wouldn’t have to keep remembering where I found the ‘good’ sausages that one time. The ingredients needed for a local diet would be easily purchased, daily and for a fraction of the cost, from the market just down the road. But a local diet would present two problems: firstly, I wouldn’t be the cook any more. Me trying to follow a recipe for butter chicken (if there are recipes, that is - I imagine many of the cooks have learned by doing) would be about as rewarding as me trying to forge the Mona Lisa. I am more than happy to accept my limitations in both these departments. And anyway, for now, I am enjoying being the cook: I like to know what’s going into Jasper and I very much enjoy my hour in the kitchen each evening, listening to my podcasts, preparing the family dinner. This hour is entirely mine and is made possible by Jasper being taken downstairs by his nanny, to play with the other kids. I doubt I would experience the same sense of active relaxation if my tiny tyrannical taskmaster were shouting at me from the other side of the baby gate I have installed in the doorway to our kitchen. Handing over the reins to a hired cook would take away both my control over Jasper’s nutrition and my opportunity to be doing something with my hands rather than staring at my computer screen.
The second problem is one of taste preference. A lot of people ask me, both here in India and back home in either Australia or Jersey, ‘Do you like Indian food?’ The longer I stay here and the more I understand about just how vast and varied the concept of ‘Indian food’ is, the harder I find this question to answer. It doesn’t have a simple yes-no answer: it’s more of a case of ‘in general, yes, there are lots of things I like but on a day to day basis no, I don’t like everything and I couldn’t eat Indian food for every meal’.
I do enjoy an idli, a roti or a paratha as an alternative to rice, and I would happily eat seconds of a papri chaat or a cheese kulcha. I love the zing of liquid that bursts out of a crispy pani puri and I will never turn down some creamy butter chicken. But there is one menu item here that I have earmarked as my nemesis. I have tried it twice, both times in Udaipur, and failed to complete the task of eating it with any dignity both times. It is a ball of ground or pureed mutton, described as ‘melt in the mouth’ and ‘aromatic and flavoursome’. If the aroma and flavour you are after is that of tangy, fragrant, pureed cat food, then I’d say that description is bang on the money. But if not, then I’d steer well clear of the galouti kebab.
Another question I am asked a lot (out of horror by people I encounter here, and out of intrigue by those I talk to back home) is: ‘Do you cook every day?’. And the answer to this one is: ‘Just about, yes.’ Except on those occasions when I make more food than we have freezer space for and then we simply have a rerun of that dinner the following evening. Even if what I am doing is not strictly cooking, it is still my responsibility to put something edible on plates for Jasper and Dylan every morning and evening: a responsibility I take surprisingly seriously considering I am hardly a gourmand. I don’t put much effort into lunches because my freezer stash forms the basis of Jasper’s lunch - easily reheated family favourites like bolognese, shepherd’s pie and yes, lasagne, that can be stuffed into a thermos pot and fed to him in the car on the way home from school. He now does three hours at nursery, from 9am -12pm and, even with a snack break, he acts as though he’s wasting away by the time he’s collected: all puppy-dog eyed as he paws at the lunchbox asking ‘What’s in the bag?’. My lunch tends to consist of scraps from the previous night’s dinner: a handful of lettuce leaves, a dollop of pasta sauce, a few slithers of chicken, whatever vegetables Jasper doesn’t like this week and the last mouthful of potato salad. And Dylan orders takeaway at his desk.
Once we leave India, I doubt I will ever spend as much time planning, shopping, prepping or cooking because we will be back in the land of one-stop supermarkets, ready meals and a barbecue manned by Dylan, so it feels only appropriate to document what a week’s worth of meals looks like for us here in Mumbai. This food diary also serves as a response to the third question I am asked a lot (again, both locally and internationally) which is: ‘What do you eat?’
Breakfasts are our favourite meal as a family: we are less frazzled and less rushed than at other times of day. They consist of a pile of fresh fruit and a rotation of porridge, cereal or toast. Jasper doesn’t know a life without tropical fruits. While in Jersey he would regularly request a watermelon or mango juice as a drink in a cafe, oblivious to how spoiled that made him sound, prompting me to mumble an explanation of ‘we live in India’ before changing his order to an apple juice or Ribena.
MONDAY dinner might be a grazing platter, bolstered by my new discovery of the Spotted Cow Fromagerie and Eleftheria Cheese who combine to provide fresh buffalo mozzarella, burrata and crackers. Jasper loves this kind of meal and delights in having the freedom to steal all the cured sausage and lick all the masala crackers.
TUESDAY is often Mexican night: chicken, wraps and assorted accompaniments, some ordered in from the Mexican Box which is conveniently right outside our gate and which does a delicious mango-avocado guac and some colourful tortilla chips.
WEDNESDAY is usually a one-pot or tray-bake night: sausage and potato casserole, chicken and vegetable bake or very lazy reheated (but homemade) sausage rolls.
THURSDAY I’ll bash out a bucket of bolognese (if I have built up a suitable stash of buff mince). If the buff has been playing hard to get or I’ve ordered too many capsicums, we’ll have a chicken stir fry.
FRIDAY is often when I cook a fresh batch of lasagne: enough to feed us well through the weekend and to replenish the freezer supply.
On SATURDAY I try to shirk kitchen duties, ordering pastries in for breakfast, reheating Friday’s dinner for lunch and ordering a takeaway pizza for dinner.
On SUNDAYS we go to watch Dylan play touch rugby in the mornings and reward ourselves with a takeaway Chinese for lunch (from the one authentic-tasting place we have found - Royal China) and then on the weekends when Dylan has both Saturday and Sunday off, and on the weeks where I have been able to procure a whole chicken or a leg of lamb, I’ll do a roast dinner.
As you can see, there is a notable lack of Indian food on my weekly menu. Every now and then I consider ordering it in. There are estimated to be 87,000 restaurants in Mumbai and I am sure the majority are serving and delivering Indian food, but the amount of plastic packaging that comes with what seems like a simple order puts me off entirely. That, and the fear of heart disease from the density of some of the gravies. I know I should try harder to include more Indian food in our diets, but for now, my system works. I am exceptionally lucky that neither Jasper nor Dylan is fussy about repeated meals because I only have about five or six ideas on the roster and every one of them shows up more than once a fortnight.
My particular brand of survivalist cooking is very efficient: both time-wise and in the sense that we appear to have only used one bottle of gas in a year. So, if the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride in very fast horses, head for our house. We’ll have lasagne for dinner. And lunch. And then dinner again. But I can promise it will taste like home.
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