Warning! You are in for a dramatic narration of a girl's first encounter with the monster of the kitchen
- THE PRESSURE COOKER!!
When I started my life afresh at a new household; I knew how to sort cashflows, I knew how to tally a Balance Sheet, sing, paint, edit stuff, and a million other things. Cooking was fun as I have always considered it an art, and love experimenting.
But one thing I did not know was how to operate a pressure cooker. Yes. Since my childhood days, a
whistling pressure cooker was something I always would run away from. Like it was a monster bomb waiting to bring down the place along with poor me in it! The numerous stories of mishandled pressure cookers bursting and killing people or burning them just added to the fear.
Sadly, nothing much changed even at the age of Twenty Five. At home the usage of pressure cooker was minimum ( now I wonder if my fear did contribute to that ). Given that, when my mom in law was out on a weekend and I was asked to cook something in this very monster, my panic was evident. Thankfully, my dear cousin came home as a savior. Brave as a warrior, he did the hideous task for me, asking me to turn it off after the right number of whistles. I remember running into the kitchen at the right moment ( after standing at a safe distance to count the whistles) to turn the stove off before the next whistle would blow rattling my brain!
So then, I was pretty smug after that successful cooker mission, as though I won a master chef competition ( though the credits go to someone else really). Then came the next big challenge of cooking for three days when my mother in law was away.
Day one: I added the right amount of water, put in the ingredients, closed the lid, turned on the stove, put the whistle on, and waited just out of kitchen with heartbeats running a marathon and a sweaty forehead, for the evil whistle to blow. But then, that never happened.
After a long wait of over Twenty minutes, I took the courage to go turn off the stove to examine what possibly went wrong. To my utter amusement, everything was cooked nice and neat inside. I thanked the heavens for saving me from the wrath of the whistle monster! This continued on day two, and I began to believe that I have after-all invented this amazing pressure cooker that does its job silent as a cat. Just imagine my joy!
But then everything had to go wrong on the next day, when my uber-confident self decided to make a special dinner with a challenging menu for the hubby. I did the same process, continued with rest of the cooking, but when it was time to take out all the cooked stuff from the cooled down cooker, it just won't open.
First I consoled myself saying the pressure is still high inside, and that I should give it more time. It was half an hour, and then one hour, it was almost time for the hubby to get back and half my dinner surprise was inside the monster machine.
Leaving my convictions, I decided to get help from one of my aunts who stays upstairs. She tried to pry it open for quite some time, even by hitting it with a big stone! But the cooker just won't budge. Finally we took it upstairs to the uncle who decided to knock it open with his powerful bare hands. And he succeeded too! When I let out a relieved sigh, the aunt asks me, "But where is the gasket??"
My confused reply was, " Er...it has a gasket? Where does that fit?"
After Thirty minutes of lecture on how to operate a pressure cooker and each part of it, the realization dawned that this gasket was the very culprit that led me into believing I invented a no-whistle cooker! Today it just decided to show it's importance by getting the lid stuck. That sneaky little gasket!
Soon after that I received enough phone calls from different relatives educating me on cooker rules.
Today I welcome the sound of that very whistle as it reminds me that the gasket is sure in place! :)
Earlier in life, I had learnt to master exam pressure and work pressure. On this day I learnt how to master the pressure cooker pressure!
