Saturday, March 14, 2015

Totally Beefed up

The whole comedy surrounding the beef ban took me many years back. 1996 to be precise. 

Myself and my cousin brother  had recently moved into Bangalore city. For some time we stayed with his sister,and then moved into a house of on our own. It cant be called a house. It was rather a room built on the terrace of a commercial complex. But, we had enough time in our hands especially over the weekends. 

One such crazy weekend, we decided to cook beef. We had no clue how to !. We went to Yeshwantpur and bought couple of kilos of beef. Yes, 2 kg for two of us. What were we thinking ? Only Gomatha knows !! Now that we had the beef, it had to be sipped down. So we bought some spirit.a bottle of rum.

How do you cook 2 kgs of beef ? My bro seemed to know. So in went the beef into a pressure cooker. He told me it cooks slow. So slow it was!! . The rum was vanishing as the pressure cooker kept whistling tirelessly. Beef wasnt getting cooked it seems ! And we were running out of patience and rum. The latter being a tougher commodity to replace. 

My cousin took out the beef from the cooker finally. A tawa replaces the cooker. Various masala powders get sprinkled generously and the beef is getting prepared well ,for our taste buds to feast. After a while, probably when he got bored stirring it endlessly, my cousin takes some out into a plate and serves our first ever self cooked starter. We both have a piece each. I chew it to what seemed like eternity, and after gulping it down with a generous doze of rum, I look at my cousin. He was trying to come in terms with his beef adventure himself. 

After an hour, the only progress was aching jaw bones and  heavily sloshed  head. Two kg of beef was still staring at us. I felt it was ridiculing me, or may be I was in fact drunk. We kept our egos in the pressure cooker and proceeded with a huge vessel full of beef to our sister's house. She took one look at our culinary production. I don't remember if she laughed or cried. It wouldn't have made a difference, anyways.

She took the beef into her kitchen and in half hour came with a remixed version of our very own original preparation. Needless to say, that smelled eatable. We realized why we should not have experimented so much. 

We all feasted for a week on beef. Yes, a whole week !! That officially is the last time I bought beef. We had so much of beef that it took the excitement of craving for beef away. 

Now that someone wants to ban it, it might be enough reason for the crave to be back. 

Now, I'm Ready to be beefed up again.