So. How do you decide what you’re going to be cooking this week?

Here’s what I do. At the beginning of the week, I tally up what I’ve had the previous week. I note any deficiencies in terms of vitamins, etc. and sum up what I need to emphasise over the coming week. I then plan out meals for each and every day, write a list of all the ingredients needed, and go shopping, carefully adhering to the list.

I am, of course, lying. Can you tell?

There are basically two things which should be sending up red flags in the above claim. Firstly, and this one is specific to me, it’s way too sensible and organised. I am neither. My writing about food tends to include less of the “3.7 bananas a week will ensure that you have a healthy supply of potassium, which is important to prevent an imbalance in your figgin.” and more of the “Hmm. That tingles. Actually, you know, that’s rather painful, ‘cause I’ve JUST PLUGGED MY HAND INTO THE MAINS”. After reading some of my accounts at least one friend has expressed her amazement that anything I cook works out (but it does, at least most of the time).

Secondly, and more importantly, it’s really dull. I can’t abide doing boring things.

In fact, it was a loaded question. How do you decide what to cook this week? You don’t! What on earth are you doing planning your cooking several days in advance? I mean, sure. If you want to do a particular recipe for some special event or the like then fine. But every day meals? Why would you do such a thing?

Often when I’ve ended up cooking for my family they’ve asked me a few hours before I’m due to start what we’re having for dinner. My answer is almost invariably “I don’t know. I’ll think of something”. For some reason this amuses them. I don’t see why, personally. Knowing what I’m cooking in advance takes the fun out of it!

Equally, sometimes you really just want something for no good reason. Every now and then I randomly find myself thinking “Hmm. I really want pancakes.” The solution to this problem is obvious: Making pancakes!

It’s obvious… but not many people would actually do it.

As support I’ll offer the following snippet of conversation:

Me: “I’m bored. I’m going to go make cookies.”
Friend: “Only you would make cookies on a Friday night just because you’re bored.”

And I don’t understand this. Making cookies is fun, not especially hard, and at the end of it you’ve got cookies! It’s a great way to dealing with boredom, or just something to do for the hell of it even when you’re not bored.

Part of the problem seems to be that the phrase “I really want X” is implicitly accompanied by the expectation that this desire is not going to be satisfied, so one doesn’t even consider acting upon it. A lot of people seem to think that cooking is a lot of work, so you shouldn’t just do it for the hell of it. I think this is really unfortunate.

Without further ado I will transition into an anecdote – my first (and only to date) time making onion bhajis.

I was visiting Liz up in Cambridge, and having discovered that our plans to find a free table in a coffee shop on a weekend in term time were not quite as well thought out as we had previously believed, we were hanging around her house. At some point the conversation turned to food.

I should provide context: Liz is even more awkward to feed than I am. The combination of near vegetarianism, a nut allergy, and gluten intolerance does not make for easy feeding (I’m pseudo-vegetarian and dairy intolerant). We were discussing ways of getting around the gluten intolerance for making various things – in particular pancakes. A while ago I experimented with using gram flour as a binding agent in making vegan American style pancakes. It failed (they looked perfect and tasted terrible), but I learned a fair bit about using gram flour in the course of doing so.

So, we talked about gram flour. From there it was a short step to talking about onion bhajis. I’d read a great post from shammi over at Food, in the Main about this a week or two before (I think I’d read this in the archives, as this was much more recently than November).

It emerged that Liz hadn’t had a bhaji in years. The problems are two-fold – firstly, most store bought ones contain wheat flour. Most of the ones in restaurants etc, have been deep fried, so their non-lethality to those with nut allergies is far from guaranteed. Hence, no bhajis. A terrible state of affairs.

It was at some point in this conversation that Liz uttered the fateful words “Oh, I really want a bhaji now!”

You know what’s coming, don’t you?

“Ok. Let’s make some!”

I don’t remember the details of the conversation that followed, but highlights included that no, I didn’t really know how to make bhajis, but I was sure that it wasn’t too hard. Also we didn’t have internet access at the time, so couldn’t check out the previously linked post. But I had the general idea, and there was a store 5-10 minutes walk away which would sell us the necessary ingredients.

So, about half an hour later we returned with onions, gram flour and dhana jeera (a mixture of powdered coriander and cumin). This, some sunflower oil, salt and generic balti spices and chili powder from Liz’s kitchen were enough to complete our ingredients list.

The actual process of making the bhajis was then pretty easy. I won’t bother giving too many details – Shammi’s post is a lot better if you want detailed instructions on how to make a Bhaji, but really it’s very simple. Basically just slice the onions, bung everything in a bowl and mix, adding water until the onions are coated with a thick goop. We measured out the gram flour according to a recipe on the side of the gram flour packet, but given that we didn’t actually measure anything else this was pretty much irrelevant! We used a lot of the dhana jeera, as it’s hard to have too much cumin.

A couple notes on cooking these:

I think if I make this in future I’ll fry the onions a little before mixing them in. They also need to be sliced quite finely. I thought they were rather raw when we cooked them.

The best way of mixing them to ensure even coating was by hand. This does of course have the downside that your hands also get covered in goop, but that’s ok.

They weren’t nearly salty enough. Liz didn’t have any large things of salt for cooking, so we had to resort to a salt shaker.

So, now having an appropriately gooped selection of onions, we heated an awful lot of sunflower oil in a pan and stuck small handfuls of it in the oil, where we flattened them, fried them until they were cooked on one side and then flipped them. Again, the best way of doing this turned out to be by hand (although we did use a spatula to flip them). To those who suggest that using your hands to stick wet things in boiling oil may be a bad idea I say pish tosh. My honorary role of Asian mother grants me asbestos fingers (except without the carcinogenic properties).

They were pretty good. As mentioned, I thought the onions were a bit undercooked, but I’m fussy and always find problems with my cooking. Liz thought they were great.

So, because of being willing to act on a whim, we got nice (if thoroughly unhealthy) food, and learned a fair bit about an area of cooking we’d both neglected.

Liz also learned to be careful about what she says around me. :-)

Now, your homework. Go cook something. Whatever you’re craving at the moment. Doesn’t matter what it is beyond that, but the more unusual the better!

(“What?” you say. “Since when do we get homework?!”. Well, the answer to that is obvious. Since now! You are of course not obligated to do it, but you’ll fail the class if you don’t…)