Acquired taste of happiness

It was a strange exchange at the time between my wife and me. Reflecting back on it, I realize how I should have seen it coming. Yet, I felt taken aback by the question. She had asked me if I hated the food she made. After contorting my face and eyebrow-ing furiously, I replied that I did not, and wasn’t sure what gave her that idea in the first place.

To add context here; We are both Indians but we come from very different culinary sources. I grew up in the state of onions, spices, and chilies. Almost every meal began with incessant chopping of onions, tomatoes, fresh green chilies, and a healthy dosage of hand-ground ginger and garlic.

A quick sidebar here! There was a phase where I would snack on raw garlic because I used to love the heat hit you get on a particularly tangy bulb. Now that I am older, I grill and eat it for the nuttiness.

Anyway, back to mise en place in Nashik. It was intense. Before cooking started, 30 minutes were lost getting the prep ready. And if there was meat to be had, I could easily forget getting lunch not earlier than 90 minutes after we first started. The point I am trying to make here is that the star of the dish would almost be an afterthought. It would be folded into the dish after the onions were fried, tomatoes were softened, red chill and turmeric was cooked in and then the ground spices (cumin seeds, cinnamon, cloves, peppercorns, cardamom seeds) were mixed in. Then, as if that weren’t enough, some store-bought garam masala would be added for good measure.

At this point, whether you added cauliflower, carrots, potatoes, or chicken, it almost did not matter. With the base overtones of spice, you had to work hard identifying the vegetable or the protein. Now that I look back, if it weren’t for the visual cues, I wouldn’t have been able to determine that at all.

Not that it wasn’t tasty, but only when I explored other cuisines (especially Japanese) did I understand the celebration of the solitary flavors. Often discarded as bland by Indians, I found this form of cooking more precise and delicate. It gave your palate a cleanse and joy at the same time. Since I grew up on spice, I continue to enjoy it but things have changed.

Another such change in my life was marrying my Kashmiri girlfriend. It was a cuisine I had absolutely no clue about. They celebrate spinach and kai-lan like greens as they should be. When eating turnip, I taste it. There are no onions, there is no garlic. There is at best some ginger powder, fennel powder, turmeric, and coloring red chili. That is it. The greens say green. The white turnip stays white. The cauliflower is delicious. The rogan josh is blood red but the meat is undisturbed of its original flavor.

Admittedly, when I first had this food, I had to get used to it (besides the meat, since I love that in any form, except meatballs that have a non-crumbly texture). But after seven years of marriage, I absolutely crave it. Especially on winter evenings or after a slew of Indian spicy food.

We have such limiting ideas about what we like. Exclusivity had excited me before but now I find it liberating to not limit my likes and go back to my dislikes and revisit them. I am even considering getting a DCT equipped car at some point! I realized that I can have them both and no longer have to prove that I still love manual transmissions the most.

So, when my wife had asked me that strange question, what I should have said, is that I actually LOVE some of the food she makes. Given given enough time, I will love ALL of the food she makes. I am no longer keen on adding spice to my life because I have begun to taste what I already have. The pursuit of happiness is more inward than I have ever imagined.

While that doesn’t make it easy, but you know where to seek and when to stop.