Why the Corner Kitchen

On the surface it all started with my watching Julie and Julia. The movie was tailor made for me as I am a very enthusistic cook and if I may take the liberty of sounding a little concieted ,an excellent one. Julie starts with julia and tries one of her recipes everyday.

For me however, it goes long back when I made my first vegetable dish when I was 9 years. It was perfect or so my dad said and gave me a princely amount of 5 rupees as a prize.But I knew then that I loved to cook. As I grew and started going to the university, our trips to different eateries also grew. I was in my graduation program when I had my first pizza, till then little known to Delhites barring a few "westernized" ones.I came home and told my mom what it was and she said " it sound easy to make" and believe me next day she and I made the pizza at home.So you know where the genes are coming from.
The cooking continued but it was largely to prepare me to be good wife. Like any other middle class girl I was expected to get a good education, get married and be a good wife. Well I did all that but I also did other things.Over the years I changed quite a few hats. I forayed into media both audio visual and print apart from being a wife and a mother to two sons.But the love affair with the culinary continued and this was one affair my husband supported grudingly at first but later accepted and now supports it to the hilt. My sons are a different story. It is largely due to them that the affair continued. They wanted to have the burgers,noodles, sandwiches and icecreams along with aloo tikkis, chane bhature and kathi kababs. To top it all my husband was in the Indian Army where you are expected to give perfect parties . So started the baking and came in the Black Forest and caramel pudding and french onion soup.

We came to Canada in 200 0January. Why and how sometime later but to my sheer delight I had access to so many ingredients so far scarcely available in India. So I was like a bull in a china shop or a kid in a candy shop to be more precise but the first constraint that I faced here was time. I had not worked back home but here I had to. And being a south asian woman I could not thinlk of not making fresh food everyday. I still do.All my freinds do . Then why The Corner Kitchen?

Because as I started researching more and more recipes I also discovered some great articles about the medicinal values of Indian spices. Great chefs like Inderjit Kalra and Ranjit Rai wrote extensively about Ayurvedic "Gunas". But is it the spices which make Indian cooking so different? Or is it the method of slow cooking? Or the yogurts and the cream? Well all of these and much more.I often hear my Canadian friends say" I love Indian cooking" " I love the flavours". Many of them started asking me for recipes and when I told them the antiseptic qualities of turmeric they were amazed. So I thought why not write about it. To be honest I did not exactly think in these terms but there was something I wanted to do about Indian cooking in Toronto. I had been taking cooking classes back in India but I wanted something more. And watching Julie and Julia cleraed my ideas. I decided on Friday night, the 7th of May that I am going to write a blog about Indian cooking. Why The tiltle? I want to write for people like you and me. People who actually love to cook and who really want to get together around a kitchen table and share not just the food but the joy and the sorrows, the highs and the lows of each other. Just around the corner.

So stay tuned and we will gather round the corner tomorrow and share some history and qualities of Indian cooking and of course some recipes.

Meanwhile if you have any comments or suggestions leave a comment on the blog.Its your corner kitchen and your comments are valuable.