It starts with a discussion about food which turns to cooking before moving on to what makes a good chicken fry and finally settling on how good a marinade curd is. “Curd is the secret,” says Sreejith Nayar, an advocate and a foodie who is passionate about cooking. He belongs to that rare breed of men whose culinary skills extend beyond making tea, toasting bread and ‘cooking’ instant noodles.
Chicken biriyani, upma,karimeen pollichathu , pasta, bhatura , pavakka pickle, duck curry, crab… no recipe is too intimidating to try and to perfect. Very few women venture into restaurant kitchens spawning the belief that men make better chefs than women. Television cooks Gordon Ramsay, Anthony Bourdain and our own Vikas Khanna reinforce the perception. Regular men like Sreejith who may not be master chefs, but know their way around spices and garnishes, all the while finding satisfaction in cooking.
Facebook communities dedicated to cooking such as
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A love of food translated to a love of cooking for Kalady-based dentist Dr. Vinu Parakkat Ravi, His father and grandfather were in the restaurant business and he attributes his interest to that. He remembers eating-out trips, while a student at Sainik School (Thiruvananthapuram), to eat Kethel chicken fry at the Rehamaniyya Hotel there. “The taste was different, the flavour unique; unlike anything I had ever eaten. It is like that…a different flavour that gets me experimenting,” he says. For him it is simple – he cooks when he feels like eating something special. His Facebook page is proof of his passion for cooking as he frequently uploads photographs of food cooked by him.
While the thought of the kitchen might get most men hot under the collar, for these men it is a form of de-stressing. The regularity of cooking and the time spent in the kitchen may wary, but when they do find time, they enjoy it. Some like Dr. Vinu tune out everything else while cooking, “I focus on it 100 per cent and do not get distracted easily,” he says. Even the phone is forgotten when he gets down to cooking.
Dr. Ajith Menon, an orthodontist at Amrita Hospital, doesn’t cook daily and doesn’t get time to cook as much as he’d like but when he does he finds it relaxing. Relaxation apart, feeding others is an aspect of the passion. This is businessman Mathew M. Joseph’s payoff, “I enjoy it when my family and friends enjoy what I make.”
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These men have been cooking long enough to confidently talk about tweaking recipes. They have, over time, developed an innate sense of what might go into each recipe and even decoding recipes by taste and smell too. The internet is a source, but they prefer intuition.
It is refreshing that these men do not consider their interest infra dig. That their friends and family acknowledge their flair gives them pride.
Their approach is pragmatic ranging from eating healthy, fun food made at home with reliable ingredients and saving money spent on eating out in the bargain.
How they found their way into the kitchen varies. Mathew learnt his first lessons as a child watching his mother cooking. He says, “Probably that is what attracted me to the magical world of cookery. The intricacies involved intrigued me.” Then there is the perennial inspiration—the Masterchef series.
Sreejith also remembers time spent in kitchen as his mother cooked, picking up his first lessons of cooking. “I would eat at the dining table in the kitchen while my mother would be cooking. I saw and I learnt stuff.”
For others like Dr. Ajith cooking as a necessity came before love. Living away from home, he learnt the rudiments of cooking from his mother who’d send him recipes and coach him.
Over time he started experimenting and making other things. A fan of North Indian cuisine, he enjoys cooking it and is familiar with basics of South Indian cooking. Since his sons favour Italian, that is also taken care of. His sons help him with the cooking, he adds.
“In today’s world it is a necessity. We no more live in joint families, even the women are working so we need to chip in and help when we can,” he says. He states if a need arises, he’d be able to manage on his own.
His wife, Sreeja, says “I pretty much enjoy everything my husband cooks, it is a break for me from the kitchen – and usually it is different from what is there normally. Before we got married he told me he cooks, the basics but the extent of it came as a surprise.”
She is yet to taste his sambar but what she has, left her impressed, the biriyani for instance. She agrees that the more complicated the dish is, the chances of it getting made are more. However Dr. Vinu prefers the regular fare, “I have tried baking. But I am lazy, I don’t experiment much. I prefer naadan cuisine and perfecting it.”
There have been the fiascos and the disasters – sour meen pollichathu , lumpy upma and burnt chicken – but these men are sporty about it for it’s all part of the game.