The expert cook

   

                                 The expert cook


In olden days the main and only job of woman was to take care of the house. So expertise in cooking was considered a necessary qualification.
Shakti kumara, a merchant's son decided to find out a bride for himself and set out in the guise  of a palmist, with four pounds of quality rice bound in a cloth.

Wherever he went, the parents of marriageable daughters showed their girls to him to read their hands. And whenever Shakti kumara saw a suitable match for him, he told her, showing the bundle of rice to treat him to a good lunch with that rice . It was whole rice with husk. The girl would laugh and turn her face away thinking him to be mad.
Ultimately he entered an old big house where Gomini ( name of the girl ) lived with her parents and a servant maid.
The moment he saw Gomini, Shakti kumara knew that she was the girl he was looking for. He simply showed his bundle of rice to her. Before he could say something, Gomini signed to her maid to take the rice from Shakti kumara and asked him to take a seat in one corner of verandha swept and cleaned, giving him water to wash his feet.
Then she set to work, while Shakti watched. First she pounded the rice, kept them in Sunlight for a while and separated the husk from the rice rubbing them on the cleaned floor.
Then she called her maid and asked her to go and sell that chaff to a goldsmith who would need it for polishing his ornaments, and with that money, to buy some wood, nether wet nor dry, a small sized earthern  cooking vessel and two earthern plates.
 After the maid had done her work, Gomini threshed the rice in the mortar with a heavy pestle,sorted it with a winnowing basket and washed it thoroughly. Then making obeisance to the oven, she kindled some of the logs of wood and put the rice in boiling water. After a few minutes, she took the utensil from the cooking fire, covered it with one of the earthern plates and poured the gruel on the other plate. Then stirring the rice with a spoon, making sure that it had been well-cooked, she kept the pot upside down to dry the rice inside.
Next she sprinkled water over the half-burnt logs of wood which had by that time turned into charcoal and asked her maid to sell those charcoals in the market and buy with that money a few vegetables and a little ghee, oil, curd, salt , amalaki ( myrobalans ), tamarind and spices.
The maid went and brought the things quickly.
Then Gomini kindled the remaining logs of wood and prepared two or three dishes. After this, she placed the earthern plate with gruel on wet sand and cooling it gently with a palm leaf fan, put salt and powdered amalaki in it which added to the gruel a flavour resembling the fragrance of lotus.
Then she asked Shakti kumara through the maid to take bath, giving him oil and amalaki for his pre-bath toilet.
When Shakti came back after cool and refreshing bath, he saw a wooden seat placed on the clean floor swept and rubbed for the second time and before it the tapering portion of a plantain leaf taken from the garden. Shakti took his seat. Gomini first brought him the cool soothing gruel soup which removed his weariness and exhaustion all at once.
Then she brought two big spoons full of steaming rice, poured a little ghee over it and served the vegetable soup and another dish she had prepared.
When Shakti had finished that, she brought the third course - the remaining rice and curds spiced with pepper, cinnamon and ginger, and fragrant cool butter milk and sour gruel.She offered him water fragrant with rose petals mingled with the perfume of full-blown lotuses.
Then the maid removed the leaf and cleaned the place.
Being highly pleased , with the consent of their parents, he married that girl  according to the proper rites, and took her home.