(F)easter Sunday

Q: How much food do you want? A: Yes.

Apologies for sending this out on a Monday. It’s been a busy weekend.

The TL;DR part of this week’s edition is that we did good. All my aunts and Tarini’s family survived the heat. In all fairness, T’s family knows what Delhi heat is like, so they don’t get survival points.

But minus the points, I think it’s fair to say everyone went home with their hearts and stomachs full. I even gave a speech and promised we could make this an annual tradition. But perhaps next year as more of a pre-Easter meal, because Easter isn’t immune to the 1.5 degree threshold, and we need some of that perfect Delhi spring weather.

It was a hot week to be cooking. The highs were in the late 30s. So as I boiled the ham, I boiled too.

We squeezed in 19 family and friends into our apartment. Had the air conditioning cranked down to 16°C. It felt like 25°C, but not a bead of sweat in sight. Even for all the Indian men who just love to perspire. So the first goal of the party was achieved. Do not let anyone die of heatstroke.

Instead, we started with dehydrating them them with copious amounts of beer and wine. They needed to line their stomachs to really appreciate the spread. And I ain’t gonna lie, a spread it was. Our table was shaking under the weight of all the food we made.

I take very little credit for this meal because I really only did one thing here - the ham.

There are way too many recipes to cover all the cooking we did this week, but I am going to share links to the recipes with a photo.

So obviously, being a show off, I killed it with the ham. My mom did the cutting and arranging because she wasn’t in the mood to see my mediocrity with a knife.

It looked pretty as a picture and both hams, marmalade and not marmalade turned out yum.

My mother, a Samurai wannabe decided to Le Cordon Bleu massacre the ham with my grandmother’s electric knife, flown in especially for the occasion. The perfect thin slices made all the difference though.

My practice ham from earlier in the month paid off, so I am glad I prepped in advance, but I made enough for an army, so now we can have ham sandwich lunches for the whole month.

I think I gloated a bit too much about my achievement, so the the real cook of the house was like “I gotta put Anand in his place and show him how things are done.”

So madama (for hindi speakers: memsahib), rolled up her sleeves and doled out a masterclass on how to cook for a party.

First up were grilled vegetables with tahini sauce. It had char, it had garlic, it had tahini and it was just 🤌.

It also finished very fast. We weren’t expecting so many takers for vegetables, but the age demographic of our party definitely leans to greens.

Then madama was like let me just grill this fish while scoffing under her breath “Anand and his ham it seems.”

Dotted with some olives and bell peppers, it was probably the most subtle dish of the day. Not that I need to tell you, but it was cooked perfectly.

After that she just had to shut the ham guy down and made a potato au gratin which was creamy and well-layered. You can see a picture of it on our table, but I am going to treat you to some of the work I actually did, which was slicing these starchy guys with a mandolin.

Then I think my mother-in-law and mother felt bad. They stepped in and separately decided to let the crushing of Anand’s cooking abilities be crushed a little further. Spoiler alert: they crushed it.

My mom made her famous tomato salad. It was the reddest thing I’ve ever seen and far and away the best salad you will ever eat. I can’t give you the recipe, so you’ll have to just bully her into feeding it to you.

Then my mother-in-law, not to be outdone by me and my precious ham, brought four different compound butters and labneh balls. Why you ask? Because she can.

You think my poor ham would be shamed enough by now. But no. She made her world famous (in our house) Tiramisu. This is a picture of the bowl after we finished it. I don’t have a before picture.

So all three women showed up and put me in my place. And so this timid Bangalore boy decided to sit back and focus on the entertainment with a round of Bingo.

Either the food was that good or everyone was hungry (and maybe just a little tipsy) because our table was wiped clean. That made our clean up easier. Considerate of our guests because water is in short supply these days. Everyone even left with a small homemade goodie bag of Christmas Crack, a street-legal drug.

This was the first time we hosted an adult party, let alone one for food connoisseurs (an idiotic rookie mistake by me). It definitely had us panicking.

But compliments were thrown at us and both of us pretended it was like a walk in the park (it wasn’t). However, I must admit it’s an extremely satisfying endeavour. If you’ve never done this, I suggest attempting it. I partly understand why our mothers and grandmothers enjoyed doing it.

Speaking of grandmothers, my Velliamma’s love language was to feed you to your gills and I am flummoxed at how she produced so much food everyday when we were deposited in her home for the summer. But if anything, this felt like a homage to what she enjoyed - feeding and hosting. I am bragging a bit, but my mother and aunts who inherited her critical nature were unusually complimentary of our spread.

Although everyone wolfed down their food, there was so much conversation that it felt like a fun party and not just one filled with the clattering of forks and knives on plates. We only heard silence during our game of Bingo. Everyone clearly had a competitive streak in them.

But real talk. When I started this newsletter, my goal was to have a large Easter feast, larger than the one we had if I am being honest. We finally actually did it and somehow managed to be good at it. Yes yes, I am as shocked as you are.

I fell into this process because I had a life-changing year last year. I battled with a lot of mental and physical health issues. I found myself plateauing at work, but cooking, weightlifting, golfing and writing every week have, in part, given me back my joie de vivre.

I know what you’re thinking -“I didn’t sign up for your feelings, Anand.” But hey, this is about sharing thoughts, recipes and my mediocre knife skills.

I don’t know what the next big food project is, but I have selfish motives these days which is to create “content” and feed the beast online and at home (Tarini).

Happy cooking folks. I’ll see you next week with something a whole lot simpler.