How It All Started

Last week I took an Indian cooking class at a local culinary shop and had such a great time. I’ve wanted to take a cooking class there for such a long time and managed to find a spot at one of the Indian cooking sessions. I love Indian food and am excited to get started with some of the techniques I’ve learned and the huge cookbook I bought. When I get back home (yes I am on another trip) I’m heading to a local Indian grocery store to buy all the spices I need.

I remember when I was maybe 11 or 12 I went to my first Indian restaurant with my dad. When I was about 10 my dad and stepmother moved to N.C. and I would go and visit them during the summer. My dad would drive up to NYC hang out for a few days with friends and family and we’d drive down to NC together. As a child and even more so as an adult when there was a plan in motion I wanted it executed with little to no deviation. Unfortunately my dad is not one to follow a plan or a schedule. This has been the basis for many fights until I realized that I couldn’t drill in a sense of time or respect for other people’s time into a grown man and learned to play the game to my advantage. As usual we’d scheduled to leave early in the morning and I was anxious to leave to just get there. I would have thought my dad would be also since he had to drive for 9 hours straight, but my dad’s lack of timing meant that we were still doing “one last thing” around lunch time.

Once he ran his last errand I kept pushing to get on the road and thought a quick lunch at McDonalds was all we needed. My dad who would rather starve then eat McDonalds wasn’t having it and insisted we sit down for a proper lunch at an Indian Restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village. I sulked and swore under my breath and went along with him to the restaurant. It was my first Indian meal and it was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. I remember eating succulent Tandorri Chicken, fluffy basmati rice and warm Nan and have been hooked ever since. I’m going to remind my dad of this story and next time he’s in D.C. “I’m making him full Punjabi dinner”(line from Bend it like Beckham).