One evening, about a week or so before I left Lucknow, I started making a list of things I could do during my 2-months stay in Iran. Cooking was on the list, because I really missed everything about cooking. While I was in Lucknow, I had access to a kitchen - but an industrial one (where the staff cooked for hundreds of students/guests daily, so you can imagine the kinds of pots/pans I had to deal with while trying to make a single meal for myself). I bought my own knife, but there was no chopping board in the kitchen. I had to cook one cup of rice in a gigantic pressure cooker because there was nothing smaller. I couldn't marinate my chicken over night because there was no fridge; only a freezer. I could only make chicken dishes there, because beef was "holy" and seafood - just no where to find. Don't get me wrong - I'm not complaining. I adapted to the situation very well, and I was very thankful for what I had.
Anyhow, as weird as it sounds, I started making a list of dishes I wanted to cook once I land in Iran. I also googled for recipes of foods I've missed but don't actually know how to cook (eg. pesto sauce, orange chicken, Thai soup tom yum goong). I noted all these down in my little diary, and when I got to Iran, I made all my food dreams come true.
I started by cooking the basic things I missed (especially grilling with the turbo). I found myself excited to show my parents the food I was cooking at home, so I'd arrange the food nicely on a plate and send them pictures. The first few pictures were quick clicks...and you'd be surprised to know my parents would also send me pictures of meals they were cooking (my Dad in Nigeria, my Mom in the Philippines). One day I was going through the pictures I sent them and realized - these look really good. So I started posting them on my instagram account. It took some time before I decided to take the photography seriously - I'd carry my plate beside the window for natural light/sunlight, I'd change between round/square/ transparent plates. I'd hold my plate by the plants, sometime I'd put it on the carpet because it looked more beautiful with that background. This was art. I had so much joy cooking, arranging the food beautifully on a plate and taking pictures, and I only posted after eating. I made a few dishes that were very simply/didn't taste very WOW, and I didn't post them. A few weeks into this, I decided to make my own hashtag so that I could view all the food posts by clicking one button (because my feed was a mix of food and non-food pictures). Hence I created # Farz In The Kitchen. The posts were strictly meals I prepared by myself. These were some of the first few posts:
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| rice kheer (my favorite Indian sweet) - rice, milk, raisins, nuts |
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| turbo-grilled quail (marinated in lemon), mushrooms and potato/rice taddigh |
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| rice (tomato sauce, green beans) and shrimps (cooked in butter and orange juice) |
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| Turkish coffee with dates (stuffed with feta cheese). I place this on the carpet |
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| This was my biggest pride - my first pesto sauce. Served here with cheese and canned tuna |
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Of course there's nothing special about this - I just sliced three kinds of oranges,
but FarzInTheKitchen made me turn everything into an art. |
