My saga of epic cooking fails

My saga of epic cooking fails stretches back a couple of decades.

Back then, I was a bachelor stationed at a remote post in the Himalayas, unskilled in the ways of the kitchen. Among the five-member staff was a cooka boy still in his late teenswho knew as little about cooking as I did. I never insisted he learn, leaving the daunting task of feeding myself squarely in my hands.

The kitchen was sparsely equipped, and my first attempt at cooking was to make rice in a pressure cooker. What could go wrong, right? Turns out, a lot. There’s a simple way to measure how much water to add when cooking rice: for pricier brands like Basmati, it’s one inch of water above the rice level; for cheaper local varieties, double that. I had no clue about these ratios back then. The result? A near disasterthe cooker almost exploded, and the rice was a charred mess. But hunger is a great motivator, and I salvaged what I could and ate it.

Those initial days were marked by such culinary disasters. I remember another time when I tried my hand at cooking two-minute noodles. Once they were ready, I didn’t realize how hot the container would be and promptly dropped the entire dish on the floor. Undeterred, I scooped up what I could of the noodles and ate them anyway.

These early experiments in cooking were truly awful, but they forced me to adapt and learn a survival skill that has served me well over the years. I could have asked for help, but stubbornness and a bit of pride kept me going. In hindsight, maybe that was the best decisionit pushed me to become self-reliant in the kitchen, a skill that has proved invaluable ever since.