Today I cooked chicken. Since my wife gone to India I am trying my hands on to various unexplored areas. Before any of your dirty minds start finding hidden meaning to it I want to clarify that I only meant to say unexplored areas of cooking because I usually not cook when she is here with me. This miracle started happening during one of the phone conversations with my wife where she told me the recipe over the phone and also pumped me up so much and induced lots of confidence into me about cooking chicken. With full of confidence I bought the chicken pieces home and then realize it’s better and easy to eat outside so given those chicken pieces some break inside refrigerator. After three days I realize it’s not fair to those chicken pieces that lost their lives with a hope that someone will eat them soon and give them the passage of reincarnation or next birth. Before you find any greatness in my thought I want to admit that actually I want to return those chicken pieces back from where I bought (Which is a good facility over here) but thought what would be the person in counter will thought about me when I will return a edible item after 3 days. That’s it I decided I am going to cook chicken what so ever it may take (anyway I am the only person who is going to eat that too). I am kind of person who if decides something will always try to accomplish that (if there is no other options available). I got my forced motivation but forgot the recipe what my wife told me 3 days back and during that time of motivation its past midnight at India and I can’t call her to verify what so ever I remembered. I believe in where is will there is a way…eureka… I know how to cook egg curry (based on another experiment I had some time back) and I believe only eggs needs to be replaced by chicken. Anyway eggs and chicken are also biologically related. If you are still wondering how I am going to cook this for the first time in my life then it’s wrong. I did it rather we did it for the first time about 11 years ago during my PG college days.
During my PG days we didn’t opt for any hostel and I with four other batch mates share an apartment where we have all facilities to cook. Once when I am with one of my roommate (roommate #1) spending time during semester break and one fine day we realize that we should do something good in our life. The first thing came to our mind after that is to cook chicken by our own. We both never bought chicken or never bother to find out any of the process involved in cooking when we were at home but we do share the same taste of testing tasty chicken. So we gone together on same bicycle to chicken shop and asked for chicken and the shop owner asked us a simple question, how much? That confused us a lot because we don’t know how much will be sufficient enough for our appetite of one meal. So we both agreed on 3 Kg but when the butcher is taking the chickens out of the cage we thought it’s not enough for two of us so we ordered 4 Kg. It’s only when we got the raw chicken pieces in hand we realized we made a mistake. For all readers who are confused like the way we are at that time 5 kg of chicken is more than sufficient for at least 25 peoples, so you can calculate. We now have the chicken but we don’t have cooking utensil to fit all the pieces and cook. Suddenly an idea strikes in my mind, in Kolkata during my childhood days I noticed during any Marriage, Caterer’s usually carry cooked chicken in Aluminum buckets to serve on plates of all guests who are having lunch or dinner at that time. If they can serve cooked chicken in bucket then why can’t we cook chicken itself in bucket? The idea suits the purpose and we prepared masala (Paste of ginger, garlic, cumin powder etc.) with lots of oil and also fried onion in separate pan and once the preparation is ready we transferred everything to a large iron bucket we had with us. Then we mixed all the chicken pieces in that preparation and then only my friend realized we skipped the step of cleaning of raw chicken piece and asked me if I had washed those raw pieces or not. It was a question intended for me and I don’t know the answer if there is any need for that and he knows the answer we should generate the need. The next step was to remove all the already marinated chicken pieces from the bucket and wash it to the best way we can. When you have the full enthusiasm you don’t feel bad of repeating the same process of creation of preparation all over again after the wash. You only feel bad when you realize after all these steps that how we are going to cook chicken inside a bucket. We cannot put the bucket onto gas stove to cook and also we can’t eat raw marinated chicken with lots of vegetable oils in it. As said before where is will there is a way…eureka…it strikes almost same time to both of our mind that we had an immersion rod (which we use to boil water for bath during winter) will serve the purpose of cooking like gas stove (only difference stove cooks from outside the utensil and it will cook from inside the bucket). It feels like we crossed the final hurdle and by adjusting the oil level in bucket and with some water our chicken started getting cooked with immersion rod. We do made some adjustments in the middle of cooking because suddenly we realized there is no salt or turmeric in it.
Finally it’s become ready to eat but then only I realized I was wrong about the final hurdle. There is so much chicken under thick layer of oil because while cooking chicken release their own fat in form of oil and we don’t know about that and had put oils like anything based on idea that so many pieces need good amount of oil to cook otherwise base of utensil may get burnt. Now we reached a stage where eating is the only option left and by cautiously removing only the chicken pieces on to our plates and also maintain the oil level inside the bucket we can achieve that too. Initially we thought of making the chicken curry with rice but as it finally turned out as “so many chickens” OIL curry that we dropped the idea of rice and only ate chicken. While eating we keep on saying to each other many a times that it cooked so nice but in heart we know how good it is. To finish all the pieces we had to eat till we drop and in that process we had to first drop our pants because we felt it’s too tight for the tummy and then shirt as chicken already started generated lots of heat inside the body at dry summer. Finally we reached to a stage where we can’t eat, can’t talk, can’t walk, can’t sit, can’t move and can’t sleep. We two roommates in our undergarments had to lie down on floor wherever we are eating along with our own plates and the bucket of cooking oil with chicken in the middle. Mind is still functioning and curious about what we should do to the remaining 150 pieces (at least) of chicken lying deep inside the oil in bucket. We don’t have a refrigerator and its summer time so we can’t keep it for next day. I can’t remember how much time we were lying down on that place but gradually recovered to a stage where we can talk, can walk, can sit, can move or can sleep too but can’t eat. As we don’t want to throw out the remaining food the only option left to finish this out by finding out friend(s) or people(s) like us who can eat chicken and due to current semester break and hot summer it’s not easy to find any of them.
We travelled to various apartments of other batch mates or friends and tried to convince them with this story of very tasty chicken we cooked at our place and end it with the point that there are still few pieces left and we may give it to someone or throw it to street dogs. It seems for us we first decide to create a product; we created it without any plan and then extensively tested it and now marketing it to people for selling that product. Luckily chicken is brand which every non vegetarian likes so we stopped advertising our product and started advertising the bigger picture of brand chicken. And it worked, suddenly we found 5 peoples (friends, friend’s friend and there friend) who willingly said why dog, what we are here for. So we got 5 young hungry people with good appetite and that turned out as sufficient enough to show those poor chicken pieces some respect. Along with the help we received from them, now we got 5 peoples in our room lying in their undergarments along with their respective plates with bucket of cooking oil in the middle.
Hence after so many years when I cooked chicken I took one chicken leg piece in my hand and raise a toast for my beloved friend and all the hard work we did to do something good in life. I am sure he will be really happy to know that the chicken cleaner had now become chicken cooker J
Disclaimer: This is a complete true story mixed with fiction and imagination. ©Tapas Majumdar
