"How many people can eat Potato Subji (Batatyachi Bhaji, in Marathi) made using 6 big potatoes ?"

Yes, that's the exact Question I've been asking myself today, since the last 4 hours (that's the time I took today to cook the food-item mentioned in the title, and FYI, Potato Subji is supposed to be one of the quickest things to cook :P). Why ? Guess what, I finally got down to cooking in Charlotte, all on my own, with nobody to help or supervise (my apartment-mates had all gone out, and I'd very enthusiastically offered to cook lunch on my own, so there I was, trying to figure out the mystery called 'Cooking' :-P ).

This post is dedicated to 3 particular ladies, out of whom the first is my dear ol' Mommy, the second is my dear Bhabhi (and 3 gentlemen too, namely 2 of my apartment-mates and the 3rd being one of my best friends from college, HG) who'd prodded me to start to learn cooking, and had hoped to teach me the same. This post especially gets dedicated to the third person on the list, a dear friend of mine from TCET, who was teaching me the finer nuances of the culinary arts at 2 AM IST (through Yahoo messenger, of course :-P) yesterday.

So, anyway, I'll come back back to the title of this post, and the options for answering it, are as follows:

(A) 6 people
(B) 2 people
(C) 3 or 4 people
(D) I don't know

As I've mentioned before, I'd been introspecting about the title of this post about 4-5 times, and all of the option above seemed like the proper answers to The Question at some point of time. When I was taking instructions from KD (my friend who was trying to make me learn cooking thru IM), I misunderstood her & thought that option (B) was the correct answer to The Question. Now, you can imagine what would've happened, or rather, what did happen today :-P.

Option (C) was what I was thinking when I started cooking the Potato Subji. I thought I had taken a huge quantity of potatoes, but since there was nobody around to correct me, I stifled my second thoughts and resumed cooking with 6 large potatoes (the potatoes we got here, are atleast 1.5 times the ones we get back home in India, so you can imagine what quantity of Bhaji I'd decided to make for 4 people - me + my roomies, obviously :-P).

Option (A) was what I thought was the answer to The Question, when I was halfway through the cooking. As per KD's instructions (or what I'd thought them to be), I'd first boiled the potatoes in a pressure cooker (and needless to say, nearly burnt my hands since I tried peeling them as soon as I took the cooker off the gas) and then peeled & diced them. After that was done, I further proceeded to make a mess of things, by soaking them in water (for what reason, I myself don't know :-P). After that, came the part of the "Vaghaar" ("fodni" in Marathi), wherein we're supposed to heat some oil, put in some Jeera, Raee & Hing when the Jeera in the oil starts crackling. Being the accomplished cook that I am (as per what I bragged to KD yesterday :-P), after doing the "Vaghaar", I then proceeded to tip the entire lot of potatoes in the hot oil. The only thing that I'd forgotten to take care of, was that the potatoes were soaked in water, and I just tipped the entire vat over into the oil (and, got a first-hand experience of what happens when a huge quantity of water gets thrown into boiling oil :-P). Fortunately, as I later realised, I was lucky, in spite of being foolish, since I wasn't injured, nor was the apt. burned to the ground :-P (for those of you who don't know cooking, never add water to any utensil that contains hot oil, and don't try this at home :-P).

Now, once the "thing" was cooked, I realised something was wrong, only because there weren't supposed to be that huge a quantity of bhaji in the kadhai (I'd observed Mom when she cooked, and it seemed so easy back then, so I used to take the process for granted). Only practice makes one perfect, especially when it comes to cooking, since without prior experience (call it trials or experiments if you want to), nobody gets a hang of what stuff to put in, how much to put in. Same was the case with me, since I had very less prior experience when it comes to cooking (you'll find mentions of that in the 2nd post on this very blog :-P), so you can imagine the extent of my knowledge in this field. As I'd expected, things got screwed somewhat (understatement ? :-P Only my roomies can answer this question, since I didn't have the guts to taste my own creation much, but they're going to be the first in the line of fire :-P), since apparently, I'd added much more Hing (asafoetida) than was needed, so to ameliorate the situation, I added lots of ketchup & salt to the concoction. Turns out, that the salt wasn't needed, and the potatoes turned out to be very salty (I've left my roomies to deal with that small problem :-P). Not only that, but also, the quantity was a minor issue. In my enthusiasm, I'd over-boiled the potatoes, so 2 of them melted & formed a think congealed mass (I think I'll have to use them to make sandwiches for breakfast tomorrow :-P), and still the remaining bhaji is more than sufficient for the 4 of us (or so my apartment-mate says).

Now whenever anyone asks me anything related to cooking, such as The Question above, the only answer I can provide, is Option (D). So, does anyone want to try out something cooked by me ? :-P ;-)