Your Grandmother's Recipe That You Want To Recreate

17th January 2023

GATTE KA PULAV
I have been fortunate enough to be blessed with spending the majority of my childhood around my grandparents. My grandfather passed away in 2015, and my grandmother, her blessings, and the food she cooks continue to accompany us! When I was young, my parents always wanted me to focus on my studies, my grandma, on the other hand, is the one who has been keen on teaching life skills in addition to education. From boiling milk to making tea, she gradually taught me cooking at the tender age of 7. Probably what this generation calls gross motor skills and fine motor skills have been refined in my case because of that only!

I last visited my grandma in February of 2022. I have been away from home since 2008, first for my education (engineering), and then I got married and settled. Since 2008, once she comes to know the date of my arrival, she starts planning each meal with so much enthusiasm. To see her cook with so much passion at the age of 85 is so intimidating. Age may have deviated her senses, but not her passion! And all the love she pours into her cooking surpasses every other flaw that would possibly be significant!

So coming back to GATTE KA PULAV! Not any regular meal for me. So Gatte Ka Pulav comes as a byproduct of the Sunday compulsory lunch of Dal-Baati-Churma. Most Marwadi households feast their Sundays with it. After a heavy lunch, dinner calls for something light. So my grandma very cleverly used to cook a little extra Guttas in the noon, sparing a little of them instead of making Gatte Ki Sabzi using all of it. And the spare one used to be mixed with the rice which would either be left over from the noon or freshly steamed, especially for pulav. Big B-schools teach cost-cutting, zero-waste, minimal efforts, and efficient use of time, and here my grandma, who is 8th pass knows and applies it all in her kitchen combined with her love. Knowledge is perceived in the real sense only if it is applied practically and successfully!
She mixes the Gatta with rice, sprinkles her magic masalas in her estimated proportions, tempers all of it, garnishes with coriander leaves, and taadaaaa... The Pulav is ready to eat! She serves it with curd, however, it can be eaten without it too, and would still taste delicious only!
Having glorified her Gatte Ka pulav so much, there is another side of her that I adore. She is always open and ready to learn. I remember, she learned to cook South Indian food and a variety of parathas just so that we get a variety in our meals and exposure to different cuisines which would not be possible otherwise as we belong to a remote place. In her train journeys, she has a habit of sharing and learning new recipes with her fellow passengers. She even has the habit of collecting recipe cutouts from newspapers and buying cookbooks. That's what enthusiasts did before the internet revolution happened! On my last visit, I taught her Kothimbir wadi (a Maharashtrian delicacy) and lacha paratha. We together even experimented with the three-ingredient cooker cake (biscuit cake), the viral recipe during the lockdown.
Other than cooking, she is a master when it comes to crochets. She gifted me some 30 crochet floral bookmarks when she got to know that I am a published author now! That's the love of grandparents for you, as wide as the horizon, and without any filter!