While my wife is just breaking to me the news that I am not even eligible for the sad "maggi wrapped in day before yesterday's tortilla" and all I am going to get is 3 days old aalu- "nothing else to cook on an already tiring day" wrapped in tor-cold and cyrogenic-tilla..I decide to give you my .02 dollars on my dilemma with the western food - Burger
(I am being warned by a voice from the kitchen that, even if its for humor, I am not allowed to indulge in false propaganda. For the benefit of my own well being and to give due credit to my wife.. I DONT EAT STALE FOOD AND MY WIFE DOES COOK FRESH AND TASTY INSPITE OF THE GRUESOME WORK SCHEDULE.)
Back to the point..
I am pretty conservative with food. So much so that, brinjal with short skirts actually feel like profanity to me. Jokes not apart, if I eat dosai with ready-to-eat chutney, I consider it the most extravagant experiement I can put myself through.
Such being my tolerance to food in any form other than "fresh and Indian", I find it tough to go to office dinners or working lunches. I am told that it's important to eat "Classic Tuna Noodle Casserole", "Shrimp Fajita" with a glass of woodword reserve whiskey to be considered global indian.
(Among other things, if you bump into "Neel(akantam)", "Dave(Devanatha Koppuluri)" and they smile with lips tightly clasped expression similar to that which you would have during a bad case of constipation, you could mark them as seasoned global indians. Its also considered quintessential to ask "how you are doing today ah?" to claim your rightful place to this group.)
While I whole-heartedly hate this group, it never ceases to amaze me how deftly they eat the burgers and 6 ft subs as though their great grandfathers were 'Stephen Martin' and 'Morgan Glenwood" instead of "Sambasiva Moorthy" and "Muthukrishna Ganabaadigal". I never get it right when it comes to burgers.
Firstly I dont understand how a piece of bun (make it two) can be considered as a food for a healthy person. Would that not be what a doctor prescribes in South India when we have extreme chali, irumal and bad case of kaachhal? Well, whatever you may argue - Keeping a slice of onion,tomato and an oversized cabbage leaf in between does not make it even a step second cousin of masal dosai or idly manchurian.
I dont get one more aspect. Why would anyone keep an overcompressed mix of shallow fried rotten vegetable & garbanzo beans mash in between the buns and the vegetation while you could keep an aalu cutlet? To make matters worse and add salt to the already illogical wound, the height of the burger is 4x of the distance between your jaws in their widest open position. That just means, technically you cannot have a complete bite of all layers of the burger, unless your mouth is as big as shilpa shetty's.
If such an illogical and outrageously un-ergonomic food does not put you off, while sitting in the lunch table, the sharp and thin wooden stick (tooth pick) that is poked right into the center of the burger should. It infuriates me.
A newbee to burger, like me goes through untellable depression..
- I need to what pressure and when applied to which portions of the burger, will help me air lift it without squeezing the filling out and at the same time, preserve the integral structure of the burger
- I need to make sure while I apply the right pressure and airlift it, the middle stick should not fall down, as that small thing is the fulcrum that keeps this garbage in the shape it is
- I need to know when to open the mouth and upto what time it should be wide open. If I keep the mouth open and then bring the burger to it, I may risk showing a "Who the f.. made you the VP of the company" expression, un intentionally ..like when the mouth makes an "O".
- Synchronizing the opening of the mouth and the movement of the burger towards my mouth well enough, is just half the job well done. It opens up a whole new challenge of knowing when to retreat. One has to have a miraculous feel for texture and sharpness to assess which ingredients in the burger and currently in the mouth and which are out and which are in partially torn between the mouth and the burger. I must say there are more than one instances where I look like a goat trying to rip a banana leaf apart, with just the cabbage leaf sprouting out of my mouth while still the rest of the burger staying intact in my retrieved hands.
- With all the frustration, if you want to get done with it and decide to proceed for giant sized bites, its advised to remove the stick. Trust me, it has a sharp edge that can give your tongue a second degree haemorrhage.
With complex procedures and inherent risks of blood loss, flase expressions, certainty of humiliation all looming large, I decided to quit trying the burger in front of all perfect global indians.
Perhaps if I go back to the starting paragraph of the post, I see its not such a bad thing to have a slightly old tortilla and aloo curry.
Here I go...for a content dinner..
