Cooking Three Things

There are three dishes every Pakistani teenager should be able to cook before they leave home: a boiled egg, a fried egg, and dal chawal. Not because cooking is a chore. Because the day will come, in a hostel in Lahore or a flat in Toronto or a kitchen at 11pm when nobody else is home, when you will be hungry and only your own hands can fix it. Khudi begins with being able to feed yourself.

Boiled egg is the easiest. Take one egg from the fridge, place it in a small saucepan, cover with cold water by one inch above the egg. Bring to a rolling boil on medium heat. Lower the flame and time it: six minutes for a soft yolk, eight minutes for medium, ten minutes for fully hard. Lift the egg out with a spoon, run it under cold tap water for thirty seconds, peel. Salt, kali mirch, a small piece of bread. You have made breakfast.

Fried egg requires a knife only for chopping the optional onion and chilli. The knife rule: always cut on a board, never on your palm; keep your fingertips curled inward like a claw so the blade hits your knuckles, not your fingertip. Heat one tablespoon of oil in a tawa or small frying pan on medium. Crack the egg on the flat edge of the counter, not the rim of the pan, and slide it in. Salt, kuti hui mirch, two minutes for runny yolk, three for set. Lift with a flat spatula. Roti or double roti on the side.

Dal chawal feeds two people for under a hundred rupees and tastes better the next day. Wash one cup of masoor dal in three changes of water. Add to a pressure cooker with three cups of water, half a teaspoon of haldi, half a teaspoon of salt, and a quarter teaspoon of red chilli. Close the cooker; on full flame let it whistle three times, then off. While dal cooks, wash one cup of basmati rice, soak twenty minutes, drain. Boil two cups of water in a separate pot, add rice, half teaspoon salt, cover and lower flame to lowest for twelve minutes. Do not lift the lid. While rice rests, heat two tablespoons of oil in a tarka pan, add half a sliced onion, two cloves of crushed garlic, one whole dry red chilli; brown lightly and pour over the cooked dal. Plate the rice, dal alongside, lemon wedge.

Fire in the kitchen is the one risk you must take seriously. If oil catches fire in a pan, do not pour water on it; water turns to steam and explodes the burning oil into the room. Slide a metal lid over the pan to smother the flame, then turn the gas off at the cylinder valve, then leave the pan alone for ten minutes to cool. Keep a packet of baking soda in the kitchen drawer; a handful thrown on a small flame kills it. Keep one fire blanket or a thick cotton dupatta nearby. Do not run with a burning pan in your hand.

Three dishes is enough to start. Cook each one twice this week. The second time will already be better than the first. By the tenth time, dal chawal will be your dish, with your tarka, your level of namak, your relationship with the ingredient. That is when cooking stops being a school exercise and starts being a life skill.