Friday, October 23, 2009

In which she gives you a household hint and an excuse to get yourself a drink to start the weekend right!

So I can flip from fertility issues to household hints to political rants and then gossip! Yeah, I know sometimes you dont know what to make of me. Sometimes I dont know either.

So get yourself a glass of something good, a plate of something fatty and crunchy to eat and start your weekend off right... and read on.

I just saved myself a pile of money! Saving money is cause for celebration right? Go on, celebrate with me... go have have another drink! See, I just gave you another excuse to start your weekend already.. did'nt I?

Why am I so thrilled? Because I stopped myself... in the nick of time... from throwing away a couple of All Clad pots, that were the stars of my culinary world. I used them for everything. They were very expensive but just the best things that I had ever bought for my kitchen. I think I probably saved up for a few months for each pot, so you know how much I loved them.

Recently I have become a less than careful cook and they had become horribly charred. So bad that even steel wool and earnest scrubbing could not rescue them. Everything stuck to the bottom and everything cooked in them tasted burnt. I wrote to the manufacturer and used every possible thing to fix the problem... including this which can basically clean anything off anything. Sigh... I was ready to weep.

I had tossed them in the garbage, when an Aunt of mine came to visit from India. She pottered around my kitchen, switched all my spices and pots around until I could not find anything anymore, declared that we did'nt eat enough good ghee and she also lectured me endlessly on how wasteful we were. Worse, she threw away Husband's preserved pickled Herring! You can tell that she was generally begining to annoy me.

I was not really surprised when she started frothing at the mouth when she saw the pots in the trash. What she did next though surprised me.

She had me dive headfirst into the slimy garbage and pull them out and rinse them off. Then she told me put an inch of water in the pots and soak a cupfull of Sago .. Sabudana... which is different from Tapioca ... in the water overnight. The next day I was instructed to boil up the whole slimy mess and stir with a wooden spoon/non stick spatula while the mess boiled. Imagine my surprise when the charred bottom bits came unstuck... in huge flakes! No scratches, no elbow grease, no hard labor. It was like a miracle! It was wonderous! My pots were back to thier new pristine glory. It truly is a miracle I tell you. It was like pulling a few hundred dollars out of the garbage!

Since then I have used Sabudana to clean pretty much every mess in the kitchen. Counters with stuck on, dried on food like egg or aataa? Those burnt on patches on the oven shelves? Non stick pans which actually do stick if you forget to turn off the stove and are on the phone with a fun friend? Cleaning the outdoor grill? Scuff marks on highly polished dining table? Yeah, you guessed it. Sabudana in its various forms! Boiled up/powdered/gloppy paste. All of them work.

Now if I can only get the family to eat Sabudana Khichadi... sigh!

11 comments:

Samvedna said...

amazing tip you have given..I wil remebr it as burnt pan are a necessary evil with me:)..it shows again old indian remedies always work:) what say?

Rajlakshmi said...

nice tip... but the rate at which you are using sabudana makes me wonder the rate at which the food gets charred :P hhehehe just joking :)

harvey said...

no jokes, really?
sabudana! my only problem is I don't get sabudana here!
getting a Aabodaana is hard enough!
;-)
thanks

The Panorama said...

Wow, that was an amazing tip!! Will try to clean mine too..they have been crying in dismay in my cupboards too, screaming their neglect everytime I look at my pots:)

Queenmatrai said...

LOL

To me thats 'sick food'

Another Kiran In NYC said...

Antarman: Desi Totka have pretty much always worked for me.

Rajlakshmi:I should just buy stock in a Sabudana company :)

Harvey: No sabudana? No desi store where you are? Arrey there are desi stores in Chile for gosh sake :)

Panorama: I used to keep my charred pots in the cabinet under the sink. Atleast visitors didnt know! Hide yours :)

Queenmatrai: Awwww at sabudana khichadi being sick food. That used to be a highlight for me for after school snacks. Try it with a bit of fresh grated coconut and a smidge of lemon on top.

Anonymous said...

Awesome piece of information.. will remember this the next time i am fighting a hard stain :)

sharell said...

"she threw away Husband's preserved pickled Herring!" Haha. That made me laugh. It would probably as horrific as if my mother threw out my husband's favourite acchar!

That's fantastic about the pot though. My mother in law performed a similar miraculous feat after going to sleep while boiling some milk in a pot -- it boiled dry and the pot actually caught on fire. lol. I thought that pot was dead and gone, but it got resurrected after being soaked with some concoction overnight.

Anonymous said...

Hi Kiran, your post could not have come at a better time.
I set my smoke alarm off yesterday when I left a pot of tea on the burner and forgot and got on to a work call (and had to apologize and halt it abruptly when the infernal alarm started it's ear-drum blasting shrieks !)
So I have a saucepan with ominous stubborn dark stuff at the bottom, that I have left lying in the sink hoping it will go away magically.
Sabudaana it will be tonight !
Thanks,
The burner

Nita said...

Hey there Kiran, this is a good tip and I love your style of writing! Very much like I remember you, crisp and lively and to the point!!

Sue said...

What a lovely idea. Thanks. :)

As for feeding the family, I suggest sabudana vadas. Far yummier and fairly easy to make.