My mom.
My husband.
Tarla Dalal.

Mom. She tried to teach me to cook ever since I can remember. Make tea, coffee, rotis, cut vegies, blah blah. And I always rebelled. Thinking I was not going to make a traditional marriage where the girl cooked.

And then I moved to Au. Mom had written a simple recipe cookbook for my brother when he had moved overseas for sometime. And I took the same book here. It greatly improved my Gujarati reading abilities cause most of the recipes are written in Gujarati.

Being a practising Jain, there is not much I can eat and so I started cooking the easy recipes first. Cabbage, peas, dal, rice. Then I started making rotis. Perfect round rotis... thankgod for the practice earlier! Koftas, Dhoklas from scratch, idlis from scratch and just other stuff I cant remember right now. Thank God for me Ma!

The husband. This gorgeous man has been cooking long before me, and I am SO SO SO lucky I married him. Touch wood. He makes me the worlds best pasta (many types), nachos, fajitas, burritos, enchiladas, spicy noodles and banana milkshake. I help, but he makes. And I learn, but I dont cook when he is in the kitchen. Cause he ROCKS! :P

Tarla Dalal.
Amongst all the recipe books I own (about 5), my fav ones are the Tarla Dalal cook books -- cooking in 10 mins, and Jain International Recipes. Pretty good variations of nice worldly stuff... My fav recipe is the mushroom-capsicum veggie and the kali dal.

And I know I am not a bad cook. Kudos to all three! :D