Am really quite reticent about my cooking. No, really. I am.my wife, friends and parents believe I?m more than a decent cook. When I demur, my father-in-law always insists, in the admiring manner that an Indian father-in-law reserves for his favourite son-in-law (made easier by the fact that I am his only son-in-law), ?No, no, Samar, you?re a gourmet!? It?s quite embarrassing and startling because I know what I am not ? a great cook. My cooking is much like a roadside mechanic?s fiddling and tinkering. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. A twist here, a turn there. Throw it together and hope the engine fires.What I am is a jhatka or jugaad cook, that indefinable Indian quality of somehow making things work, using whatever?s available. I know most married men don?t cook, but I do, because (a) I like to eat (b) I like it that my family and friends like it (c) I like it that my wife gets (very, umm) excited when I cook and (d) I like it that my cooking has made me ? not wealthy, but ? happy, healthy and wise. Blame it on my upbringing. I grew up eating paya (a spicy soup of goat?s trotters, or hooves) for breakfast in the Deccan, that steamy, arid heart of the Indian peninsula, which to this day remains a land of black soil, backwardness and bhanamati, the local dark art of black magic. It was the 1970s, a slow, dreamy time when tomorrow was much like yesterday, and counting your marbles or walking your sheep down the dusty backstreets passed off as the day?s highlights.I did have a sheep; my brother and I unimaginatively called him Curly. We had a cook who turned out the most delicious biryanis (I suspect Curly ended up in one after we tearfully bade him goodbye); Goan curries made with, horrors, river fish; and, oh yes, a palak (spinach) that we swallowed with water. As you can tell, I come from a family that has always struggled with vegetables. My father claims to like a few, but my mother, brother and I have always stayed with the ways of the flesh. Anything that has lived, we?re willing to try for dinner. I?m often asked: Isn?t cooking hard? It isn?t, really. The trick is to adapt, innovate, stumble and triumph. Secret no. 1 Learn to use what you have, focus on the party I have one of those Patiala-made cooking ranges ? if the grill or oven is fired up, you touch its surfaces or knobs with bare hands at your peril. First, you need to get it started, a task fraught with tension: You get on your knees and open the grill or oven door, peering into the darkness (why can?t the Patiala gas engineer figure out how to put in a bulb?). You turn on the knob, race to light a match and hope it doesn?t go out while you hastily and vaguely wave it near a series of perforations through which gas is noisily escaping. Of course, the match always flickers, the flame struggles for life and soon all that?s left is a wisp of smoke from the extinguished tip. The only sound now is the hiss of the gas. No reason to panic.?The gas is escaping!? yells the wife, an otherwise wonderful woman who is not given to staying calm. You shut off the gas, though the instruction booklet cheerily tells you there?s no danger of an explosion within the minute (that?s how much time it will take to light it twice). I have to admit it?s a little hard to stay calm while you are on your knees, fumbling repeatedly with a matchbox with the hiss of gas near your ear. In the 18 months that we?ve had this cooking range, I?ve used the grill and oven once each. One autumn evening, I had the oven and four burners on. We had invited 12 people over for dinner, and then I realised the dinner actually had to be cooked. I become a little hazy about these details on a pleasant evening with a pleasant dose of Old Monk rum. Two-dozen people showing up for dinner unannounced doesn?t faze me, but as you might imagine, there was a lot of hand wringing, hopping around and cursing going on as I kept fiddling with super-hot gas knobs. Damn those Patiala gas engineers. Usually, everyone will say, ?great food.? Even when it isn?t, you?ll be surprised how forgiving friends and family are, simply because you cooked it. At a restaurant, my wife can be a terror, calling for the manager when a bit of broccoli is under-done. At home, she smiles sweetly and says, ?Oh, I love it. It?s so crunchy.? It isn?t an act; food actually tastes better when a loved one makes it. In the early 1990s, I began serious cooking with a single hot-plate on the floor when my home was just one room and a bathroom on a terrace. The tomatoes and onions nestled among my T-shirts, and for two years I couldn?t handle anything beyond eggs (every kind of omelette conceivable), sausages and kebabs. Every Sunday, my friends flocked there, happy to be experimented on. Even today, when I?m far more proficient, the roast chicken sometimes blackens around the edges, the fish emerges a raw-looking pink, a leg of lamb dries out. That?s because when you?re buzzed, it?s hard to kneel time and again to keep tabs on the oven. If the Patiala (or Italian) gas stove scares you, stick to the stove-top. All you need is a humble OTG (oven-toaster-grill; mine is 15 years old, and it rocks), or a simple, heavy pan. Don?t ever blame your tools. Secret no. 2 Identify a few favourite ingredients, and get to know them My family ? like every other I know from the Konkan coast of Maharashtra and Goa ? cannot conceive of a fish curry without kokum: a dried, tangy rind of a fruit found almost exclusively along the west coast. I have never run a kitchen without a stock of kokum, even when I lived in the US for two years. Last December, I even took kokum to Copenhagen, persuading my landlord for a week to give me a discount of 1,000 Euros in exchange for some Goan fish curry. Nothing could be simpler and more delightful.