💬 My phone died halfway through bagara baingan and it came out better

For 3 years I made bagara baingan with a recipe video playing on my phone, propped against the oil bottle. Pause, rewind, pause again. My hands were always sticky and the screen was always covered in masala. Last Thursday my phone died in the middle of it. I was already holding the brinjals. No charger nearby. I stood in my kitchen and thought, either I do this or we eat eggs. My mother showed me the dish over the phone in 2021, 20 minutes, while I wrote down every word. She said a bit of this and a little of that. Nothing she said had a number in it. So I looked up videos, because videos have numbers. 2 tablespoons, 1 teaspoon, 15 minutes on low. I'd measured everything for 3 years and it still never tasted like hers. I fried the sesame and peanuts first, because I remembered the smell from my mother's kitchen. I ground them with coconut and a little tamarind. I didn't measure anything. I used my hand and a spoon. When the oil separated at the edge of the gravy I knew it was ready. I didn't check a clock. It tasted different from the video one. Sharper, with more tang. My friend Fouzia from the next flat had 3 helpings. She asked if I'd changed the recipe. I said no, I just made it. She said, it's better. I said, don't be silly. But I sat down and felt ridiculous. 3 years I'd been checking, and it took a dead phone to stop me. I rang my mother that night to tell her. She said, did you add enough tamarind? I said yes. She said, then of course it's good. She wasn't even surprised. That was a little annoying.

Cooking without the video is scary the first time, so well done for going ahead with it. My grandmother's rule for this dish was to wait for the smell of roasted sesame before doing anything else. I can't follow written recipes either. Her hand always knew when it was ready, and mine still guesses. Next time try writing down what you did right after eating, while you still remember it.

The dead phone moment made me laugh. I learned this dish by ruining it a lot first.