I confess that I may have a ridiculously large collection of cookbooks, I love cooking shows, I obsessively watch YouTube videos of cooking, am a member of multiple Facebook cooking groups, follow cooking blogs and, above all, I have a drawer full of recipes written in my mother’s handwriting, as my most treasured possession.

I also confess that I am a terrible cook and whenever I attempt it, I inevitably make a hash of it. Almost everything turns out to be the same. Barely edible.

It may not come as a surprise, therefore, that my habit of collecting recipes and watching cooking videos creates some ill-will in the family. Mostly in the husband, I may add. The children are a different story. Their take is rather intriguing because funnily enough they seem to like whatever concoction I come up with.

A favourite dish in our household is something the children call ‘chush’, which is basically my attempt at Chinese food ending up as mush. It’s actually quite fun because we never know what the chush will taste like, so we play a guessing game to see if it will be closer to a Shashlick or a Manchurian. Usually though, it’s like neither but they love it nonetheless.

Needless to say, this lack of discretion in their taste is all the more annoying for the husband. I already feel sorry for their future spouses, because no matter how accomplished they are as cooks, they will never be able to compete with my soggy birthday apple cake, my chewy cold cake that lies in the freezer as a late night treat, or the pot of gruel that is my remedy for all illness and stress.

I guess it’s not about the recipes at all. It’s our association with the food that makes it special, irrespective of its taste. I don’t think I have ever eaten more delicious parathas and qeema than the ones that would come out of the tiffin box on my childhood train journeys, the chana mewa pulao served on the dastarkhwan in my grandparents’ house in Peshawar or the sandwiches my mother packed for family picnics. One can go to the most fancy restaurants and copy the recipes of the most famous chefs, but nothing can recreate that magic.

Sometimes when I really miss my mother, I make the dishes she used to make just to recreate the smells of her kitchen (I don’t even aspire to recreate the taste) but just the smells take me back to my childhood and those wonderful feelings of love and comfort.

I do think, however, that good cooks are blessed. People love them because more often than not they are also good hosts; they are gracious, kind, warm and welcoming. People naturally gravitate towards them. They can whip up a fantastic dish for any occasion, throw a party, make comfort food for the sick and sad, send a tasty friendship offering to new neighbours, impress the in-laws and be the focal point of a home where everyone feels welcome.

I seriously envy this. I feel my popularity may have suffered from the unchanging menu of shop ordered pizzas served at all parties, my prompt return of empty plates in lieu of the kheer/haleem/tikkis from the neighbours, and my naïve assumption that guests preferred my company over kebabs.

When people were sick, I offered medical advice not soup, and when they were unhappy, I attempted words of wisdom, knowing all along in my heart that chocolate cake would have been much better.

Which is why I collect recipes and watch cooking shows in the forlorn hope that I, too, will become that warm, beautiful and charming person whom everyone loves for their food. But, sadly, it seems like an elusive dream. Fine, I don’t try very hard. But even then, there are days when I am really inspired.

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I tell myself I am going to make something fantastic and surprise everyone. But you have to admit, our kitchens are not the same as those pristine, air-conditioned studios where all the ingredients are magically lined up in little cups, neatly washed, prepared and measured. It’s usually sweltering and chaotic and there are unexpected hitches.

Take the day when I set my heart on baking a cake. The recipe asked for baking powder. I think what I had put in the old coffee bottle was baking powder but it might have been baking soda. I forgot to label it, didn’t I? But how much difference can it make anyway so I splash some in.

The flour is just a tad less than two cups (fine, it was a quarter cup less) and just as I’m about to start whisking the batter, with my battered old machine, the electricity goes. I whisk with my hand. I whisk hard, but by this point, I no longer feel like smiling, and my enthusiasm is waning. I am sweating and dishevelled and the kitchen looks like a disaster zone.

I put the bloody batter in the oven on which the numbers are no longer visible. I open it forty, hot, minutes later, (which is surprisingly longer than the commercial break on the TV show), stick a toothpick in as I have seen being done, and it comes out with sticky goo on it. I bang the oven door closed and go away to read a book. I come back when I smell something. It’s still cake. One could say.

The cooking shows are a lie I decide. One ought to just watch and enjoy because no matter what, they are still strangely therapeutic. All worldly worries can be put aside while one watches a tomato flower being created for a salad, or learns the secret trick for telling the good eggs from the bad ones. If only it were that simple in real life.

I happily sit back to watch a video of a frittata being made; I love Italian food. Then with a rude start I realise it’s time for dinner. I trudge to the kitchen, look in the fridge and pantry, rack my brain for ideas and settle for aloo gosht.