I don’t know if it’s just me, but there’s one major impediment to trying out new recipes. Wait, make that two major impediments.

(1) I don’t recognise more than 50% of the ingredients listed in most recipes and (2) after I’ve discovered what they are, the question arises: Where can I find those three ingredients, without which the dish might end up tasting like muddy debris dredged from the depths of a stagnant pond?

In my view, recipe inventors and writers practice a subtle and sophisticated form of culinary terrorism. And they get away with it. They tantalize you with exotic-sounding dish and ingredient names. They seduce you with riveting photographs and well-crafted descriptions of a healthy life. They lead you to believe that your taste buds will achieve nirvana. They claim that your heart will swell – with renewed blood rush, not because of its weakened muscles. They will convince you that years of alcohol use/abuse and a sedentary lifestyle can be flicked away with a few recipes. They will beguile you into imagining that the secret of ever-lasting youth (maybe even age reversal) lies on a webpage or in a YouTube link.

Then, out of nowhere, they land a hard kick at your mouth. They follow it up with a foot shoved right up to your tonsils, even as you’re gasping at the injustice of it all.

What they omitted to tell you is that they had a rich sponsor for the cookery show on which you watched that mouth-watering recipe come alive. That some of the expensive and hard-to-find ingredients were helpfully imported from Turkey, Japan and a virtually inaccessible part of Finland. And that, if you wanted to do the same, you’d have to sell your car.

Result: Dishoom. You are knocked witless.

If you think I made this up because I had nothing better to do, let me prove to you that the situation I’ve outlined is not as implausible as it might seem.

But first, a little bit about my family – so that you don’t go thinking that my rant was the result of a low level of education, abysmal general knowledge and a state of financial deprivation.

We are what could legitimately be described, by Indian standards, as an upper-middle class family. I spent a full working life as Creative Director in multinational advertising agencies, we are reasonably well educated, quite well travelled, and are charmingly wasteful in some of our habits, as befits a family that doesn’t have to count its pennies.

I urge you, however, not to be misled by the 50-year-old stainless-steel containers and vessels lining the open shelves of our kitchen, the deafening roar of the 25-year-old mixer and the ageless stainless steel serving ladles that my parents used in the 1950s. All this is normal even in upper-middle class India.

As far as food preferences go, we like Mughlai, Chinese, Thai, Mexican and Italian. The dishes cooked at home, however, are drawn predominantly from our ethnic cuisine, which happens to be South Indian. This phenomenon of cook local-eat out global is how middle-class India expresses its food cravings.

That’s enough background, I imagine. Let’s get to my experience with the offending recipe.

I keyed in “Healthy vegetarian recipe” and clicked on the first link that came up. I then randomly chose Orecchiette with Broccoli Rabe Pesto (2 servings).

There. Straightaway, I had hit a speed bump and was flung three feet in the air. Ma’am, what’s Orecchiette? Hello, what’s Rabe? As for Pesto, I guessed – not incorrectly – that it had something to do with pasta.

Now let’s look at the list of ingredients.

Broccoli – not in the fridge, but it can be purchased at the local supermarket, although somehow it always looks sad and limp.

Pistachio – check, available at home.

Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese – I’ve never heard of it. Oh, but it’s available on Bigbasket.com, a popular online grocer. They only have a 200g block of it, for Rs. 675 or $11. That’s an upfront investment of Rs. 337.50 or $5.50 per serving, even if I don’t use all 200g of it (because what’s left over will rot away in the freezer). Delivery in 3-5 days.

Next up, Kosher Salt. Kosher the word, its origin and its usage, I am familiar with. Kosher salt – what on earth is that? Bigbasket.com, here I come again. Alright, zero search results. Now let’s try a gourmet site, Sprig.co.in, which claims to sell all sorts of obscure, imported stuff. Nope, no luck.

Let’s move on.

Part-Skim Ricotta Cheese. What’s this? I try a different online grocer this time, thegourmetbox.in. Yes! Rs. 495 for 250g + Rs. 100 shipping charges ($9.50 in all), and 5-7 days for delivery to my zip code.

I’m $20.50 down already.

Almost finally, we have Orecchiette Pasta. I have never encountered this culinary delight… not even in Italian restaurants in Italy, as far as I can recall from last year. And my memory is good. Fret not, it’s available on thegourmetbox.in for Rs. 400 ($6.30), except that it’s out of stock. A call to customer care reveals that they don’t know when fresh stocks will arrive.

And finally, Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Happiness – an almost full bottle of it, infrequently used and encrusted with oily muck, is sitting on a slimy piece of plastic surrounded by useless things.

I’m now down $26.80, yet I cannot cook this recipe, because I don’t have the key ingredient – Orecchiette Pasta.

See what I mean? Stumped and stymied. Kicked in the mouth by the recipe monger, with her foot now needling my tonsils. The health freak in me, and my craving taste buds, can revolt all they want; they just have to wait longer.

I must tell you, though, this particular recipe has received 3.5 stars out of 5.0, which I assume isn’t bad at all, and a large number of comments. It might be interesting to read, verbatim, what some of them had to say:

From an indignant Italian:

“Orrible!!! You mix three different sauces, please this is not Orecchiette with broccoli from Italy…”

From a contrite host:

“Very bitter. I made it for some guests coming over. We all took a bite and looked at each other. I told them I was not offended.”

From an angry soul who, I assume, had to order pizza after this:

“Terrible! Bitter and unedible.”

To be fair, not all comments are critical or angry. One enthusiast says:

“Absolutely delicious and a nice change to the regular pesto I usually make.”

Whom does one believe? That question can wait until I’ve found Orecchiette pasta and Kosher salt, and then actually prepared this dish. That could be… whenever.

I have come to the conclusion that dealing with recipe writers and amateur chefs is a bit like dealing with mathematicians, tax consultants and lawyers. They kind of assume that you already know a lot, and they unleash upon you a barrage of impressive-sounding terms that mean nothing to you. And then they look at you as though you were a semi-literate imbecile. They display the arrogance of Picasso who, reportedly, once said something to the effect that if you didn’t understand his paintings, the problem was with you. Not him.

Maybe you want to try making Udang Galah Goreng? It’s a tasty Malay thingy, for which the ingredients might be available on your friendly, neighbourhood planet. Two seats are still available on the Galactic’s 2022 flight.

Bon Appetit!

G S Shridhar, despite the absence of tattoos and piercing and long hair/shaven head, is a creative person by inclination and practice. He has spent 34+ years in advertising and marketing, and has written over 200 ad films for some of India’s largest brands.His forays into humorous writing have so far largely been confined to bloggy emails, which he sends out to a family group on Gmail. Shridhar lives in Bangalore, India.