Cooking without pestle and mortar

Chopping an onion into big, almost inch chunks, he cut the red tomatoes in half next from the stem to the root, and then sliced them width-wise. As soon as the pan hit the heat, he added a generous portion of melted butter. Simultaneously (multitasking with much ease), he broke in a couple of eggs into a bowl, followed by an array of not-so-finely diced ingredients, and his secret ingredient black pepper. With an up-and-down as well as back-and-forth motion, he then beat the hell out of them until there was no strand of white or yellow.

"This is going to be the perfect omelette," I thought to myself. After a long leave that I had happily sanctioned my cook, soon after which I fell sick, our kitchen had turned into a dismal wasteland. But the man of the house aimed to do something productive in the kitchen that day.

But it was when the eggs produced a loud satisfying sizzle on the pan, that I critically questioned my insights. "Wait a minute! Tell me you didn't tell me that you 'don't know how to cook'!" I exclaimed. He smirked extravagantly wriggling his elbows and body, and then drawling to me he said, "Don't know, yah."

After five years of sharing our lives, I had just come to terms with the fact that he's probably never going to make the kitchen a romantic place to be. And yet, here he was, regaling in harmony amid broken egg shells and inedible onion skins.

Whilst I coughed away to glory, he gracefully plated up a perfect, bright-yellow, butter-doused omelette with a sprinkle of pepper and a burst of colourful veggies that looked warm, earthy and inviting.

Unwittingly following the pattern of a triangle as we sat at the dining table, the three of us began consuming the omelette effectively. As my husband and I recounted the story of "I don't know how to cook" and laughed out loud, while also praising the newly discovered sneaky chef, it was obvious that our three-year-old daughter didn't like this kind of commotion at the table. She preferred her mother giving her the fullest attention. I then cut a perfect triangle and speared a morsel of omelette into her mouth and asked, "Happy now?"

Of course, while I can't say enough good things about our new chef's debut performance, one thing is certain. As Gloria Steinem puts it: "Women are not going to be equal outside the home until men are equal in it."

So in her mortar when you swing a pestle, there, you can see Her fly across the evening sky.