Like all stories worth telling, this one starts with a 30-rack of Natural Ice -- which is not to be confused with Natty Light, Ice's weaker, less fun younger brother. There's an important scientific distinction between the two: Natty Ice goes through a freezing process where all excess ice crystals are removed allowing for more alcohol by volume, and, by that logic, more cheeky, good-natured shenanigans.

Everyone remembers that pivotal mouth-moment where food went from being an overconsumed and underappreciated necessity to something more sacred and experiential; something that transcended the traditional reasons for which we consume.

Also, it happened to be the brand that my friend Dip's older sister came back from the liquor store with day. Seventeen-year-olds desperate for coolness points can't afford to be selective with their alcohol, and, as his sister constantly reminded us "this isn't a [redacted] liquor delivery service, you ungrateful [redacted]." She had a point.

The plan was simple: invite a few fellow friends to an non-parentally-supervised house filled with beer and red solo cups, then sit and wait for the awesomeness to roll in. And it did in a sense, but we had really low standards for awesomeness back then. Our version of a "best case scenario" was someone bringing a water bottle full of hijacked gin and Tom Collins mix from their parents' liquor cabinet.

The night progressed as planned -- beer pong, king's cup, listening to Usher's "Yeah" on repeat for six hours -- standard teenage kickback accoutrements. Our modest crowd of about 10 started to thin out at the midnight mark. One of the cool, I'd-rather-you-drink-where-I-know-you're-safe, SUV-brandishing moms even shuttled people back to their homes. The ones without a means to get home were promised a clean patch of carpet and a pillow for the night. We were the careful brand of careless teenagers.

Our crew was down to five highly lucid but unmistakably drunk overgrown toddlers, all splayed out on a beer-soaked sectional in front of a big screen TV, ready to smack talk our way through hours of Play Station until our tired, cherubic eyes drifted off to sleep.

There was a singular moment when we realized our crucial, if not fatal, rookie mistake: we forgot to account for the drunchies. We were new! We didn't know any better, we were just kids back then man! It took one sentence to throw us into a feral rage: "dude, how good would Del Taco be right now?"

Images of dollar menu chicken tacos flooded our simple little minds. It would have been awesome, Chad, that's how good it would have been. It would have been the best thing any of us had ever tasted, or foreseeably would ever taste, in our lives. But everyone knew the cruel truth of it all -- we were stranded. We were on an island. We were too drunk to drive, too lazy to walk the requisite 1.5 miles, and too stupid to realize that we easily could have called a cab. That left us with two options: raid the fridge or eat Brandon.

Since Brandon was small and sinewy, we went with the former. We were crushed to find out that the fridge had been all but gutted; stripped down to its bare shelves and produce drawers. Dip's parents had been gone for almost a week and the house was completely bereft of consumables. A few of the lucky ones made away with a handful of cold tortillas and a jar of peanut butter, but the rest of us were left wanting, desperately trying to figure out how we could make a container of expired nonfat cottage cheese edible.

I was ready to curl up into a ball on the cold linoleum floor and acquiesce to death when Dip said, "Dude! Dude dude dude!" and took off rifling through the freezer. His mom had made and frozen a gallon of pav bhaji before she left, a spiced potato and cauliflower curry that, though I'd never heard of it, I couldn’t wait to shovel in my mouth.

I sliced through the giant, frozen curry cylinder with a knife and threw all the shards into the biggest sauce pot available and cranked the heat on high. Wielding a wooden spoon as my weapon, I stirred the pot of frozen curry as violently as possible, assuming the faster I stirred the faster I could eat.

Growing up in Orange County where the restaurant landscape was dominated by nationwide fast casual chains, I didn't have access to a ton of good Indian food. There was the watered down steam-table place outside our local movie theatre, but that barely qualified as food, so standing half-drunk over this steaming pot of curry was a bit of an emotional experience for me.

I didn't know food could smell that good. The cinnamon, cumin, coriander, tomato, and cauliflower smells all got swept up by the steam and blasted me in the face. I shoved my head into the pot and inhaled the fumes for what must have been a ten minute block of time -- I think I got high off of pav bhaji before actually tasting it.

But when I did taste it, when that first bite of firey, molten-hot curry hit my lips, it was like listening to the Rage Against the Machine for the first time. It was overwhelmingly good. I threw all sense of rationality out the window and started shoveling-wooden spoonfuls of boiling hot curry directly from the pot into my mouth -- I couldn't stop myself if I tried.

I don't know if it was the alcohol, the adrenaline, or the lack of concern for my physical well being, but I didn't notice how scorched my mouth was until the next morning. I woke up to blisters on my tongue; confused and hungover but not the least bit regretful.

Every time I end up back at Dip's house, his mom has at least three tupperware containers of pav bhaji waiting for me to take home. It's been my favorite dish ever since that night.

I never thought to ask her for a recipe until last week, partly because I knew she didn’t write anything down. Everything she cooked was made purely from experience and memory -- no measuring, no cooking times, and especially no overexposed step-by-step pictures. But, for me to really understand and appreciate a dish, I need to know the process behind it, I need the textbook answers to my mouth's questions.

Not only did she write me a recipe, but she sent me a picture of the original copy she hand-wrote down in Gujarati before transcribing it in English via email. If I was even conversational in Gujarati I would have cooked directly from that, but all I know is "hello", "how are you doing?" and a few incredibly useful vulgarities.

I drove down to a local Indian grocery store to pick up all the requisite ingredients. I also bought a bunch of Indian sweets to fuel me through the cooking process, because eating candy for breakfast is a responsible, adult decision.

I gathered all my ingredients -- the masala, tomatoes, cauliflower, onion, garlic, potatoes, peas, and spices, and scattered them across my counter (I've been told I lack organizational skills.) The first step was to wash four medium russet potatoes and boil them whole and unpeeled. I didn't understand why the no peeling specification, but I realized after the fact that this reduces the amount of water absorbed by the potato. You can actually see a ring about ¼ inch past the skin where the potato stops absorbing water and instead steams itself from the inside out. Mind already blown on step one.

Next, I threw four roma tomatoes in the food processor with two medium brown onions and three cloves of garlic, then pureed until smooth. This mixture forms the base of the entire dish -- there's no additional liquid necessary outside of the natural juices from the onion and tomato. Again, mind blown.

The coolest thing about seeing a recipe after you've already eaten a dish multiple times is that you get to fully conceptualize the process behind all the flavors. The acidity comes from the tomatoes, the sweetness from the peas, and that lush richness from a whole stick of butter. It's these hidden, unseen by the naked eye ingredients that make me appreciate a dish on a deeper level.

After simmering the onion and tomato puree in a stick of butter for 15 minutes on low heat, I pulsed the cooked potatoes in the food processor with ½ head of blanched cauliflower, and 1 cup of blanched green peas. Just pulse them, don't get too crazy with it now -- restraint bro, restraint. You can even rough chop by hand if you want to, but I think the more jobs we defer to machines the better.

When you stir the potatoes, peas, and cauliflower into the pot, you really see the pav bhaji develop. This is the gestaltian moment where all the individual parts become one, and you look down at the pot and go, "Oh yeah, that's why I've been doing this for the last hour instead of watching college football."

The last step is to season and simmer for another half hour, or however long you feel like waiting, which, if you've done it right, you're not going to want to do. I used six tablespoons of pav bhaji masala, but I'm not sure that I ever found a point of diminishing return; the more I added the better it tasted. Throw in a bunch of cayenne pepper and salt to taste, and then start shoveling it into your mouth with a wooden spoon. Or, like a civilized human might, put it in a bowl and garnish with red onion, cilantro, and a squeeze of lime.

Mine wasn't as good as hers. It was good, don't get me wrong, it just wasn't the same. I don't really know why -- the flavors were there, I followed her recipe, I even threw in an extra half stick of butter because I don't care about my body -- but it was missing something.

Maybe it's not the flavor I was chasing so much as the memory. Maybe it no longer tasted like a drunken Friday night from my childhood. Or maybe she just had years of experience and hundreds of more opportunities to perfect the dish than I had. We'll never know.

Even though I don't have the expertise and deft hands of an experienced cook, I do have an insatiable urge to make every recipe into a glorified Taco Bell item, which is what led to the pav bhaji chalupa. Deep fry a piece of flatbread and fill it with pav bhaji, raita, mango pickle, cilantro, and red onion, and you have the best Taco Bell and Indian food hybrid since the "Paneer 'n' Fajita Kathitto" (that's a real item by the way).

Josh Scherer is a 5th year, zero-time All-American at UCLA and author of the blog Culinary Bro-Down. He thinks cheesy gordita crunches make the best mid-day snack, and his life's greatest achievement is eating at three Guy Fieri restaurants in one night. Hates cookie butter.