Ram Shanker: May 2021

Sometimes, probably 5 years or so back, I along with 6 to 8 friends went to a restaurant in Hauj Khas Village for lunch to celebrate something. We ordered many things. Handi Biryani being one of them. It is a specialty dish made with Rice as basic ingredient. Many of the restaurants cook them in a pot made of burned-clay. Just when we were halfway through the lunch, the chief-of-cooks came to ask "How is food?". We had only good things to say. It was really good. Than he noticed one of my friends mixing the biryani inside the "Handi". He said, "Hey don't mix it, you need to taste all the layers separately.". He explained further, "Food taste better when you intermix the varying taste". It is the variation which we enjoy. Say salt and sugar. Sour and Chilly, sorrow and plain.. and so on. This is why Handi Biryani taste so good. It has a particular aroma, color and taste gradient. The rice nearer to surface is cooked more and brownish, while the center is less cooked and much whiter. This is my first thought on cooking.

So this was one of the lessons I learned about food. In my part of the India, cooking is mostly a "Female" thing. Boys are not generally taught how to cook. Boys and men learn cooking much much older when they HAVE to. Are forced by the circumstance. This lockdown being one of them for me !! We being two brothers only, we never learned to cook anything in childhood. My mom wanted me to study and never bother about cooking. So there goes the age old culture...… Up to grade 5, my mom cooked for me. After that, it was the "mess" of the boarding school. Collage also had "mess" for food. When I started working and was Bachler, we lived with other boys and hired a maid to cook for us. Though I did cook some specialty items like sandwiches, Magee, Poha etc occasionally on weekends, but that was it. When I married, wife was working in 24x7 shifts. Not much time to cook. So again we hired a maid to cook for us. Now in recent turn of events, my wife went to hometown for a month, to help with her sister's marriage. Sometimes in March. 2nd wave of Covid was just brewing up in India, and when lockdown started, maids were forbidden to come to our home, or restricted to only one flat in society. Same had happened in lockdown one.

So here I am. A forced bachelor. COOKING SINCE LAST 2 MONTHS !! And it is awesome. When I started cooking, just out of random thoughts, decided NOT to watch any YouTube video or recipe website. Just cook whatever I had observed our maids or my mom doing. I learned quite a lot. I did have some theoretical ideas, some really good ones as well like the 1st para of this blog post. However this does not mean, I invented cooking. My mom was always there with here awesome tips. One day I sent the photos of Rotis during lunch. She immediately called over phone and said "Roti looks burned, it must be chimmar". And it was. She gave me the time that you can over-cook roti only when you are going to eat it immediately. Otherwise it would become chimmar and difficult to eat. So that day onwards, my morning cooked rotis tasted good even during lunch. Mom kept giving me tips whenever she saw any peculiarities in my platter. Mistakes one after another. Love you mom. Another tip I got from my father was how to make rotis bump-up 10x. You put roti on tawa, and flip it just after 10 seconds. This will create a very thin layer in a side. Than let it cook for 30 or so seconds. Than when you put it finally on open flame, the initial layer made in 10 sec would separate from opposite layer, and roti would be 10x the original height. He he he he. It works. Even for my rectangular rotis. More on this latter.

Another thing I had learned during my occasional Poha cooking was this. Food is spoiled always due to excess of ingredients. You put more masalas in it, it would become bitter and not eatable. Put more salt, and again you can not eat. Put too much of Garlic, and you are going to absolutely throw it ! Put too much chilly and your nose will not let you eat. So basically be conservative about additive ingredients. Basic ingredient of the food like rice, aatta etc can be put in volume based on how much, and how many persons need to eat. However when it comes to additives, always be conservative. I have been putting just a pinch of Jeera-powder and Dhania-Poweder to all my vegetables. And it tastes good. Allow me to share one of the tips I learned few years back on Technology website "Hacker-News" I follow regularly. It said, whenever you are reading a recipe online, and it says to mix "X" quantity of sugar, you follow all the steps exactly as written, except put "X / 4" of sugar into it. Yes just one forth of what is recommended. And the food would still taste good ! Tried it sometime, and It was one hell of a revelation. You can reduce the quantity of ingredients. If the food doesn't taste as good as it should be, you can add more latter. So this is my second thoughts on cooking.

So lately I was thinking, what exactly happens in cooking? I will summarize my answer to this as sum of three parts. These are my third thoughts on cooking.

Part A: Cooking as in making the food digestible. Over the evolution of human history, humans have got rid of the ability to digest plants as it is. We simply can't digest leaf as easily as monkeys. ;) So you need to make the food digestible. Humans have learned that "Temperature" is our best friend to make food digestible. You simply heat stuff. Heat it for some prolonged period and it would undergo some chemical changes and magically become digestible. So far so good. Boiling that vegetables is enough to make it digestible. Frying, again a process of heating. We even optimized this process of heating, by inventing a device called "pressure cooker". Normal boiling water heats up to 100 degree Celsius only. However when inside pressure cooker, it doubles the atmospheric pressure, elevating the boiling temperature of water to ~120 degree Celsius (googled it just now). This elevated temperature/heating is what reduces the cooking time. Another thing we have to realised that different food need different time-duration at elevated temperature. Ex: Cauliflower and beans would take twice as much time as potatoes. Pulses take 4 pressure-cooker Vissel against the 2 for rice. These numbers come up automatically within a few iterations of cooking. Just give it a try.

Part B: Creating the taste. Here we Indians are quite expert. :) We do not enjoy bare rice, or simply boiled vegetables. Gandhi Ji was known to eat only boiled food. But for rest of us mare-mortals, taste is a pre-requisite. Remember, this part is totally optional from biological point of view. However we have been conditioned since our childhood for those delicious gravy . ha ha ha. India is the largest producer of Masala in the world. We mix so many things in the food that many American can't it traditional Indian food! However remember my second thought above. In pursuit of taste, we put so much oil in food that we harm our health. People develop cholesteryl problem and so on.... Not required. You can reduce masalas and oil quantity by half, and food will still taste good. Go ahead. Try it today.

Part C: The presentation. This is of least importance inside the household. As long as you have covered part A and Part B, you are done. Ever since I started cooking, I have been sharing the pictures of my platter in my family WhatsApp group. I would be truthful here. Only the best of photos would get shared. Say I cook 4 rotis, the one which is most round would be shared. He he he ..You remember the "Round roti cooked by newly married bride !". This is just it, the presentation. My rectangular ones are equally taste good. However "round-roti" is a cultural sensation in India. There is still a place where this part is given equal importance. The Restaurants. They need the presentation to attract customers. After-all customers click photos, have good time there, and food MUST look good. However, if presentation is good but taste not-good, you know what would happen. ;) I remember my first date with my fiancé, on 14th Feb 2016, just one day after engagement on 13th Feb. I had booked a premium seat in "The Garden Restaurant" in Lodhi Garden. Full of NRE (New Relationship Energy), I booked the restaurant for 4 digit INR, even though my friend Saptadip recommended against the price. That day, My fist valentine day, they had pre-decided food on the menu. One of the item was some "Red soupy thing", and reddish-fried potatoes, presented awesomely in a pearl-white plate. It was so well color coordinated with theme decoration, and lighting specifically for that day. Even though both of us were not hungry, we couldn't resist eating it. However just after few spoons, it was at the side of the table . You see, presentation of the food attracts people, but can't retain us without taste.

So, here I am. Cooking my own food, thanks to lockdown. And I have cooked quite a lot of dishes. Time for some showoff. :) Remember, only the best of photos are published. Disaster ones are not for public eyes. Ha Ha. Enjoy.