The Science of Cooking!!!!

Being an engineer, I won’t call cooking an art. It is definitely a science as it involves all skills of a scientist. It begins with discovery (discovery of tastes of different ingredients or identification of different flavors), experimentation (experimenting with all kinds of ingredients with different permutations and combinations), invention (it’s declared when you love it and everyone appreciates your cooking – that’s the measure of success) and last but unquestionably not the least is the touch of innovation – it is the basic element of any kind of research :). Innovation can be at the first stage or at the final one.

I belong to a family of foodies, where everyone is a cook in himself. My mom, dad (definitely a better cook than mom in some ways), me and my bro..... he is very innovative. To tell you sincerely, he is my main motivation for innovative cooking. You won’t believe if I tell you that he can cook million type of eggs at the same time and they all taste completely different from each other (just thinking about it makes me hungry :O). My grandmother was a great cook, she knew what "taste" is in a real sense. Her food would always make you gluttonous. It used to be yummy always, with lots of ghee and love. If you happen to have tasted the traditional "Kashmiri Fish Curry" she made, you were definitely the luckiest one. That is the best fish I have ever had till date, my mom still cannot cook it as well as Gia (my grandmother).

I have been cooking for almost like a year now, and believe me it’s a great stress buster and a very good way to kill time. I am in love with my cooking, I guess too self-obsessed. I love to experiment with all the vegetables, different combinations and ingredients. It’s really good because you just keep getting better and better. The performance graph is linear initially and then the improvement grows exponentially :P (yup it might sound funny to all my non geeky friends but I love R&D at all levels).

Furthermore, the effect of culture on cooking is also mind-blowing. Culture, geographical location and the local climate have a huge impact on the cooking of a particular region. It’s amazing to see how cuisines change at every mile (also within a single state). Our country being a great example of diverse cultures, foods as well as eating habits vary from one city to another.

But every cuisine uses a perfect science for cooking….

If you consider Kashmiri cuisine, everything is deep fried (vegetables as well as non-veg.), uses a lot of oil and red chilies...... but we balance it out with ‘sauf’ powder and lots of curd. (Curd is a specialty among Kashmiris, we love curd and we have it all the times). Now if you see the climate in Kashmir we need foods that can keep us warm so all the spices, oil and non-veg. does the trick for us.

Next, if you see the typical north Indian cuisine (esp. places like Punjab,UP etc.). They don’t have very spicy food but they use a lot of lemon, lots of water, lassi (buttermilk) and coriander in food. Coriander is very good for stomach and lemon and lassi are helpful for the extreme heat.

Now if we go down south......... the food is highly spicy but they always follow food with curd rice.... :) A perfect antidote to the gunpowder they take (gunpowder as they call it, is the chili powder). They love to have plain white rice with gun powder and a spoon of ghee,it tastes great. Moreover, drinking rasam or that colored water in Kerala definitely helps you digesting the food properly.

So, won’t you agree with me that it is definitely a science?

I dedicate the year of 2009’s R&D to cooking, which is turning into a passion :)