Yummy gummy's journey in my tummy
Let's focus on my eating habits and talk about the science and art of cooking
I was always a picky eater. During school days, Mom was always hopeful that I would get to finish the full lunch box one day, but more often than not, I would bring it back with leftovers. It is not that I hate food or eating; I love food and the science of cooking, but it's just that my palate craves new things in smaller quantities. It used to be a silly competition where I surreptitiously added food from my lunchbox or plate to my siblings. Did I say I am the eldest? 😂 . I used to justify to my friends that a buffet is still a worthy deal for some users given that their utility is measured towards varied tastes in a meal; it does not matter how much they eat if all they crave is sampling the food of dozens of varieties. Anyway, I have become wiser in choosing food not to waste.
Now, picky doesn't mean completely idiotic; we still had days of rice with just salt water, or chilli powder and hot oil, or tamarind broth or some other varieties which are just for survival instead of made for palate, as research shows, when you are hungry, every food tastes better than it can be. Either way, more frequently, it is spicy Indian snack food such as samosa, chaat, pani puri, and bakery cookies, ... that enticed me during those days, not the sweets, which partly has to do with the fact that my mom is crowned as kind of star chef of making traditional Indian sweets among all the people I know.
But if I have to say about my favourite foods, cruciferous Cabbage, Cauliflower and Broccoli are my all-time favourite foods. I have tried dozens of recipes for these and can safely live with them for weeks.
Then comes the pasta, and my favourite is spaghetti, although I have only tried a few other varieties – Macaroni, penne, fettuccine, farfalle, tagliatelle, conchiglie and orecchiette. I want to hand-make Lasagna, ravioli, tortellini and cannelloni soon in this decade. I also love thin-crust pizzas, although I am unsure whether I will like Neapolitan similarly; I love making it from flour and yeast. Pizza making is a soothing pasttime for me. I also love Mushroom Puff and Quesadilla.
Delhi made me love Rajma rice, tandoori rotis and soya chaap. Mom stopped cooking rajma after she failed once in my school days, and I taught her back the Delhi recipe now; it's too good to leave it out of the kitchen for past errors 😋
Pani Puri and Samosa, as I said, are favourite snacks after school, and mom always used to get them home whenever she got the chance. We tried cooking only once at home; it was successful, but it took too much time to fold the suitable shapes; if only it were as easy as topology and knot theory.
Malabar Parotta, Paper plain dosa, Idli and Puri – Although preferred as breakfast in general, we used to have them all the time for days on straight (especially when mom became furious that we wasted food yet again)
Of course, I also love Biryani, especially with Prawn/Shrimp instead of chicken, and I'm not much of a mutton fan.
I also have a share of weird foods that I like Spiny Gourd (for its crunchy seeds) and Chicken Gizzard (I hate rubbery overcooked chicken, and this is much better in texture)
In the desserts and sweets – Ice cream, chocolate, Puran Poli and rasmalai.
Among the foods I hate, or more bluntly, nausea inducing ones to me, are plain milk, curd(Indian yoghurt), ghee, dahi balla, dahi papdi, shrikhand, misti doi, buttermilk, raita boondi, malai kofta, lassi, bitter gourd, ... Yep, not typical south-Indian taste is it? But hey, at least there is no comparison among siblings, as we have the same love-hate foods. There is a hilarious story on bitter gourd in school. One afternoon, my mom was feeling daring to try to impart healthy food habits to us. She had the idea that if she cooked bitter gourd directly and brought it to school (yes, we had a shared lunch place for all students in school, and some parents used to stay during those hours, as you can guess, for making the kids finish in time, by even resorting to forceful hand-feeding). So, we were ready for lunch as usual, and she force-fed one handful of bitter-gourd rice to all of us and – we cried for one whole hour with the same bite in our mouths 🤣; Mom says one thing she is grateful is we don't vomit the food once it enters our mouth since as babies, but also we cannot gulp it not to make her feed another bite during that lunchtime. So, yeah, there was a one-hour crying session among hundreds of students and parents for that bitter gourd, and our teacher sided with us, saying we could eat what we liked but study as she wanted. It was worth it; she never made bitter gourd for us again.
Now, coming to cooking, the context is always there, from days of going to the market and relatives' vegetable farms for all those school days to hundreds of hours of food factory and related shows on Discovery Channel. The one time I decided to try cooking pasta for the first time, I vomited. Fast forward a few years, and Harvard's freshman course, Science of Cooking on edX, made me try again. You need not consciously use science all the time, but knowing the right metaphors, principles and reasons for why it works makes you fearless to do things you would not have perceived otherwise. I loved the course and the reason for making me love cooking, with later influences of Michael Pollan, Heston Blumenthal, Ferran Adria and Nathan Myhrvold here and there.
Of course, it can be sinful or silly for some to make cooking a scientific experiment when it could be a personal, natural or intuitive experience for them. I agree. Cooking is fundamentally a social affair; whether it's a family recipe carried on for generations or the cultural events and stories as a context that evoke such recipes or tastes, everything is raw human experience in it. Some may use precise scales, while moms can intuitively decide the proper ratios, temperature and timers on the fly. One is not superior to another when, in the end, everyone feels the need to cook repeatedly, often with the family and for family or friends. A recipe you cook shows your inner self much more than we think, whether they used ample spice or being conservative and playing safe, whether they prefer precise placement on plates or gobble straight from the pan, whether it's readymade packs or careful attention to picking each produce, I feel everything shows itself in the recipe at the end. Even if you never cooked before, have just started, or feel there is not enough time in life (you read until this, I am sure you can spare a few minutes for your food), please reconsider. Try something simple or help in the kitchen with the people who cook daily for you. Give them what makes them happy – just a small token of appreciation for the food they so eagerly cooked for you. If I ever give you my address, feel free to invite yourself to my home, and we can cook anything adventurous. Ofc, there is no promise on curd things, though 😉
Oh btw, fresh black pepper powdered is my favourite spice
Current diet includes mainly: Carrots, grapes, oranges, bananas, cucumber, boiled eggs, spinach – eggs omlette, spinach-banana-milk-yogurt-honey smoothie, flax, green tea, idli sambhar, medu vada, sprouts, litti choka, gobi – sattu – paneer parathas