Lock-down cooking- 5 lessons learnt (some revisited)

Last three months of life have gone by within the confines of home, following social distancing and looking at everyone else with a single lens- s/he is a potential covid carrier! This paranoia has made us physically distant from almost everyone on this planet except the immediate family. Among all others on the planet, there were a few on whom our lives were critically dependent- maids, cooks, drivers etc. These important social supports that were being taken for granted disappeared overnight. 

Many of us had to double up as sometimes maids- brooming and mopping up the floors, sometimes doing dishes (I mean washing, the cooking part follows), cooking, baby-sitting and many others. As one of my friends had put it "we are experiencing first world problems in a country with third world infrastructure!".

Among other things, I have tried cooking during this lock-down.  A disclaimer though, I actually copy recipes from YouTube step by step. If the recipe tells me to take 5 whole black peppers, I take 5- not a pepper more, not a pepper less. If it says medium flame for 2 mins, I cook on medium flame for approx 2 mins - no questions asked. If the recipe is for 500gm and I am cooking 1kg, I actually multiply each ingredient by 2. Guess you get the drift about my cooking skills (or the lack of it)! 

The immediate idea was to put food on the table and give some break to wife, at least on a few days. When I reflect on - lockdown apparently seems to have provided time to reflect on everything- there are some learnings that I could probably takeout from this "mundane chore". Here it goes...

1) Same recipe, different "cooks" equals different tastes

Cooking is as much art as science. The science of cooking, for ease of reference let's consider making tea, has a simple recipe. Give this recipe to 10 different people and believe me we are going to get 10 different tasting teas. The results can and most likely does differ, because of the execution. 

To put in a management cliche- Execution matters

2) Biryani isn't just rice and chicken, simply cooked together

After a few "successful" recipes I thought of making the "simple" biryani. I have defined success here broadly by 2 parameters- my finicky younger daughter ate it without much fuss and, I wasn't the only one left trying to finish off the stuff!

Now biryani has always seemed tasty and simple to me- rice and chicken( or meat) cooked properly in layers, that's it!! And therein lies the trick, getting separate layers while ensuring that both rice and chicken are cooked properly is tough. Moreover, for an authentic biryani the rice grains need to be separate. Theoretically, you should be able to pick each cooked rice grain on its own. 

And that is the problem. Seemingly simpler things might have hidden and executional complexities. Add a pinch of overconfidence based on your earlier "success" and you have a perfect recipe for disaster. Needless to say, my biryani looked (and tasted) more like a khichdi ( white in colour!) mixed with chicken! 

3) Browning the onions is not a process that gives linear results

Onions are interesting! Most of the recipes that I tried involved "browning the onions". Now you can cut onion in different ways- chop them fine, chop them medium, cut them vertically or grind them. When you brown the onions they change from white to pink to golden brown to brown. (Warning- If you don't stop here they do turn black as well!).

However the onions seem to be taking forever between the white/ pink phase to turning brown. It seems as if nothing is changing and the temptation to move on to the next step in the recipe or increase the flame becomes stronger with every minute of seeming non activity. Moving on to the next step means uncooked onions. Turning the flame to high does carry a risk- when onions do start turning brown, they rapidly change from golden brown to darker shades of brown and even more rapidly black.

To put Pareto principle (in management jargon)- 80% efforts would probably yield 20% results. The remaining 20% efforts would yield higher results. Of course, the initial 80% efforts have built the platform and foundation for the 2nd step of generating seemingly disproportionate results with 20% of the efforts. Each process is going to take time to optimise itself, reach a threshold and then finally give results.

4) How you use tomatoes matters

I have tried cooking different cuisines- a North Indian, a Goan, a Maharashtrian and a Bengali dish among others.(I cannot vouch for how "authentic" my preparation would have been but yes I abided by the recipe instructions to the "t").

Some of these recipes had regular cut tomatoes, others had grated tomatoes without peel, some a puree. Similarly, some had full spices, others had ground spices, still others had full spices roasted and then ground, and multiple combinations. Each of these combinations gives the dish a taste unique and acceptable to the region where it came from. 

Similarly, managing any communication or product launch needs to respect the tastes of the culture to be accepted. The ingredients need to be adapted/ used in a manner that is palatable (and therefore critical to its success) in a particular region or culture.

5) If you enjoy the process, the results are more likely to be tastier

The journey is probably as important as the destination. If one treats cooking like a mundane chore, the end result will more likely turn out to be a mundane one. However, if one is enjoying the process the probability of a tastier dish is higher. You might still end up with burnt ingredients but those cases will be less.

Similarly if one looks at every work day as a chore to be completed, it will eventually become a daily chore- most likely not providing the taste of satisfaction that one would desire. One might ask- will every day worked passionately give great results. Everyday?! Perhaps not, but definitely they will give you more days where you can go to bed with a lingering taste of day well spent and a...

BURRRPP!!

(Views expressed are personal)