Article#26: The Art of Cooking

Hungry in the morning? Let’s try Onion Paneer Butter Masala Dosa, How about healthy afternoons? Why not Hyderabadi Biryani? Want to have a fulfilled snack for the evening? Samosa or Kachori is the best option. What’s going to be a lite meal for the night? Aloo or Gobi Paratha would be perfect. It sounds good when we try all these items in different places or order from our famous food apps. But what if we try to cook these items at home that too by ourselves? There lies the pain or gain. Pain, when we are not sure of anything about cooking or when we are too lazy enough to cook and gain, when we know the secrets on how to make the items delicious. Well, in this article I am going to talk about the gain, the art of cooking, how it began, what are the methods and ingredients to cook.

Cooking is nothing but the art of preparing food. The preparation techniques vary round the globe based on people’s culture and tradition. But, one common thing that happens worldwide is the preparation using heat or fire. It is not necessary these days that a particular item such as fruit or vegetable should be available in a particular place, the import and export is happening easily with which chefs find lot of options to go ahead in their own style.

It is said that our ancestors have invented cooking around 2 million years ago by rubbing two stones with which the fire gets generated.

We have different methods of cooking like Roasting, Baking, Boiling, Frying, and Steaming. Roasting is used mostly for cooking anything on an oven or outside. The items cooked this way are usually tasty. Baking is used for bakery items like cakes put inside an oven. Such items taste good for a longer time compared to others. Boiling is used mostly for vegetables which helps in preparing a good curry. Frying is used for preparing snacks like samosa, kurkure, chips, etc. Fried items also last little longer compared to others. Steaming is used to cook special items like idly, modak, etc. They taste well when taken immediately.

Cooking bring us enough confidence when we try something new and it turns out to be a successful dish. I have 5 years of experience in cooking. Starting from fries, curries, rice items, I tried sweets, breakfast items and many more. To a major extent, they turned out so well that I became a fan of my own cooking style. I learnt that cooking is not just about preparing the dish. The process involves everything starting from selection of vegetables, ingredients to chopping or grating them to preparing the items. You don’t have to follow an available procedure said by the people around or on the internet. But, there’s always a scope to experiment in your own way and enhance a particular dish.

Few general tips based on my own experience

·         try to add coriander to any curry, it enhances the taste

·         try to add lemon juice to boring vegetables like cabbage, it tastes good

·         try to add jaggery to vegetables like bitter guard, it tastes wonderful

·         Ensure to have cashew in all the rice items like Biryani or even in the sweet items like halwa or kheer. Your dish will be a hit

·         Try to use Asafœtida or hing in chutneys, it gives a unique flavor

To conclude, it’s not that simple to prepare a mouth-watering dish. But If you show little interest and lite passion, it’s not even that hard to cook. Hope this article inspires you to cook.