Masala Lab

That said, try and avoid pressure-cooking for meats and seafood. Rather counter-intuitively, meats tend to dry out even with moist cooking methods. The key to great-tasting meat is to ensure that its internal temperature never goes above 70oC. In a literal pressure-cooker atmosphere, that is simply not possible, so the chances that you will end up with dry, overcooked pieces is very high

Page: 45, Location: 679-682

Note: Meat don't like heat

The general, fail-safe algorithm to cook rice perfectly is: Wash away as much amylopectin as possible from the surface of the rice. This is the starch that becomes sticky when cooked. Wash rice till the water runs clear. Then add water to the rice and bring it to a boil. When the rice’s internal temperature hits 65oC, starches gelatinize. Don’t worry, you don’t have to poke a thermometer into a rice grain to accurately measure this. Just let the water visibly come to a boil, and the moment that happens you will know that all the starch in your rice has gelatinized. As the water comes to a boil, place a lid on your cooking vessel and reduce the heat to the lowest setting possible. At this point, we are simply letting the gelatinized starches absorb the rest of the water in the vessel. This takes about 15 minutes. Once all the water has visibly been absorbed, take your vessel off the stove and let it sit for 10 more minutes with the lid closed. At this point, a process called retrogradation happens, where each grain separates and creates its own identity, much like a teenager reading Ayn Rand. Once this is done, open the lid and fluff up the rice with a fork before serving.

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Note: Tip.

Here is where your grandmother’s till-the-first-knuckle-of-your-index-finger rule is good science.

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Note: Tip.

One of the hardest legumes to cook, the chickpea (chana), can be cooked to perfect softness if you add a pinch of baking soda to the pressure cooker. Baking soda (see Chapter 5) breaks down pectin, the hard substance that holds the plant’s cell walls together, and accelerates the cooking of chickpeas (or any other legume for that matter).

Page: 50, Location: 753-756

Note: Tip.

As always, our knowledgeable grandmothers will also throw in a teabag into the pressure cooker when making chana. They might tell you that it’s meant to impart a lovely dark brown colour to the pale white chana, but the more useful, non-cosmetic purpose is to neutralize all the unused baking soda, which has a nasty, bitter and soapy aftertaste. Tea, as we will learn in Chapter 4, is an acid, while baking soda is basic. Acids and bases tend to react and neutralize each other.

Page: 50, Location: 756-759

Note: Tjip.

Page: 50, Location: 759

Note: Tip.

Another minor annoyance when cooking dal is the foam it produces in the pressure cooker, which makes it hard to clean the lid afterwards. A teaspoon of oil added to the water in the pressure cooker will significantly reduce foaming when cooking legumes.

Page: 50, Location: 759-761

Note: Tip.

If you want to make a whole wheat loaf of bread in India, your best bet is to use 70 per cent maida

Page: 53, Location: 801-802

Note: Tip.

The algorithm for the perfect, soft chapatti dough is: Mix atta and water, and roughly bring it to a shaggy mix (no need to knead) till there are no dry bits of flour. Let it sit for 30 minutes. This triggers a process of autolysis where gluten formation starts in the presence of water. You can use slightly warm, but not boiling, water to increase gluten development. Boiling water will cook (gelatinize) the starches in the wheat, and that will leave less water for gluten development. Some methods do recommend using boiling water, but that will produce not just a soft chapatti but also an ultra-flaky one. Ultimately, it’s a matter of personal preference. I tend to like my chapattis with some amount of chew. The beauty of autolysis is that you don’t need to knead the dough at all. The dough will literally knead itself. After 30 minutes, work in some salt into the dough. We don’t add the salt up front because salt tends to tighten the gluten network, and we don’t want that during the early stage of gluten development. Just knead the dough mildly till it looks shiny and slick (the autolysis phase will help make this happen pretty quickly) and you are done! Think of all those instructions that ask you to knead the dough for 10 minutes. If you think the exercise will be useful for your deltoid, triceps and biceps, go ahead, but

Page: 54, Location: 814-824

Note: Tips

Try and use as little extra flour for dusting and preventing stickiness while rolling, because all that extra flour tends to burn on the tawa and flame, adding a burnt flavour to the finished product.

Page: 54, Location: 826-827

Note: Tips

Another useful rule to remember is to always use salted water when boiling vegetables. Salt will prevent the leaching out of flavour molecules and nutrients from your vegetables, and also accelerate their cooking times.

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Note: Tips

In general, steaming vegetables is a better approach than boiling them, especially if you are looking to retain most of the vegetable’s flavour and texture. It will take longer than boiling because, as we learnt earlier in this chapter, vapour is less dense than liquid water and, thus, takes more time to transfer heat. However, if the idea is to assault the vegetable with fifteen spices, ginger and garlic, then it doesn’t matter much. But if you are making a minimalist dry dish with a vegetable, it’s better to steam the vegetable to the right level of doneness, brown it in oil and then add spices, before quickly turning the stove off.

Page: 57, Location: 868-872

Note: Tips

What does work in getting flavours into the meat is a process called brining. Letting meat sit in a salt solution, into which you can add other flavouring ingredients as well, will result in the salt getting into the meat, which by itself significantly improves the flavour. More magically, the salt prevents the loss of water from the muscle tissues in the meat. This is rather counter-intuitive because when you add salt to vegetables, they tend to lose water, and we tend to assume that salt is a dehydrating agent. Yes, it is, but only for plant cells. For animals, including humans, salt helps retain moisture. Think about what you do when you are dehydrated. You drink water (to replace the lost water), sugar (for instant energy) and salt, which helps you retain the water you just drank.

Page: 59, Location: 896-902

Note: Tips

So, applying what we now know about how meat cooks, keeping it in a water bath at 39oC, will defrost your meat in 10–15 minutes without cooking it. Protein starts to denature around 50oC, so the idea is to get water as warm as you can while ensuring that it is circulated constantly to ensure even transfer to heat. A sous vide device will do this, but if you do not have one, heat water in a microwave, at a low setting for about a minute. Then use a temperature probe and wait till the water reaches around 40oC. Put your meat in it and keep stirring once in a while. Tap water in India is regularly in the 40–45oC range during summer, so you can use that, but make sure you use a lid (or cling wrap) to reduce exposure to air.

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Note: Tip

And if you have the problem of the egg sticking to the shell after boiling, making it painful to peel, try adding a pinch of baking soda to the boiling water. This will increase the pH level of the water, which will keep the egg from sticking to the shell.

Page: 62, Location: 939-940

Note: Tip

Like with meat, the best way to cook an egg is to use low heat. If you are scrambling an egg or making an omelette, the trick to getting the softest and fluffiest results is to salt the broken egg at least 15 minutes before you cook it. The salt will uncoil the proteins in the egg before they have the chance to set rapidly when heat is applied. This allows for a softer texture in your omelette or bhurji.

Page: 62, Location: 941-943

Note: Tip

molecule of fat is like a flagpole with three flags. The flagpole is a small molecule called glycerol and the three flags are fatty acids. While they are called ‘acids’, they are pretty weak.

Page: 63, Location: 952-953

Note: Til

Fatty acids, both long and short ones, have two kinds of bonds between the carbon bonds—a single bond or a double bond. When there is a double bond, there are fewer hydrogen atoms, as the carbon bonds once more with carbon instead of with the hydrogen in the fatty acid. When all the bonds in the fatty acid are single bonds, the fatty acid is saturated (with Hydrogen). When one of the bonds is a double bond, it’s a monounsaturated fatty acid. When there are more than one carbon double bonds, it’s a polyunsaturated fatty acid. Each fat molecule could have any combination of three saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids.

Page: 63, Location: 955-960

Note: Til

Because chemists tend to be insufferable geeks, they describe unsaturated fatty acids in terms of where the carbon double bond is in the long chain. If it is three atoms from the end of the chain (Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet), it’s called Omega minus 3.

Page: 64, Location: 968-970

Note: Til

And, by the way, rancid oil only smells and tastes bad. Consuming it has no known serious, negative health effects.

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Note: Til

2 Science of Spice and Flavour

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Note: CH.

Flavour is a combination of taste, smell, mouthfeel, and to a smaller extent, sound and visual experiences. And despite the fact that 80 per cent of flavour perception happens in the nose, we tend to associate the tongue as being the Watson and Crick of flavour to the nose’s Rosalind Franklin.

Page: 67, Location: 1025-1026

Note: Note

What you smell before you eat is called orthonasal olfaction, and what you smell as a result of a ton of volatile flavour molecules hitting those receptors as you breathe out is retronasal olfaction. This, in my opinion, is the single largest contributor to taste, because the act of chewing releases the maximum amount of volatile aroma molecules from your food.

Page: 70, Location: 1067-1070

Note: Note

Malodorous feet and cumin aside, smell is the only sense that goes straight to the brain’s cortex—the olfactory nerve is close to the part of the brain that deals with emotions and memory, which is why the smell of food evokes nostalgia and memories, and also why no Michelin star chef can compete with your grandmother’s dal.

Page: 71, Location: 1079-1081

Note: Note

Since our saliva contains 0.4 per cent salt by concentration, any food with less than 0.4 per cent salt by weight will taste unseasoned. So, 0.5 per cent to 1 per cent by weight is a sensible starting point for estimating how much salt you need in your dish.

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Note: Tip

A rather common question people have is how to fix a dish that has been over-salted. Allow me to use state-of-the-art science to finally give you the highly anticipated answer. You can’t.

Page: 75, Location: 1135-1137

Note: Note

Here’s a quick cheat sheet on the rules of salt: Salt balances sweetness by elevating other flavours in desserts. Take your dessert game to the next level by always adding a pinch of salt when making something like payasam or kheer. You will not be disappointed. Salt mutes sourness. This is a trick commonly used to salvage overly sour yoghurt by serving it with a pinch of salt. Salt mutes bitterness. This tip is very useful when cooking green leafy vegetables or bitter gourd. Salt dehydrates plant material. This is an excellent trick to improve the flavour of salad ingredients. Salt helps meat retain moisture. You must always consider brining meat before marinating or cooking it.

Page: 75, Location: 1144-1150

Note: Tips

Like with most spices, chillies (both green and red) lose their flavour once they are powdered. They do not, however, lose heat because capsaicin is not volatile. If you want the flavour of the chillies, use them whole. If you only want heat, use the powder.

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Note: Tips

Here is a cheat sheet for using heat in your dishes: The right amount of heat intensifies other flavours. Fat mutes heat, which is why idli gunpowder is paired with sesame oil or ghee. Alcohol mutes heat, which is why bar snacks in India tend to be insanely spicy, because after a couple of large pegs, your TRPV1 receptors are not exactly in working condition. Acid amplifies heat.

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Note: Tips

A key thing to remember is that the flavours of spices work only in combination with the following seven basic elements: Salt: Amplifies spice flavours Sweet: Amplifies spice flavours Bitter: Many spices by themselves have a bitter taste, but they also have a strong aroma that our noses detect Sour: Balances spice flavours and makes multiple flavours stand out Umami: Makes spice flavours linger in the mouth Heat: Makes spice flavours pleasurable Fat: Transports flavour. Most flavour molecules are not water-soluble. If not for fat, most flavours would simply be lost to the air.

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Note: Tips

To summarize, if you want to extract more flavour: Roast dry spices. Mince or grind fresh spices into a paste. If using the spices whole, add them at the start of the cooking process. If using a powder, use it towards the end of the cooking process. You will see a ton of cooking videos on YouTube that add a ton of roasted cumin powder at the start of the dish. You are better off adding a much smaller amount of this spice towards the end and achieving a similar effect. Use fresh or dry herbs only at the end of the cooking process. Spices cooked in oil will taste more intense than spices boiled in water.

Page: 87, Location: 1327-1333

Note: Tips

get a mortar and pestle made of granite too, since it offers the most amount of abrasive firepower to crush spices. A mortar and pestle will extract more flavour from fresh spices, such as garlic and ginger, because the high-speed blade of a blender ends up heating and partially cooking the spice.

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Note: Tip

If you are using an onion for a salad and will be eating it raw, just soak it in water for a bit to remove most of the pungency. If you want your salad onions to remain crunchy, don’t use warm or hot water, as the heat will break down cell walls and turn the onions limp.

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Note: Tip

As mentioned earlier, the inner layers of an onion are less pungent and flavourful than the outer layers. So, think twice before discarding too many of the outer layers. Incidentally, the enzyme reactions we just spoke about continue well after you cut an onion. They don’t just stop because, at room temperature, the enzymes are still active. This is why it’s not a good idea to cut onions in advance. They will lose flavour and also develop a slightly bitter taste, as the enzyme reactions continue unabated. Cut them as close to the cooking time as possible. If this is not practical, consider refrigerating after you cut them.

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Note: Tip

If you hear a mild sizzle, your oil is ready. A loud sizzle indicates close to frying temperatures, while no sizzle indicates that the oil is not hot enough.

Page: 98, Location: 1500-1501

Note: Tip

It turns out that you can pressure-caramelize onions! All you have to do is add butter, salt and onions to a pressure cooker and cook it for 20 minutes at peak pressure. The onions have enough water in them, so you don’t need to add more water. If you are nervous, go ahead and add a teaspoon just to soothe your anxiety from trying water-free pressure-cooking. The butter will, in any case, prevent the onions from getting scorched.

Page: 101, Location: 1534-1537

Note: Tip

Baking soda accelerates the breakdown of pectin, which in turn releases the proteins and sugars inside the onion. These, when heated up, undergo the Maillard reaction. As long as the pectin holds, it will guard the innards of as many onion cells as possible with great dedication.

Page: 102, Location: 1553-1555

Note: Tips

You can also use soda to great effect when trying to save the planet by reducing the use of energy to cook lentils, particularly chickpeas and black urad dal. A pinch of baking soda added to the lentils in the pressure cooker will cook them in half the time it would otherwise take. It’s the same chemistry.

Page: 102, Location: 1558-1560

Note: Tips

If you cook your onions till they are translucent, they will impart a mild flavour to your dish. I’d use this for milder, creamier curries, like kormas, etc. Mildly browned onions will impart a complex sweet and savoury flavour, suitable for tikka masala-type strong-flavoured gravies. If you go all the way to golden brown, the onions become suitable for bhuna (roasted), rogan josh or theeyal-type dishes. If you go all the way and caramelize them, you might as well just go ahead and smear it on a piece of toast and wonder what you’ve been missing out on all these years.

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Note: Tips

The less cellular damage you do to the garlic, the less garlicky its flavour will be. So, whole garlic cloves will lend a milder flavour than roughly chopped garlic, while minced garlic will be the strongest of them all.

Page: 104, Location: 1589-1591

Note: Tips

A simple rule of thumb: When you add garlic to a pan, always keep the heat at medium–low. And if you observe your grandmother, she will likely add the garlic only after the onion. The reason for this is that onion, which has more water, releases it into the pan, which keeps the garlic from burning.

Page: 105, Location: 1606-1608

Note: Tips

A whole bulb of garlic (mind you, cloves of garlic will likely burn), drizzled with some oil, wrapped in aluminium foil in a 175oC oven, which is the temperature at the end of the Maillard reaction chain, for 30 minutes will yield spectacularly caramelized garlic which, when added to butter, makes for the most satisfying garlic butter you will ever taste. The papery outer layers of the garlic bulb and the individual cloves will mostly be burnt at the end of 30 minutes. In fact, it serves as an additional layer of protection to prevent the flavourful innards from burning.

Page: 107, Location: 1631-1635

Note: Tips

Try this: Blend caramelized garlic, cashew nuts, salt and green chillies to get the most astonishing chutney with the complex, savoury and sweet taste of garlic, the creamy and nutty texture of cashew nuts, the herby hot freshness of green chillies, and salt to bring it all together for a flavour explosion in your mouth.

Page: 107, Location: 1637-1639

Note: Tips

Here’s a quick recipe for caramelized cabbage sabzi: Caramelize the cabbage separately while you make an onion, ginger, garlic, chillies and spices base. Add the browned cabbage to this and quickly mix it before turning the heat off. Temper with mustard/chillies. Caramelized cabbage has more flavour than onion because it has more glutamates, which lend a umami (savoury) flavour to the dish.

Page: 108, Location: 1653-1655

Note: Tip

knowledge of the Maillard reaction to make the perfect, golden-roasted potato by simply adding a pinch of baking soda to the vessel in which you are boiling the chopped potato. Baking soda will break down the pectin on the outer layers and create ridges and grooves that, when encountering hot oil, will turn into the most scrumptious and crisp exterior, even as the insides remain perfectly soft and cooked. Make sure you wash the potatoes once they are parboiled because unused baking soda does not taste very nice.

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Note: Tips

When you brown any ingredient, you must also leave it unmoved on the pan for a little bit because contact with hot metal is what gets the temperature high enough. In an oven, browning takes time because air is a terrible conductor of heat, but you sure can brown more evenly.

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Note: Tips

So, here’s the biggest food science tip for the Indian kitchen, albeit one that restaurants use all the time and good cooks just seem to know. Consider browning as many ingredients as possible before adding them to gravies, if you truly want the most delicious flavours. A simple example: Roasting pumpkins in an oven, or on a grill, before using them to make pumpkin soup makes for a significantly more delicious soup than simply boiling them in a broth. You can use this principle in any dish you wish to make, for example, cauliflower gravy. Lightly steaming the cauliflower and then browning it in butter before adding it to a tomato-based gravy will yield a distinctly superior-tasting final product than simply dropping the cauliflower into the gravy

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Note: Tips

Page: 113, Location: 1726-1728

Note: Tip

This is why the vada batter must have as little water as possible. If it has too much water, the outside will take a long time to dehydrate, resulting in vadas that are overly dark brown with a thick crust. An important thing to remember: You can’t fry something that does not have both sugars and proteins. This is why you need a batter when frying something like chicken or pakoras. The batter is usually made using a starch, such as rice, wheat, corn or gram flour. You can also use breadcrumbs, which stick to whatever it is you are deep-frying, using eggs.

Page: 113, Location: 1726-1730

Note: Note

If you don’t eat fried food right away, it will go limp. This happens because even after you take it out of the frying pan, it continues to lose moisture. If you don’t provide an avenue for it to escape, it will settle on the surface of your fried chicken and make it soggy. The trick is to store freshly fried food at a temperature just short of the boiling point of water, so that no further cooking happens and it is easy for moisture to evaporate and keep things crisp. An oven at 93oC (200oF) will do the trick.

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Note: Tip

When we cook meat, we use heat to denature proteins, causing them to become tougher. Another technique used with meat is marinating it in an acid. Any kebab is usually marinated in some acid, typically a mixture of yoghurt and lime juice. Now, the Internet (and many cookbooks) will tell you that acids make the meat more tender, but they don’t! Acids break up protein structures and cause them to reassemble in bigger meshes, which actually makes the meat tougher. But in doing so, the acids allow the mesh to absorb other flavourful molecules in the marinade, like ginger, garlic and garam masala. By the way, all of this happens only on the surface of the meat. So, anyone telling you that the marinade penetrates deeper the longer you marinate is simply lying.

Page: 119, Location: 1817-1823

Note: Note

So, never overheat yoghurt. Always add it later in the cooking process. However, if you are making a gravy that is yoghurt-based, and need to cook it for a fair bit of time, the trick is to use some starch like corn flour, rice flour, wheat flour or gram flour (besan) and whisk it into the yoghurt to strengthen the emulsion, thus keeping it from breaking down when heated. This is the key to dishes like kadhi, morkozhambu and pulisheri.

Page: 120, Location: 1831-1834

Note: Tip

If a recipe calls for amchoor alone, try using half the quantity mentioned and squeeze lime at the end to bring about a more layered and richer flavour profile.

Page: 124, Location: 1889-1890

Note: Tip

A key thing to remember about citrus is to never add it early in the cooking process. Cooked citrus juices develop strange, nasty, bitter flavours. This is why they are added right at the end.

Page: 125, Location: 1905-1906

Note: Tip

The terpenes in it (Chapter 2) will get oxidized, which will then develop a well-rounded taste. So, if you are making nimbu paani, lemon rice or jal jeera, squeeze the limes well ahead of time. If you are using it just as an acid, don’t bother. Just squeeze it straight into the dish. Also, don’t try this trick with oranges—they will taste off if exposed to air for long.

Page: 125, Location: 1908-1910

Note: Tip

When a recipe calls for tomatoes, add the fresh ones, and then drop in a sachet of the tomato ketchup that you should be saving up from all your home deliveries. Ketchup will improve any red-coloured gravy. For special occasions, especially when making gravies where tomato is the star, say a paneer makhani, you can apply the flavour-layering principles outlined so far. Use fresh tomatoes, tomato paste (or ketchup) and dehydrated tomato powder to get the most intense, layered flavour.

Page: 127, Location: 1942-1946

Note: Tip

The flavour of tomatoes is improved significantly by concentration (removal of water) and sustained low heat over long periods of time.

Page: 127, Location: 1946-1947

Note: Tip

When using tomatoes in salads, salt them ahead of time. Not only will the salt pull out some of the moisture, resulting in a more concentrated flavour, a salted tomato will make you eat more salads because it is absolutely delicious.

Page: 128, Location: 1950-1951

Note: Tip

The Japanese combine kombu (that has glutamates) with bonito flakes (that are made from tuna and have IMP) to make dashi stock, which forms the base for a lot of Japanese dishes. The Italians combine parmesan cheese and tomatoes, which are also quite rich in glutamates. The Japanese, in particular, have a cuisine centred around umami, which amplifies all other flavours, whereas Indian and Middle-Eastern cuisines are centred around fats and oils, which primarily transport flavour molecules. This is also why Japanese cooking is rather minimalistic. With umami as the base, you can make dishes using very few ingredients and yet get tremendous depth of flavour. Umami makes other flavours come a long way.

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Note: Note

Monosodium glutamate (MSG), is umami in its purest form. There is no chemical difference between the glutamates in cabbage, mushrooms and tomato, and the half teaspoon of Ajinomoto that you sprinkle on fried rice. If you think MSG is bad for you, you might want to let every nursing mother know. After all, breast milk is exceedingly high in glutamates (at least ten times the amount of glutamates than regular cow milk).

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Note: Note

Let’s begin with what it can do to pectin. Baking soda is the guy operating the wrecking ball on pectin. Adding a pinch of baking soda when cooking legumes like chana, rajma and black urad dal will reduce the cook time and fuel consumption by about 40 per cent.

Page: 136, Location: 2078-2080

Note: Tip

Adding a teabag to the cooker will ensure that any unused baking soda is neutralized. Because baking soda is mildly basic, it has a soapy and bitter taste, so the idea is to add just enough quantity for it to do its job but not linger around unutilized.

Page: 136, Location: 2080-2082

Note: Tip

Baking soda can also tenderize tough cuts of meat. If you recall Chapter 1, a common misconception is that using acids in a marinade helps make the meat tender. They do not. On the contrary, acids make meat tougher. Bases, on the other hand, can make it tender. If you add a pinch of baking soda to tough cuts of meat, like beef or mutton, and let it sit for 5 minutes, it will make the meat tender. But don’t add too much or you will be left with a nasty aftertaste.

Page: 137, Location: 2090-2093

Note: Tip

Baking soda has the ability to accelerate the Maillard reaction, the one that turns ordinary food deliciously brown. Anytime you want more browning, sodium bicarbonate is your friend. A pinch added to vada or dosa batter will produce restaurant-grade dosas and vadas (now you know what they are doing). A pinch added when sautéing chicken will give you the right amount of browning before the chicken dries out.

Page: 137, Location: 2093-2096

Note: Tip

This is a crucial thing to remember when making good food—we can only taste things that are water-soluble, but we can smell way more volatile aroma molecules thanks to the olfactory receptors in our noses.

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Note: Note

following temperatures: 40–50°C: Proteins in fish and meat begin to denature. 62°C: Eggs begin to set. 68°C: Collagen in the connective tissues of meat denatures. 70°C: Vegetable starches break down. 110–154°C: Maillard reaction becomes noticeable. 180°C: Sugar begins to caramelize visibly.

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Note: Tip

Good recipes that use simple ingredients are a decent way to get started on your journey to becoming a good cook. In general, recipes are limiting from a culinary education standpoint because it’s like trying to learn a craft by only looking at the output, with no knowledge of why what you do has the effect it does.

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Note: Note

Some handy tips: If you want to reduce the lachrymatory torture because of the syn-propanethial-S-oxide generated each time you mechanically damage an onion, cut it right under a ceiling fan, or use a small USB fan to blow away the irritant. However, the fan will simply blow it all over, leaving the other occupants of your house with some mild to moderate eye irritation. Depending on the general political philosophy at play in the household, this might be acceptable as an instance of ‘let’s share both the pain and joy’ socialism, or unacceptable from the standpoint of ‘You suffer the pain, keep me out of it, but give me the finished product to enjoy’ exploitative capitalism. You could also chop onions under water and avoid this political dilemma altogether. In most situations, you can replace shallots with onions. Shallots have a sweeter flavour profile that works perfectly with hot and spicy south Indian dishes, so if you can get them, nothing like it. Please ask misbehaving adult children to peel shallots as penance.

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Note: Tip

When it comes to tomatoes, here are your options: Chopped (for gravy dishes with a bit more texture or for drier dishes). Pureed (for smooth gravy dishes). To take things to the next level, add concentrated tomato paste. If you don’t have tomato paste, use a sachet of ketchup. In dishes where the tomato is the star of the show, consider adding some dehydrated tomato powder too.

Page: 164, Location: 2510-2514

Note: Tip

Vegetables can be: Peeled if they have a thick, inedible skin. In general, we tend to discard more skin than necessary, and almost all vegetables have a ton of flavour just beneath the skin. You can use a general rule of thumb that vegetable or fruit flavour is a gradient that goes down as you travel from just under the skin to the core. Cut: a) Chopped to the size you want in your dish. b) Minced, if it is going to be cooked for a short time. Remember, the more the surface area, the faster it will cook. Once you have done that, you can also: Use the chopped vegetables as is. Blanch: This is best for green leafy vegetables. You can also puree them, say, for palak dishes. Steam: Generally better than boiling vegetables. Sauté in fat: To brown them and add more flavour, thanks to the Maillard reaction. Bake: Coat them with oil and put them in an oven at 180oC till they are evenly browned. This is more time consuming but requires less fat. If you have an air fryer, you can do this faster than in a conventional oven. Deep-fry: Reserve this for special occasions and obsessive attempts to ‘get that restaurant flavour’. When you order a bhindi masala in a restaurant, the bhindi is chopped and deep-fried before being added to the gravy. That is why it tastes so good.

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Note: Tip

Some handy tips: Don’t waste your time marinating vegetables. They usually don’t have enough protein for the acid to tenderize, and they absorb salt pretty quickly in a dish anyway. It’s a good habit to store chopped vegetables in a bowl of water. While some vegetables do not oxidise quickly, many do. Research on habit-forming tells us that it’s always better to apply a rule to everything so that the habit is easy to institutionalize. If you are chopping vegetables well ahead of the cooking time, squeeze some lime juice into the water. Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is an excellent antioxidant. Don’t throw away peels. Collect them and store them in the fridge to make vegetable stock. Once you are done using them for stock, you can compost them. Be careful with green/leafy/delicate vegetables. Tearing the leaves by hand will cause damage in between cell walls and help retain crunchiness and structure. Using a knife will likely slice through cells and activate enzymatic defence mechanisms that cause them to wilt and brown.

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Note: Tip

Prepping meat is about deciding whether to use it as is, or to marinate it, or to brine and then marinate it. Just marination does very little, so my recommendation is to always brine as a bare minimum. Also, don’t marinate for over an hour. Brining is what results in juicy, flavourful meat. You can always add flavour during the cooking process.

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Note: Tip

Most lentils take longer to cook in an acidic gravy, which almost all gravies tend to be, so it’s better to cook them separately. Pressure-cooking is the most convenient way to prep lentils. You can refer to the table in Chapter 1 for soak and pressure-cook times. Use a pinch of baking soda for harder/bigger legumes to reduce cook time. Avoid adding salt before pressure-cooking to reduce cook times. You can cook smaller lentils in the microwave after soaking them. Add some fat when pressure-cooking lentils to prevent foaming.

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Note: Tip

Boiled eggs: Bring water to a boil, drop the eggs into it, turn the heat off and close the lid. It takes 8 minutes for medium-boiled and 12 minutes for hard-boiled eggs to be ready. Adding a pinch of baking soda will reduce the chances of the egg sticking to its shell. Scrambled eggs: Break the eggs and salt them for 15 minutes before cooking. Then, at low heat, cook the eggs in butter. Stir constantly. You can also add some cream or milk for fluffiness. Poached eggs: Bring water to around 95oC, just short of a full boil. Strain the egg of any loose egg white and drop it into the water for 5 minutes, till the white sets. Omelette: Break the egg and salt it for 15 minutes before making an omelette. Add cubes of frozen butter when the omelette is cooking for a creamier texture.

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Note: Tip

General Dough Tips If you are planning to deep-fry (like a puri or kachori), the dough needs to have much less water, so add more fat instead. Fat shortens gluten strands, which is what you need in a puri that needs to be flaky without being chewy. Use as little of dusting flour as possible (for puris, don’t use any). Use oil instead. The dusting flour will burn in the 170oC oil and turn into not-very-nice-to-eat compounds.

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Note: Tip

more flavour-heavy dal, for which the method might look more like this: Heat fat and add whole spices. Cook onions till they brown (remember the Maillard reaction from Chapter 3). Add ginger, garlic and tomatoes. Let them reduce and thicken. Reduce heat and add spice powders, such as coriander and cumin powder. Remember, spice powders are sensitive to high heat. Add pressure-cooked lentils. Add more water to achieve the desired level of consistency. Add salt and finishing spices, such as garam masala. Turn off the heat, temper with whole spices like mustard and cumin. Garnish with herbs and squeeze some lime juice (recall the balancing with acid concept from Chapter 4).

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Note: Recipe

you will get a passable sambar. Heat fat and add whole spices. Cook onions till they turn brown. Add vegetables and tomatoes. Let them reduce and thicken. Reduce heat and add sambar spice powder mix. Add tamarind water (as the acid). Add water to achieve the desired level of consistency. Add pressure-cooked lentils (toor dal). Add finishing spices (some more sambar powder or finishing sambar spice mix). Turn off heat and temper with whole spices like mustard and cumin. Garnish with herbs, such as coriander leaves.

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Note: Recipe

We can generalize this a bit and arrive at this: Heat fat and add whole spices. Cook onions till they brown. Add ginger and garlic and let it cook. Add tomatoes, and let it reduce and thicken. Add prepped ingredients (vegetables/lentils/meat/seafood). Reduce heat and add spice powders. Add more water or stock (vegetable/meat/seafood) to achieve the desired level of consistency. Add finishing spices. Turn off heat and temper with whole spices. Garnish with herbs.

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Note: Tips

Here’s how you can make makhani gravy: Take a big pot and heat butter and oil in it. Add coarsely chopped onions, ginger, garlic and tomatoes. Use more tomato than the onion. Add whole spices like Kashmiri red chillies, black cardamom, cloves, bay leaves and pepper. Add thickening agents like poppy seeds or cashew nuts. Add water (or any kind of stock). Optionally, add cream (it’s better to add it fresh when you are making the dish). Let it cook at medium–low heat for at least an hour. Once it cools down, blend it in a mixer. Strain out all the fibrous husks of the spices, pour the gravy in silicone cups and freeze them. When you are making a dish, take as many cups as you need, microwave them to bring them to cooking temperature and add to your dish.

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Note: Recipe

A chutney involves eight elements: Cooked ingredients: Essentially, these are things that don’t taste good raw. It could be beetroot, eggplant, or cabbage for that matter. Pick one of your choice. Raw ingredients: Things that taste good raw, such as carrot or radish, and most fruits. Again, pick one. Nutty ingredients: Like roasted lentils, cashews, coconut, etc. These add body and crunch to the chutney. Pick one or two from these. Herbs: The green things, like mint and coriander. Pick one or both. Seasoning: Basically salt and sugar for balance. Black salt can also add a lovely flavour dimension. You can also use honey instead of sugar. If you are using fruits, you don’t need any additional sugar because the fruits will bring fructose to the party. Heat: Use pepper, ginger, or red and green chillies. Pick just one or two from this list. Acid: You can use anything from vinegar to citrus juice to amchoor to yoghurt (which makes it a raita) and tamarind juice. Pick one or two from among these. Tempering: This is optional, and as per regional or dish-specific preferences.

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Note: Recipe

Chutney and Raita Rules Don’t pick too many ingredients or your chutney will taste like nothing in particular. Use flavour-pairing rules for ingredients and combine ones that go well together, like basil and mango. Roast nuts or lentils before using them. If you are making a green chutney that predominantly features leaves (coriander, mint, etc.) don’t add the acid till just before serving. Strong acids quickly decolourize leaves and turn them into a dull olive green that looks unappetizing. Yoghurt, however, is not a very strong acid, so it’s okay to mix greenish raitas ahead of time. Season raw vegetables with salt ahead of time. Let it extract the extra water out of them to make them crisp and taste better. Do not do this for leaves, as the salt will make them wilt and lose crunch. If you are planning to use raw onions or radishes, consider pickling them in vinegar ahead of time to tame their sharpness. You could also blanch them if you don’t want the strong vinegary taste.

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Note: Recipe

There are seven elements that go into a balanced salad. Of course, this is just a guideline. Feel free to ignore any elements. Greens Carbs: Optional if you are the type who eats a salad only because it’s ‘healthy’. Vegetables: These can be cooked, pickled or raw. Anyone who thinks raw radish is a good idea must be shredded and thrown into a tub of mayonnaise. Always season raw vegetables with salt because they taste terrible otherwise. Salted tomatoes and cucumbers taste amazing in a salad. Fruits: These could be fresh or sun-dried. Proteins: These could include legumes, paneer (or any other kind of cheese), tofu, eggs, shredded chicken, cured meats, etc. Crunch: Since a salad does not have an intense flavour profile, it needs to have variation in texture and mouthfeel. Adding nuts, roasted papad or fried onions will make a salad taste and feel interesting. Fancy ingredients: Olives, cheese, etc.

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Note: Recipe

The aim of marination is to get the flavours to stick to the surface of the meat, but that alone does not help the meat to stay tender. The key to that is brining. A quick recap: Salt dehydrates vegetables but helps animal tissue retain moisture. This is why we drink water with salt and sugar when we are dehydrated. The salt helps you retain the water you just drank and not lose it to perspiration.

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Note: Tip

Journal Everything If you didn’t write down what you did on the day you made the perfect chapatti, you won’t be able to replicate it with ease. Let me give you an example.

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Note: Tip

The general idea is to try and keep the pressure inside approximately 1 bar above air pressure. At this increased air pressure, water boils at 121oC. So, a pressure cooker is, in its simplest sense, a device that lets you cook using liquid water at 121oC (unlike an open vessel that allows you to do this at 100oC).

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Apparently, during the golden era of pressure cooker manufacturing, cookers would make perfectly cooked rice in three whistles, whereas the modern ones tend to be temperamental.

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The scientific, common-sense way to measure pressure-cooking to achieve consistency in results is the actual elapsed time at maximum pressure. Once a pressure cooker comes to full pressure and releases some steam, that’s when the clock starts.

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However, it is not uncommon to use pressure-cooking with tougher cuts of red meat, such as beef or mutton, to save time. But if you are looking to get the best flavour, low and slow is the way to go.

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Rice is designed to nourish the next generation of rice plants, much like an egg is designed to nourish the next generation of chickens. The germ is the next baby rice plant. The husk, which is the rough protective layer for the grain, is inedible unless you are a cow, and while the bran is highly nutritious and contains proteins and fat (the source of rice bran oil), it goes rancid quickly. This is why brown rice, which is rice with the bran and germ included, has a short shelf life.

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When the bran is removed, we get white rice, which has a fantastic shelf life. That is what we mostly eat.

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When the whole grain is partially boiled, it drives a good amount of the useful nutrients found in the bran and germ into the endosperm. This is why parboiled rice is almost as nutritious as brown rice and has the shelf life of regular white rice. This is also why most heavy rice-eating parts of India tend to have a diet that includes both parboiled and polished white rice, so that they don’t end up with vitamin deficiencies.

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White rice, like most starchy foods, has two kinds of starch molecules: amylose and amylopectin. Amylose is a smaller, linear molecule, while amylopectin is larger and branched-out.

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It’s when water and heat are applied that the amylose breaks through to form a gel-like substance we associate with cooked starch. The percentage of amylose and amylopectin determine if a certain variety of rice will be sticky or have separate grains when cooked. Rice varieties with less than 20 per cent amylose (80 per cent amylopectin) tend to become a little sticky after cooking, while varieties with more than 20 per cent amylose tend to have separate grains.

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When rice is cooked in hot water, a process called gelatinization happens. This is where starch molecules, which are made up of long chains of sugar molecules, break down and form cosy relationships with water molecules to create two kinds of textures—a hard and waxy texture from the amylose, and a sticky gooey texture from the amylopectin.

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Two of the hard-to-digest carbohydrates in legumes like kidney beans (rajma)—raffinose and stachyose—cannot be digested by our digestive systems efficiently and, thus, become food for the bacteria in our guts. They metabolize these carbohydrates and produce gas, causing a rather familiar discomfort and occasional wind production. Turns out, eating fart-producing beans is not a bad idea at all because it encourages the growth of a diverse colony of healthy gut bacteria, who are, in general, excellent tenants.

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Lactobacteria on the surface of the dal and rice will, in the presence of water, cause fermentation, a behaviour exploited to make idlis, dosas and other lip-smacking items. Given that the weather is warm and humid all through the year in south India, fermentation is largely predictable and controllable.

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Here is how you can make the perfect idli/dosa batter from scratch: Take parboiled rice and decorticated (sounds cooler than saying de-skinned) urad dal in a 4:1 ratio, and soak them separately in water. Rice will need at least six hours of soaking, while urad dal will require just two hours. Don’t oversoak the dal, or you will end up with a pasty texture in your idlis. Grind the rice and dal separately with a pinch of fenugreek seeds, which have been soaked for an hour, and salt till you get a smooth texture. Don’t over grind. Mix them together and let it ferment at room temperature. If you live in a colder place, heat up an oven, switch it off and then let it cool down to about 35oC before placing the batter inside. It will take between six and eight hours for the ideal amount of fermentation to happen before you can make idlis. The density of the batter will decrease as the bacteria eat the sugar in the rice and dal, and fart out carbon dioxide, which leavens the batter. Fermentation will also increase the amount of vitamin B in the batter and reduce its pH, thanks to the production of lactic acid that makes the batter mildly sour, a topic we shall explore in detail in Chapter 3. The amount of lactic acid will increase as the batter continues to ferment, which is why dosas are sourer than idlis and utthapams are the sourest of them all. After six to eight hours, refrigerate your batter if you don’t plan to use it right away. You can make idli on the first two days, and as fermentation continues slowly in the refrigerator, you can make dosas on the third and fourth days, and utthapam after that. Before using the batter, check its ‘pourability’. It should feel like melted ice cream. If it feels thicker, add more water.

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The Indian subcontinent mostly uses two kinds of wheat flours: maida, which is made just from the endosperm, and atta, which includes a little bit of the bran.

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The milling process (in a chakki, which is a set of two millstones used to grind grain into flour) used to make atta causes a fair bit of damage to the proteins and starches in the flour, which makes atta not an ideal flour to bake leavened bread. A loaf of bread baked with atta tends to be dense and crumbly, and not soft and airy like it is if you use the whole wheat flour available outside India. This is also why leavened breads, such as naan and kulcha, tend to use maida, which is not made using the stone-grinding process and, thus, has better gluten development when leavened.

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If you want to make a whole wheat loaf of bread in India, your best bet is to use 70 per cent maida and 30 per cent atta for the best results.

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Here is what happens when you add water to atta or maida. There are two proteins in wheat—glutenin and gliadin—that form a stretchy and elastic structure called gluten, which traps air to create give your finished bread a light and airy texture.

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Maida forms stronger gluten structures than chakki-ground atta, which is why chapattis made of maida are chewier than those made using atta.

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A fascinating thing to think about is why organic vegetables tend to taste better than non-organic produce. As we just learnt, flavour tends to be a function of how strong the plant’s defence mechanisms against predatory munchers is. If a plant is exposed to more pests, it will use more of its resources to defend against them and, thus, be more flavourful for us. This is why non-organic produce, grown in sterile and pest-free environments, tends to be bigger and lacking in flavour.

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One of the mechanisms a plant uses to sense insectile threats is to detect a substance called chitin. Chitin makes up the cell walls of several fungi and insects that attack plants. So, when a plant detects chitin, it goes into ninja mode and invests more in its defence budget. We can use this behaviour to trick the plant into thinking that there are pests nearby, by mixing powdered crustacean shells (like shrimps, which are closely related to insects) into the soil the plants are growing in. While we want the flavour that comes from plants operating in DEFCON 5 mode, we don’t actually want pests to eat the stuff we should be eating. The chitin in the soil does the trick. Some modern organic farms use this trick to produce delicious vegetables with a reduced risk of pest damage.

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This is why the best way to cook leaves is to blanch them in boiling water for 30 seconds and then to remove them away from heat. If you need to use them in salads, you can also stop any further cooking by plunging them into a bowl filled with ice water. The application of high heat for a short period deactivates an enzyme called polyphenol oxidase that typically robs the chlorophyll molecule (the one that gives leaves their bright green colour) of its precious magnesium atom, causing the leaves to discolour into an unappetizing dull green. You can then puree the blanched greens and use it as you like. It will both look bright green and not taste too bitter. In general, high temperatures (around 85oC) for short periods of time are the best way to cook most vegetables to optimal taste and texture.

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This is why we store chopped vegetables in a bowl of cold water after cutting them, preventing access to air. Squeezing some lime juice into the water also prevents oxidation.

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On the other hand, perfectly cooked meat is tender and moist when moderate heat, well below boiling point, is applied, causing the proteins to bind loosely to each other while still being able to retain water. If you overheat meat, and this is ridiculously easy to do, it will become tough and dry, and the proteins will bind to each other really tightly, squeezing all the moisture out.

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Meat (and animal protein in general) is edible in a very narrow range of temperatures. Below 55oC it is uncooked and potentially harbours dangerous microbes, while above 65oC it becomes dry and chewy. And to make things more complicated, how long you need to cook meat will depend on which part of the animal is being cooked.

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Fat by itself is tasteless, but it transports flavour and thus makes meat taste better.

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Muscles that are used regularly take longer to cook (like chicken legs), while parts of the animal that generally Netflix and chill tend to cook really fast (chicken breast).

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Marinades, despite conventional wisdom, do not penetrate into the meat. At best, they coat the surface. When cooked and eaten, your mouth usually can’t tell the difference between flavours that come from the surface and those that come from inside the meat.

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Given urban India’s general tendency to never take risks when it comes to meat, most dishes made at home tend to be overcooked. It is the sophistication of the gravy and flavouring that compensates for what is usually a rather dry and chewy piece of meat.

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In fact, the very notion of an egg being considered non-vegetarian in India, while milk squeezed out from the udders of a post-partum cow is considered vegetarian, is predicated entirely on the belief that the egg is a prospective chick only if you let it sit around and wait for it to hatch.

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Fun fact: H2S is also the primary smell of black salt (kala namak), which has a tiny bit of H2S in it.

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but there is an inordinate asymmetry in the obsession to reduce fats in our diet compared to the real villain, carbohydrates.

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Any oil that has a higher percentage of saturated fatty acids is more likely to be solid at room temperature. Think of butter, ghee, coconut oil and animal fat (lard). Any oil that has more unsaturated fatty acids is likely to be liquid at room temperature. Think of groundnut, mustard or sunflower oil. Because solids are easier to transport, the fat industry has, over the years, tried to convert cheaper sources of oil (typically from plants) that tend to have more unsaturated fatty acids into solids. This is done by forcing hydrogen into those fatty acids and turning the double carbon bonds into single bonds through a process that we should be familiar with, thanks to the label on Dalda—hydrogenation. So, while the palm oil from which Dalda is made is liquid, Dalda itself is solid at room temperature. Saturated fats also

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Most flavour molecules in spices dissolve only in fat, not in water. This may be the reason why more or less every single dish made in India starts with whole spices and flavouring ingredients being added to hot oil. That base of flavour is what defines the dish. Spices added to water, in contrast, lose most of their aroma to the air because

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Fats, unlike water, have higher boiling points. In fact, in the context of fats, it’s called the smoke point, because while water boils away into vapour, oils usually catch fire and burn when heated well beyond their smoke points.

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And, by the way, when you heat oil, any fancy aroma that an unheated expensive oil has all but disappears. So, buy expensive oils only as finishing oils, not cooking oils.

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It’s also important to understand how oils go rancid. In general, oils with more unsaturated fatty acids are more likely to go rancid.

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As long as the fatty acids are attached to the glycerol, things are fine, but if they happen to escape the flagpole and loiter about on their own, things get nasty.

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It turns out that individual fatty acids are extremely noxious, and nasty-smelling and tasting, molecules that somehow, when attached in threes to glycerol turn into edible oils crucial in the kitchen.

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So, how do rogue fatty acids break free of the glycerol? Light, water and oxygen. Light tends to act as a catalyst for the rebellious behaviour of fatty acids, and when you deep-fry something in hot oil, you are essentially dropping something with a ton of water into fat.

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Consider coriander. Its name comes from koris, the Greek word for bedbugs, because the ancient Greeks

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Consider coriander. Its name comes from koris, the Greek word for bedbugs, because the ancient Greeks thought that the seeds smelt like the insect.

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But there is a sizeable section of the population that has a visceral aversion to coriander (4–14 per cent depending on their ancestry) in its leaf form. It turns out that it’s not an irrational personal choice but genetics. Coriander’s flavour molecules are a family of compounds called aldehydes, and the ones present in coriander are also found in soap. Some people have a gene (or a combination of genes, we don’t know fully) that makes their taste buds specifically sensitive to aldehydes, so eating coriander leaves strongly reminds them of soap.

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But what’s interesting is that when you crush coriander leaves, or grind them into a paste, an enzymatic reaction breaks down these soapy aldehydes, which is why people who can’t tolerate the leaves as a garnish don’t mind coriander chutney in their chaats

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Sweetness and saltiness are detected rather quickly, while bitterness, which is mostly detected at the back of the tongue, takes a bit longer and tends to linger in the mouth. This explains the expression ‘bitter aftertaste’. Sourness tends to be detected

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Bitter tastes come from substances called alkaloids such as caffeine (in coffee), theobromine (in chocolate), quinine (in tonic water), and so on. Our ability to detect bitterness comes from the need to identify poisons before we ingest them.

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Umami is the fifth taste that has recently been added to this list. It is the savoury, lingering, meaty taste that comes from the presence of salts of a specific amino acid called glutamic acid.

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This is why a pinch of sugar is a good idea in any dish, because it balances saltiness.

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In fact, restaurants tend to take this effect to its logical extreme—adding lots of sugar allows you to add lots of salt to your dish. This combined effect is like turning the volume knob to 11, which is why restaurant food tastes more intensely flavoured than home-cooked food.

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It turns out that taste buds operate at their peak between 20oC and 30oC. This is why coffee is tolerable at 50–60oC, which is usually the temperature at which it is served, while it tastes bitter once it gets to room temperature, which tends to be the temperature range in which our taste buds operate at their peak.

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This is why many foods that smell funny taste amazing once they are in the mouth. A good example is cheese. Many older Indians find the funky smell of cheese off-putting. This is because what you smell before you eat the cheese is the overwhelming smell of the ketones and aldehydes in it. Once you chew it, the complex molecules generated by the slow fermentation process start to hit your nose retronasally, and that’s when you go ‘ah, cheese’.

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Most people not used to fish will first taste and smell a sulphurous molecule, which makes up the intense flavour of cooked fish and can be rather off-putting for anyone who has never eaten fish before. But once you chew, a ton of umami flavour molecules start hitting your tongue, and that is what makes any Indian fish curry such an addictive dish for those who are used to fish.

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Our preference for crispy and crunchy sounds in food comes from the evolutionary preference for fresh plant products.

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Our preference for crispy and crunchy sounds in food comes from the evolutionary preference for fresh plant products. Crisp and crunchy fruits, and stems and nuts, indicate freshness and, thus, nutritiousness.

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yet it is the only substance we eat that did not originate in a living thing.

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Iodide salts tend to break down at high temperatures and lend an acrid metallic taste to food. You will not notice this when making gravies because the temperature is not going to exceed 100oC in those cases, but you will notice it when you deep-fry or bake food in an oven. This is why it is recommended to use non-iodized salt when baking or deep-frying food. By the way, the processed food industry usually never uses iodized salt for this reason.

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At the very least, use iodized salt when making gravies and non-iodized salt when deep-frying.

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Adding potatoes, balls of rice or dough don’t really reduce salt concentration. All they do is absorb the gravy and leave you with less gravy overall. You can add sugar or an acid (like lime juice) to change the perception of saltiness, but that won’t move the needle by much. What does work is adding more unsalted stock (or just plain water), but that will dilute your dish.

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When cooking, an important salt behaviour to keep in mind is that while it dehydrates vegetables, it prevents moisture loss in meats. Adding salt when cooking vegetables will cook them faster and adding salt to raw vegetables will cause them to lose water. But if you let meat sit in a salt solution for a few hours before cooking, it will remain tender and moist after cooking. This magic trick, which we discussed briefly in the previous chapter on the science of meat, is absolutely key to preventing meat from drying out during the cooking process.

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Incidentally, not all sugars taste sweet. Sucrose is the one that is most familiar because it makes up the crystalline sugar we use every single day. Sucrose by itself is made up of two other sugars—glucose and fructose—that got together, shook hands, agreed to lose a water molecule and bonded together.

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Honey: This is mostly fructose and glucose, and has a very complex depth of flavour compared to plain sugar, or even jaggery. But the complex flavours are heat-sensitive, so avoid adding honey earlier in the cooking process.

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Sugar needs to be at least 0.75 per cent by weight in your dish for it to register as sweet. But like salt, sugar can magically improve your dish even without being perceptibly sweet. In general, a pinch of sugar will improve any dish.

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Here are some simple rules for sweetness as a taste: Sweet mutes saltiness up to a point, and also mutes sourness and bitterness. You can use it to balance these flavours. Sweetness adds depth to other flavours, such as spices. When you bite into a cardamom, you will smell it, but it will taste bitter. When you bite into cardamom with a pinch of sugar, the aroma and taste of cardamom will seem stronger.

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your mouth has TRPV1 receptors, which trigger panic bells when a few things happen. One of them is when you bite into a hot samosa that you think has cooled down. The second is when you imbibe something with very low pH levels, essentially highly acidic things. The TRPV1 receptors detect high temperatures and strong acids in the mouth, and here is where the genius of the chilli plant comes into play.

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I’m afraid, water won’t be of much help. Capsaicin is not water-soluble, it only dissolves in fat or alcohol. A glass of milk, a spoonful of sugar or honey, or some wine, will be more efficient

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I’m afraid, water won’t be of much help. Capsaicin is not water-soluble, it only dissolves in fat or alcohol. A glass of milk, a spoonful of sugar or honey, or some wine, will be more efficient in putting out this (illusory) fire in your mouth.

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Mustard (allyl isothiocyanate), ginger (gingerol) and black pepper (piperine) also produce molecules that can trigger these receptors. By the way, you can desensitize this receptor by continuing to eat more chillies. Eventually, like the villagers in the story about the boy who cried wolf, they will not ring alarm bells every single time.

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In simpler terms, the pain of eating chillies is also pleasurable, and since the capsaicin is only creating the illusion of heat, it does no permanent damage unless you eat a ton of chillies. And the release of endorphins while you are eating makes the rest of the food taste way more delicious than it is. This is why we are addicted to hot food.

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If you are sensitive to heat, a common misconception is that it’s the seeds that contribute all the heat. They don’t. The seeds are removed because they taste bitter. It’s the placenta, which connects the seeds to the flesh, that has most of the capsaicin. So, removing that will reduce the heat levels in your chillies.

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Heat alleviates richness or fattiness in dishes. When your dishes are too greasy, creamy or heavy, heat will reduce the perception of richness.

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As we discussed briefly earlier, the strongest flavours we use in the kitchen tend to come from the defence mechanisms of plants against microbes, insects and hungry herbivores. These are what we tend to generically term as spices.

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The two major families of molecules behind almost all flavouring in our food are terpenes (the ones behind floral, woody and citrusy flavours) and phenols (the ones that impart stronger, unique and sometimes pungent flavours).

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The flavour of a spice in a dish depends on: How you mechanically damage it: Cut, chop, smash, mince, grind, etc. How you cook it: Dry-roast, oil-roast, boil in water, etc. How long you cook it: In general, the longer you cook, the lesser the intensity of the flavour of spices, but this is a tricky concept. When you cook a gravy for a long time, the amount of water will reduce, which will increase the concentration of spices in your dish, thus making it taste more intense. So, it’s important to understand this distinction. The intensity of a single spice’s flavour will reduce with cooking, as more aroma molecules are lost to the air, while the dish in totality might taste more intense because it is becoming thicker. What you pair it with, in terms of acid, fat, salt and sugar.

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And for each of these four categories of spices, these are the methods available to mechanically damage them to release flavour: Dry spices (black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, clove) Use whole, as we do with mustard and cumin, for a mild flavour Coarsely ground them for medium amount of flavour Finely powder them to extract the maximum amount of flavour. However, these have short shelf lives because powders leak volatile aroma molecules very quickly. Dry herbs (fenugreek or dried mint) They are already flaky and powdery, so at best, crush them before use (like fenugreek) to help extract more flavours. Fresh spices (garlic and ginger) Use large pieces for the mildest flavour Roughly chop for medium flavour Mince for medium high flavour Use a paste for maximum flavour Fresh herbs (coriander or curry leaves) Use whole for mild flavour Roughly chop for medium flavour Mince for medium to high flavour Use a paste for maximum flavour, but remember that the leaves tend to have enzymes that will start degrading flavour the moment any damage happens. So, use right away or use the trick described in Chapter 1, where you blanch it for 30 seconds and shock it in an ice bath before grinding into a paste.

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Dry herbs are best added late in the cooking process as they tend to be delicate. Too much cooking will largely dissipate their flavours. This is why kasuri methi is added once a dish is almost ready.

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Fresh spices, such as ginger and garlic, can be used to impart a wide range of flavour intensity based on how they are cut and cooked. Roughly chopped garlic will have a milder flavour than the paste, but garlic cooked from the start of the dish will taste milder than garlic that is added towards the end. So, in the dishes that you do want a strong garlicky flavour, add it closer to the end, but only use roughly chopped or whole garlic cloves instead of the paste, so that you do not overwhelm the dish.

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Fresh herbs are the most delicate of them all and, in general, best added right at the end of the cooking process, although curry leaves, which have a very intense flavour, do tend to survive long cooking and still impart their characteristic citrusy and meaty flavour to a dish. But the best cooks, when making dishes that use curry leaves at the start, will also add some fresh leaves at the end so that you get a hint of the fresh flavour as well.

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Raw whole spices + no heat: Little or no flavour. Crushed spices + little or no heat: Medium flavour, like cardamom powder added at the end of payasam of kheer. Crushed spices in water + heat: Mild flavour, like cardamom or ginger in tea. Whole spices + oil + long cooking + medium heat: Moderate flavour, like using panch phoran or mustard/cumin at the start of a dish. Roasted whole spices + crushing + oil + low heat: Maximum flavour. Powdered spices + oil + high heat: Causes burning, so please avoid. Use low heat instead. Oil-roasted whole spices + crushing: Don’t cook for too long. Best added at the end of a dish. Whole spices + oil + high heat: Mild flavour. This is the idea of the tadka (tempering). It’s not to overwhelm the dish with last-minute flavour but to add a whiff of it by using high heat, which destroys most of the aroma molecules but leaves behind just enough.

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Also, it won’t be uncommon to find a spare packet of instant noodles masala and throw that into your dal. In fact, your dish will taste delicious because instant noodle spice mixes tend to be extremely well-thought-out combinations,

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you start a dish with mustard oil and add mustard, fennel, nigella, fenugreek and cumin, it will bring Bengali cuisine to mind, no matter what you do after that. And if you start with coconut oil, and add curry leaves, garlic, mustard and cumin, it will evoke Kerala. Combinations of flavours that have been used for centuries in specific regions will almost always be the first place to look for inspiration.

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For starters, you need to gear up to become a spice ninja. Get yourself a spice grinder (or a coffee grinder that you can use for spices), and always buy whole spices. Powdered spices lose their flavour very quickly.

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Let’s recap the twelve categories of flavours in spices: Sweet, warming phenols: Clove and fennel Warming terpenes: Nutmeg and mace Fragrant terpenes: Coriander Sweet-and-sour acids: Amchoor Fruity aldehydes: Sumac Toasty pyrazines: When any spice is dry-roasted Earthy terpenes: Cumin and nigella Penetrating terpenes: Cardamom Citrus terpenes: Lemongrass Sulphurous and meaty: Garlic, black salt, mustard, asafoetida and curry leaves Pungent: Chilli, black pepper and ginger Complex flavour: Saffron, turmeric and fenugreek You can also refer to the table of flavours we saw just a while ago. Pick one or two flavour categories, the ones you want to be dominant in your mix. Pick a spice from each category. For each of those spices, pick one more spice (from any category) that shares at least one flavour molecule. For example, if you picked black pepper, your second spice should be black cardamom, which too has pinene. Black pepper and black cardamom will work well together as they will reinforce the woody/camphorous notes of pinene. Of course, nothing stops you from adding more spices to your mix, but remember that the more you add, the less your mix will stand out, as too many flavours will make your dish taste intense without necessarily being unique. Like the instant noodles masala.

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French physician and chemist Louis-Camille Maillard was the first to describe what exactly was happening to the proteins and starches in the cooking vessel. It’s been about a 100 years and we are still in the process of describing what happens when you cook food at temperatures above 110oC. It is precisely this spectacular diversity of chemical reactions that lend the seemingly infinite range of flavours to food all around the world. We shall begin exploring this magical browning reaction with the humble onion.

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For starters, food science now tells us that the more flavourful, and correspondingly more tear-inducing, parts of the onion are the outer layers, not the inner ones. So, the next time you chop onions keep this in mind before callously discarding too many of the outer layers.

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The Latin word ‘unus’, which means ‘one’ is the likely origin of the word ‘onion’.

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Then there is a purple variant, which is great for use in salads but is not as flavourful as the yellow one. It is truly a testament to the sophistication of various cuisines in India that we make do with what is ultimately a substandard variety of onion and coax the most amazing flavours out of it. But this is a rather recurrent theme in Indian home cooking.

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We tend to use a large number of contrasting flavouring ingredients, and rarely just onion or garlic.

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When you cut an onion across the bulb, and not along it, you break the cells, which release, after a chain of reactions that takes about thirty seconds after mechanical damage to the cells, an aerosol of syn-Propanethial-S-oxide, a sulphur-based chemical that immediately causes the lachrymose (tear) glands to fight back by generating tears to flush the irritant chemical out.

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You could refrigerate the onions for a little bit before cutting them. Don’t store onions in the fridge for long though because they need well-ventilated spaces, and fridges are not exactly ventilated. The science trick here is that if you remember your high-school biology, most cellular reactions require at least body temperature (37oC, or 98.6oF), so briefly chilling the onion before cutting it will significantly reduce the rate of that enzyme reaction.

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when heated, is converted to another molecule called MMP (3-mercapto-2-methylpentan-1-ol, if you want to show off to your friends). MMP lends the meaty, savoury and luscious

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when heated, is converted to another molecule called MMP (3-mercapto-2-methylpentan-1-ol, if you want to show off to your friends). MMP lends the meaty, savoury and luscious taste to any gravy that features onions.

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The more mechanical damage you do to the onion, the more MMP is released, and thus more intense the flavour in your dish. It is also fairly water-soluble, so adding a bit of water after sautéing the onions will get you a stronger flavour, as it will prevent any further loss of aroma to the air.

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The flavour of an onion in your dish depends significantly on how you choose to chop it in the first place, essentially how much cellular damage you do: Slicing pole to pole: Least pungency Slicing across the bulb: More pungency

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In general, you don’t want to slow-heat oil because it will only oxidize more. You also don’t want to add your onions before the oil is hot because adding anything to oil lowers its temperature. Another science tip to remember: You want to heat the oil to something way less than 177oC, which is ‘frying’ temperature. We are not frying onions at this point, although that is a perfectly valid thing to do if you are making biryani.

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If you add a pinch of salt at this stage, it will dehydrate the onion even faster.

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An interesting fact: The amino acids in your own cells react with sugars over time, in a very slow version of the Maillard reaction, to render proteins in your tissues dysfunctional, which, scientists say, is a component of human ageing! Imagine the irony in the fact that the same reaction that makes your onions delicious is also the reaction that slowly kills you. This is also why doctors keep telling you to keep your blood sugar levels low.

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caramelization is an entirely different chemical reaction that happens to sugars at extremely high temperatures, where they break down into a family of caramelly and nutty-tasting molecules. Caramelized onions, on the other hand, are just onions Maillardized to their fullest possible potential,

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That said, it does take a fairly long time for onions to get to Stage 5, typically up to 45–60 minutes if you are cooking about 500 g. Worse, it takes near constant attention and stirring to keep them from burning.

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The catch is that pressure-caramelized onions don’t taste as good as the 60-minute open-pan version

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One of the compounds produced when you cut into garlic is allyl mercaptan, a close cousin of ethyl mercaptan, a chemical so smelly that our noses can detect even one molecule in an entire room.

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So, remember, your entire body will have a lingering, garlicky aroma for up to twenty-four hours when you eat a ton of garlic.

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Cooking is the strategic application of heat to transform an ingredient into a narrow range of acceptable flavours and, more importantly, textures. Burning is the brute application of heat with the malicious intent of turning your ingredient into elemental carbon.

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But browning garlic is very tricky business because the line between getting good flavours from the Maillard reaction and nasty, bitter flavours because of burning is very slim. This is one reason why it’s generally safe to avoid browning garlic when it’s part of a more complex dish, because the chances that it will add bitter flavours to your dish is very high, unless your nose is finer than the one on a French sommelier.

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But Indian cuisine wouldn’t have included potatoes had it not been for the Portuguese colonizers. In fact, the Marathi word for potato is literally the Portuguese word: ‘batata’.

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In the 1920s, French physician and chemist Louis-Camille Maillard described a series of reactions that were central to turning proteins and carbohydrates into delicious, easier-to-digest compounds. Our focus shall primarily be on the ‘delicious’ part of the story, because the easier-to-digest part is for books about nutrition. Anything deliciously brown, from seared meat to ground coffee to chocolate to caramelized onions, garlic or cabbage, has undergone the Maillard reaction.

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we will look at what happens to the ingredients in your cooking vessel as their temperature hits 110oC, which is when the Maillard reaction starts. This will start to happen only when all the water on the surface of the ingredients has boiled away. Remember, as we learnt in Chapter 1, this reaction requires a dry cooking process.

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What is useful for us though is to understand what the actual caramelization reaction really is. Unlike the Maillard reaction, which happens between amino acids and sugars, caramelization happens to sugars when they are heated to a very high temperature. When you heat onions at low heat for a really long time, you will eventually get to the point where both the Maillard reaction and caramelization of sugar happen, but that is dangerously close to burning territory, so be very careful. The more you actually caramelize the sugars in the onions, the sweeter they will taste.

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We sauté in the range of 110–150oC. Frying temperature starts at about 170oC.

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crust. As the insides heat up, the starches gelatinize,

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Of course, many things could go wrong. Let’s take a puri. If the oil is not hot enough, the exterior will not dehydrate fast enough to become non-porous quickly. In that time, hot oil will seep into the puri and make it greasy and heavy. If the oil is too hot, the outer crust will brown too fast and the heat will not have enough time to cook the insides, giving you a raw doughy taste. Another thing to keep in mind is that hot oil oxidizes, and oxidized oil tastes nasty. This is why reusing frying oil is not recommended, however, if you filter for particles and prevent further oxidation by storing it in a dark place, you can use it again. One way in which you can reduce the amount of oxidation during frying is to use a narrower frying vessel, like the smallest kadai that fits your food. That will expose less of the hot oil to the air than a larger kadai. Also, fry in smaller batches. You can also add a pinch of baking soda to the batter of whatever it is you are frying. Alkaline conditions accelerate the Maillard reaction and will result in more even browning.

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Every sour ingredient is essentially an acid. In fact, the word acid literally comes from the Latin word acidus, which means ‘sour’. To varying degrees of sourness, yoghurt, lemons, pineapples, tamarind, grapes and vinegar are culinary acids.

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Here’s how sourness affects other flavours: Sourness reduces bitterness: A squeeze of lemon into your spinach dishes will mute any residual bitterness in the cooked leaves. If you recall Chapter 1, leaves tend to turn bitter when cooked for too long. But be careful, acids can also decolourize green vegetables, so use them towards the end of the cooking process. Sourness balances spice flavours by doing what an equalizer does in music. In dishes that have many strong flavours, adding an acid will create space for every individual flavour and make them stand out. Sourness minimizes the perception of fattiness and makes food feel less heavy and rich. If you feel that you’ve used a bit too much oil in your dish, a good way to reduce the perception of greasiness is to add some acid (like lime juice) at the end. Sourness can balance overly sweet dishes. A good shrikhand is an example of this. If not for the sour tang of the yoghurt, it can be cloyingly sweet.

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Marination attaches flavours to the outer layers of whatever it is that you are marinating. Another tip to marinating effectively: Beat the hell out of the meat with a tenderizing hammer, which will create more surface area for the marinade to operate on. And use small pieces of meat. Avoid using over-acidic marinades, as they will cook the meat. If you want to take your kebabs to the next level, brine your meat for a few hours, and then marinate in spices and acid for about an hour. Twenty-four-hour marinades don’t do much, other than cooking your meat in acid.

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In general, tamarind water-based gravies will need 6–8 minutes of medium heat to bring the sourness down to an acceptable level. Start from there and then decide if you need less or more cook time. Contemporary chefs who work with food scientists have determined that the pH of a good, balanced dish tends to be in the range of 4.3 to 4.9.

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Tamarind has a meaty, savoury base flavour that works well when cooked, sort of like a drummer and bass guitarist put together. Amchoor has a fruity, bright, sour flavour that works best when not cooked too much, like a lead guitarist. Citrus juices, which we shall discuss now, are like the lead vocalists who are usually in your face.

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Green, unripe tomatoes are more predictably tart, but they are not always available.

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The flavour of tomatoes improves with cooking and concentrates when you sun-dry or dehydrate them. When recipes call for tomato puree, noobs add tomato puree, experts add tomato paste and legends add tomato ketchup.

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Alcoholic drinks are also acidic, which is why cooking with wine or beer is common in the West. But given the general tendency to keep alcohol at an arm’s length in Indian homes, this technique is not very common in the country. If you have some old wine lying around, try this when making gravies: After you sauté the spices in oil, cook onions, ginger and garlic, add a splash of the wine into the pan. This will deglaze all the lovely tasting brown bits (Maillard reaction, remember), extract more flavour from the spices and, while at it, add sourness.

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One of the rather effective things they did was to invent a family of molecules called alkaloids, which tend to be poisonous for animals. That is not to say that the animals sat around munching on poison and dropping dead in large numbers; they figured out ways of detecting poisonous plants before ingesting them, which helped us hone our perception of bitter tastes. Since alkaloids tend to be bitter, our tongues evolved a mechanism to detect these (at the back of the mouth). This mechanism causes a nasty aftertaste to linger in our mouths, causing us to spit out what we are eating, potentially saving us a gruesome death by poison.

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All things alkaline, which by the way are not related to alkaloids, tend to taste bitter, in that they activate the same receptors. So, over millions of years of evolution, our digestive systems have developed a bias towards acidic foods.

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Foods that are a darker brown in colour tend to indicate more delicious tastes because of the Maillard reaction. This is why darker-looking chana, despite not actually undergoing Maillard browning, appears to be more flavourful than it actually

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The Acid Cheat Sheet Here’s a simple guide for you: Acids add brightness to food, while balancing other flavours, particularly spices. Acids cause us to salivate. The processed food industry takes advantage of this weakness of ours to make what is nutritionally terrible food taste delicious. And since adding acids balances the saltiness and sweetness, it allows them to cram more salt and sugar than is good for us into the snacks. This is not to deny that they taste delicious as a result. Acids tenderize meat, in that they break down the protein structures that help flavour molecules attach themselves to the surface. However, strong-enough acids toughen meat, so use them in moderation. Acids also cause plant cell walls to toughen up by bonding with the pectin, which is why cooking lentils with acids (such as tomatoes or tamarind) takes longer. A good way to use acids is to layer them, as you might do with spices (recall Chapter 2). In dishes like fish curry, sambar or kadhi, the acid is the anchor, while in dishes like dal, acids are the accent on top. You can layer acids by using different ones at various stages of the cooking process. Chaat, as described earlier, is a fantastic exemplar of acid layering—tamarind and tomatoes act as the base, while amchoor and lime juice, and occasionally pomegranates, are the accents. And remember what heat (capsaicin) does to flavour perception. Chaat, being hot, also results in an endorphin rush that makes the overall eating experience more pleasurable. Coca-Cola is more acidic than vinegar. As much as nine teaspoons of sugar in one can of the beverage is what makes it palatable. If you add so much sugar to vinegar, it will taste pretty decent too. Liquid acids preserve anything stored in them because bacteria don’t like living in acidic conditions. Interestingly, some microorganisms use this as a trick to keep competing critters out. Yeast and yoghurt bacteria produce lactic acid, which makes the fermented product too acidic

for other fungi and bacteria. This is why fermentation works. If it was a free-for-all for every microbe out there, it would be called spoiling and not fermentation. You can take a good dish and add an acid to make it an amazing dish.

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It turns out that combining glutamates with IMP or GMP has a greater-than-sum-of-parts effect. Essentially, adding both will result in an intensity of flavour that is a lot more than what you might expect by adding them individually.

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For instance, we now know that in addition to having a separate taste receptor for umami, it looks like glutamates (and its compatriot nucleotides IMP and GMP) may be causing a phenomenon where other taste receptors, particularly salt and sweet, stay activated for longer periods of time than they would have in the absence of glutamates. This explains the lingering aspect of umami, where it causes other strong tastes to last longer on the tongue. Since umami amplifies saltiness and sweetness, a good way to reduce your salt and sugar intake is to use MSG, which, in addition to adding umami, is only about one-third as salty as common salt

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The reasons why umami is classified as a separate taste are still open for discussion. One theory being explored is that it evolved as a mechanism for the tongue to detect protein-rich foods that are healthy.

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Adding a pinch of baking

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A pinch of baking soda in the water you boil peeled potatoes in will break down the pectin, resulting in rough, jagged surfaces with significantly more surface area for crisping. Next, sauté these potatoes to get the most amazingly crunchy texture and golden brown colour. You can also use a pinch of baking soda while blanching green vegetables. This will keep the vegetables green, as the baking soda will prevent the breakdown of chlorophyll, which gives the vegetables their characteristic colour. Don’t cook them for too long though because the baking soda’s assault on pectin can turn your vegetables to mush.

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When you ferment things, ethanol is almost always produced. There is no escaping it.

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Remember, you smell cardamom, you don’t taste it. What you taste when you bite into cardamom is its woody mouthfeel and bitter taste. This is why fats are absolutely crucial to cooking, because most flavour molecules are fat-soluble, not water-soluble. This means that when you cook spices in hot oil, it extracts all of these flavour molecules and dissolves them into the oil, thus preventing them from being lost to the air. When you eat this food, the enzymes in your saliva start breaking down the fats, which results in those dissolved aroma molecules escaping into your mouth. As they enter the short, shared highway that transports both food and air, the act of breathing out elevates the aroma molecules, which are basically gases, and makes them hit the olfactory receptors. That is when you truly experience the complex taste of the thousands of aroma molecules from the saffron in your biryani.

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Here is how I use alcohol when making Indian dishes: A splash of vodka, brandy or rum when cooking onions, ginger, garlic, tomatoes and spice powders has two benefits: extraction of more flavour from the spices and the alcohol’s ability to release all those sticky bits from the bottom of the pan, which have a ton of flavour thanks to the Maillard reaction. A splash of wine added at the end of a dish, along with finishing spices, will amplify the effect of those spices when you eat. Keep in mind that while a small amount of alcohol can amplify flavour, a large amount will actually prevent the release of flavour molecules by holding on to them like family heirlooms. This is incidentally one of the reasons why bar snacks tend to be overpoweringly spicy in India. When had with a large whisky, that mirchi bajji could well be made using bhut jolokia chillies and you won’t notice. The amount of alcohol in beer is not strong enough to make a difference, so at the very least, use wine. The cheapest one will do because once heated, all the evocative notes of strawberries and smoked salmon in your fine Chardonnay will largely be destroyed. You can, however, use beer as an acid (see Chapter 4). If you are frying fish (or vegetables) using a batter, try a batter made of maida, salt and vodka (which is just plain ethanol diluted in water). What the alcohol does is reduce gluten development, which we do not want in a fried product, as it will cause chewiness. It also prevents surface starches from absorbing too much water to gelatinize, which will result in a drier and crispier crust. This technique was pioneered by Heston Blumenthal, who went one step further and carbonated his batter before use. The aerated batter makes the crust airy, in addition to being crisp. Trust me, use this technique and you will have some game-changing pakoras to enjoy.

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Here’s a quick microwave cheat sheet: You can cook any ingredient that has water in it. Most vegetables will cook in 3–4 minutes at high power (high power on your microwave is most likely the default setting, but do check the manual to learn how to change the power setting). You can coat them with a little bit of oil, and spices, to infuse some flavours too. You can melt butter to perfect, spreadable consistency by reducing the power to half. At the default high-power setting, the water in the butter will turn to steam and break the emulsion, leaving you with translucent butter that is not very spreadable.

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You can also collect the malai (cream) that floats on top of milk every day. Once you have enough, just put it in a tall microwave-safe vessel (so that it does not overflow) and microwave it for 7–8 minutes. You will get ghee once you filter the brown milk protein. 5. If you crave chickpeas one day but forgot to soak them, worry not. Simply microwave the chana in water for 20 minutes (at a low power setting) and then let it sit for another 20 minutes in the same hot water. You will have chana that is as good as the one soaked for eight hours. Pressure-cook it and use it as you please. 6. You can also dry fresh herbs and turn them into powder in the microwave oven. Do this for curry leaves and mint, which usually have a very short shelf life, even when refrigerated. 7. Let’s say you crave some rice late at night (who doesn’t!), but who wants to cook a single portion in the pressure cooker and then have to clean all the vessels. What if I tell you that you can make instant pulao in the microwave just by adding some ghee, whole spices, washed rice, salt and water. Simply let it microwave for 10 minutes at high power, and then 10–15 more minutes on a low setting, and it will be done. If you remember the method to cook rice perfectly from Chapter 1, the first step is about gelatinizing starches, which happens at about 80°C. The second step is about lowering the temperature and letting the gelatinized starches absorb water till they become nice and soft. That’s exactly what we are doing here too. Once done, squeeze some lime juice, because acids improve everything, and if you want to take it to the next level, sprinkle some MSG or mushroom powder for the umami hit. A caveat: don’t try to feed your entire family. Remember how microwaves have 12 cm wavelengths and create dead spots? Using a large amount of rice risks uncooked or undercooked portions being left in some places, so this method is ideal only for a single serving.

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We already learned about one of them (blanching greens for 30 seconds and then shocking them in an ice bath to deactivate the enzyme responsible for stealing the magnesium from chlorophyll). But even this will keep your chutney green for a few hours at best. Enter our second modernist ingredient, sodium bisulphite. A really tiny pinch of this will keep your greens looking bright for a really long time. This molecule prevents most enzymatic browning (caused by polyphenol oxidase) and non-enzymatic browning (caused by good old oxygen). Added bonus: It is also a preservative that will prevent fridge-friendly fungi and bacteria from dipping into your chutneys.

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To understand what it does, let’s understand what emulsification is. Typically, fats and water do not mix. But when you have a phospholipid, which is a fat molecule with a phosphate group attached to the glycerol backbone, in addition to the long fatty acid chains (recall Chapter 1), it allows the molecule to do something interesting—the phosphate side of the molecule binds with water, while the fatty acids like to hang out with their oil friends. So, when you introduce an emulsifier to a mixture of water and fat, and mechanically agitate it, it will turn into a creamy emulsion, like mayonnaise. Lecithin is a phospholipid found naturally in egg yolks and soy lecithin is simply lecithin produced from soybeans. You can use it to make super-stable salad dressings and also increase the shelf life of anything you bake in an oven. By the way, phospholipids are how our bodies digest and transports fats. We are mostly water, and fats don’t mix with water, so the phospholipids in our intestines emulsify fats (literally like mayonnaise) to be able to transport them easily.

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The charcoal smoke flavour does not come from the charcoal; it comes from the fats in your food dripping on to the hot charcoal and breaking up into several highly aromatic compounds, which then waft up with the smoke and attach themselves to the food. On the other hand, wood is made up of cellulose and hemicellulose, with lignin acting as a glue of sorts. Cellulose and hemicellulose are carbohydrates, essentially made up of long chains of simpler sugar molecules.

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Here is how you can make the most amazing modernist chicken tikka with breast meat, which is the most frustrating cut to deal with because it overcooks way too quickly. We shall apply all the science lessons we have learnt so far, turning it into a useful recap. Brine the chicken pieces in a solution of salt, dry spices and water. A 5–10 per cent salt solution will work. Try various levels in between to arrive at what works for you. You will need to do this for two hours for every 1 kg of chicken. Once you are done, wash it in plain water. Now, marinate the brined chicken in ginger and garlic paste, a little bit of salt, garam masala, chilli powder, turmeric, oil and yoghurt in a bowl for about an hour. Place a small cup in the bowl, drop in a piece of charcoal heated for at least five minutes and pour a teaspoon of ghee on it to start the smoking. Seal the bowl with a tight-fitting lid to keep the smoke inside. I’d say smoke it for at least 2 minutes. You can do it for longer if you like a stronger flavour. Transfer the marinade to a food-safe ziplock bag and drop it into a sous vide bath set to 67oC for about 90 minutes. If you don’t have a sous vide device, or a water bath, no worries. Here’s the perfectly serviceable jugaad: Take the largest stock pot you have and fill it with water, up to three-fourths of its depth. Let it simmer and then turn the heat down to sim. Now insert a temperature probe and wait for the water to reach 70oC. At this point, lower your ziplock bag into it in such a way that all the chicken is under the water. Secure the bag against the wall of the vessel with a metal clip. Stir the water once in a while and keep a watch on the temperature. If it goes below 65oC, use the lowest heat setting to get it back up to 70oC. Do this for 90 minutes. Yes, it sounds painful, but this is what you need to do to get the most succulent chicken breast possible. If you really like the output, you can always buy a cheap sous vide device online. Take the

cooked chicken out and grill it in a pan with some oil, at a high temperature, till it browns beautifully. You can now serve it as a dry dish, after sprinkling some chaat masala on it for the mild, pungent hit of the hydrogen sulphide and a little lime juice for the acid hit. Or, you can drop it into a makhani gravy (Chapter 7) to turn it into chicken tikka makhani.

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The second idea to understand here is the concept of a metamodel. The recipe for paneer butter masala is a model. The generalized method for a (makhani/Punjabi/Chettinadu/Malabar-style) gravy dish featuring either vegetables or proteins is a metamodel.

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The second question to ask is: How do you want to make this dish?

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I’d like to see what’s in my fridge and pantry and make the best of

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I’d like to see what’s in my fridge and pantry and make the best of it.

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A general rule to keep in mind is that things that cook at different rates are better off prepped and cooked separately, before they are ultimately brought together to finish a dish.

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As far as onions go, they can be: Cubed (for mild flavour, best added later in the dish) Half-moon sliced (for mild flavour) Minced (for medium flavour) Pureed (for high flavour. Add this earlier in the dish and cook it for longer)

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Some handy tips: Recipes that call for removing the seeds and pulp should be burnt at the stake. That’s where all the flavour is. Of course, there might be some situations that call for removing the skin, although you can always puree and run it through a sieve to remove the fibrous bits. The outcome will largely be the same.

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You can refer to the table in Chapter 1 for soak and

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Once washed, you can either choose to soak it or use as is. A general tip is to soak the long grain varieties, used in pulao and biryani, for 20–30 minutes, so that a good amount of water absorption happens before the cooking process. This will result in a more evenly cooked final product

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For making regular steamed rice, no soaking is required. However, in my experience, unless you are using a pressure cooker (which is perfectly fine given the convenience), go ahead and soak all varieties. This will reduce the cook time and minimize chances of the rice sticking to the bottom of the pot and getting scorched.

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Here is the algorithm for plain steamed rice: In a vessel, add prepped (washed and soaked for 20–30 minutes) rice, and water that is one knuckle of your index finger above the level of the rice. Bring it to a boil. Salt is optional. Keep in mind that a 1–1.5 per cent of salt by weight of final cooked rice is a good place to start. So, if you are a beginner cook breaking into a sweat about how much salt to add, weigh the water and rice, and add 1 per cent of salt. If that’s not enough, add more the next time. Once the starches gelatinize and the water level reaches the top of the rice, reduce heat to low and close the lid. Wait for 10–15 minutes. Using a fork, gently check to see if there is any water at the bottom of the vessel. Do not fluff up the rice now, just do this surreptitiously in one corner. If there is water left, close the lid and wait for another minute before checking again. Do this till there is no water left at the bottom. Turn the heat off, keep the lid closed and let the rice sit for 10 minutes. This is crucial as it is at this point that the gelatinized amylose and amylopectin strike some backroom political deals and align to ensure that your grains are separate and fluffy. Use a fork (never a spoon!) to fluff up the rice before serving.

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If you are cooking a very small amount of rice, just for yourself (and maybe one other person), microwave oven is an option too. Just 10 minutes at high and 10–15 minutes at low will get you perfectly serviceable steamed rice. Don’t use this method for large amounts of rice though, as your microwave’s dead spots will leave you with an unacceptable amount of uncooked rice.

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Once you master this, you can start experimenting with flavours. Use 50 per cent coconut milk + 50 per cent water. Use soy sauce instead of salt for umami-flavoured rice. Add flavouring to the water: Onion powder, garlic powder, lime zest (but never lime juice). Use vegetable, meat or seafood stock to add more depth of flavour.

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The algorithm for flavoured rice is dead simple. Make steamed rice using the method described above.

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The algorithm for flavoured rice is dead simple. Make steamed rice using the method described above. Let it cool down. Prepare a flavouring of your choice and mix it with the rice. The flavouring here could be: Tadka/tempering with whole spices. Acid (such as lime juice). Crunch (roasted peanuts, cashew nuts, lentils). A full chutney or gravy (such as a tomato and onion chutney), or tamarind chutney.

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Rice + Lentils Typically, the texture of the rice in such a dish needs to be soft and well-mixed with the lentils. A pressure cooker is the most efficient way to do this. Here’s how you can go about it: Heat fat and whole spices. Add prepped rice, lentils, stock (or water) and salt. With such a dish, you can be generous with the water because you want a mushy consistency. Pressure cook for at least 15 minutes. Once depressurized, open and add the finishing flavouring, tempering and herbs. Finishing flavouring could very well be a separate gravy, like in the case of bisi bele bhath.

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The algorithm for pulao is a fusion of the algorithms for flavoured rice and regular steamed rice. You might want to consider using a long-grain variety of rice, which has less amylopectin and whose grains stick less to each other. Heat fat and add whole spices like cumin. Add your choice of prepped vegetables. Use finely chopped vegetables so that they cook at the same time as the rice, while maintaining some texture and mouthfeel. Add your choice of brined and marinated meat. Add the washed and soaked rice. Let it cook a little with the other ingredients. Add water, or any kind of stock, till it’s about one knuckle on your index finger above the level of the rice. Bring to a boil and follow the same instructions as the ones for plain steamed rice (Step 2 onwards). Once the water has reached the level of the rice, you can optionally add finishing spices such as saffron in milk, roasted dry fruits, garam masala, etc., before closing the lid and letting the rice absorb the rest of the water. At the time of fluffing, you can garnish with herbs.

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What atta is perfectly designed for is to make rotis and parathas that are soft and flaky, as opposed to being chewy. Anyone who has tried to make chapattis with maida will attest to this fact. Maida has better gluten-forming capabilities, which is why it’s preferred for making unleavened breads like naan, kulcha, or baking cakes and breads. It doesn’t work for chapattis because when you add water to maida, it forms a stretchy, strong gluten structure that we do not want in a chapatti or paratha.

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So, let’s get going with the algorithm for an unleavened wheat-based bread dough. Take atta and water in a 1:1 by weight ratio and roughly mix them together. Let this sit for 30 minutes. Thanks to a process called autolysis, the wheat will mix with water and form gluten structures by itself, with no kneading required. This is a 100 per cent hydration dough. Depending on the brand of the atta, the room temperature and the alignment of Beta Centauri, this can either become a sticky dough that is hard to handle, or a slightly hard dough that will result in papad, not chapatti. If you are a beginner, you might want to start with less water and work your way up once you get used to managing a moderately wet dough. More water results in a softer final product. Now, gently work salt into the dough till it’s evenly distributed. As a general rule, you can use 1% salt by weight of the dough as a rough guide. Use more if it’s not seasoned well enough for your taste. Salt is not added during the autolysis phase since it tends to tighten gluten, and we do not want that till the dough forms an extensible structure that gives us a perfectly soft, yet structurally sound, chapatti. If you want an even softer chapatti, you can use boiling water. Personally, I prefer my chapattis to offer a modicum of resistance to my teeth and not melt in the mouth. So, experiment with both these variables—the temperature and amount of water—till you get the kind of dough you like.

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The general way to do this with yeast is: Take maida and water in a 1:0.7 ratio. You can substitute up to 50 per cent of the maida with atta if you want a more whole-wheaty flavour. If you do this, remember to add a little more water because atta is a thirstier flour. Let it sit for 30 minutes to autolyse. Work salt into the dough and then add half a teaspoon of instant yeast. The more you add, the faster the fermentation will be. Cover the dough with a wet cloth and let it rise till it doubles in size. Depending on where you live and what time of the year it is, this might take anywhere from 30 minutes (in Chennai) to 2–3 hours (in Srinagar). Place it inside a switched-off oven to accelerate the process. If you want to take your naans and kulchas to the next level, place the kneaded dough in the refrigerator to let it rise more slowly over a longer period of time. Longer fermentation always results in richer and more complex flavoured bread. Do not forget to cover the vessel or else the dough will dry out in the fridge. If you are fermenting overnight, or for twenty-four hours, all you need is flour, water, salt and yeast. If you are using a more rapid room temperature rise, adding some enriching ingredients like milk, eggs, fat or sugar will improve the flavour and texture of the final product.

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If you are not someone who bakes cakes regularly, don’t buy baking powder because it has a shorter shelf life than baking soda. Follow the same instructions and replace yeast with baking soda. You will need to add yoghurt to the dough as well in step 2. Adjust the amount of water suitably since yoghurt is also mostly water. Finally, don’t let it rest for more than 30–45 minutes because chemical leaveners can be fast and do not depend as much on room temperature.

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Remember our enemy amylopectin, the sticky starch? We don’t like it much in our rice, but it is our friend when it comes to flours. Using really hot water to knead the dough will make it sticky and relatively easier to roll out. Bear in

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French cooking was among the first cuisines to adapt to the Industrial Age. It was not only the first to document standardized methods and recipes for dishes, but it also went a step ahead and documented the preparation of building blocks for dishes that could be made in bulk, and then actual dishes could be assembled in very little time.

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The simplest dal you can make likely involves the following steps: Pressure-cook lentils. Add salt. Temper with whole spices like mustard, chillies and cumin. Garnish with fresh herbs like coriander leaves.

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In the nineteenth century, Marie-Antoine Carême (the last name is pronounced best while attempting to dislodge some phlegm in your throat) anointed these five sauces as the building blocks for all of French cuisine in his monumental work L’Art de la Cuisine Française au Dix-Neuvième Siecle: Béchamel: A white sauce made from butter, flour and dairy. Velouté: A white sauce made from butter, flour and white stock (poultry, sea food or vegetable). Espagnole: A brown sauce made from butter, flour and brown stock (red meat). Tomato: A red sauce made from butter, flour and tomatoes. Hollandaise (added later): A sauce made using egg yolks, clarified butter and acid.

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Let’s start with what makes a gravy evoke a specific flavour from a region, cultural label or cooking style? These are just broad-brush generalizations, by the way. Gujarati: Use of gram flour, yoghurt, sesame seeds, sugar and lime juice. Punjabi: Use of ginger, garlic, onion and tomato-based gravies with coriander and cumin powder. Chettinadu: Use of shallots, garlic, curry leaves, red chillies and fennel (saunf). Malabar: Use of shallots, garlic, curry leaves and coconut milk. Mughlai: Use of cashew nut paste, or cream, and garam masala (mace, nutmeg, cardamom). Bhuna: Use of browned onions and slow cooking to thicken a gravy till it coats the main ingredient. Banarsi: Use of spices mixed in yoghurt. Jain: Use of turmeric, asafoetida, coriander, jeera and chilli powder (no onion or garlic). Bengali: Use of mustard oil and panch phoran spice mix.

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There are three building blocks for our modernist gravy dishes: Base gravies. Spice combinations (both for use at the start and end of a dish). Choice of fat and flavouring oils.

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We can also make a Chettinadu-style base gravy: Heat sesame oil. Add ginger, garlic, shallots, curry leaves, red chillies and fennel. Add chicken stock and let it cook for an hour. Add rice flour as a thickening agent. Blend it, strain it and freeze.

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Or a Malabar-style base gravy: Heat coconut oil. Add garlic, shallots, curry leaves, red chillies and coriander seeds. Add coconut milk diluted with water or stock. Let it cook on low heat for 30 minutes. Blend it, strain it and freeze.

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Or a Mughlai-style base gravy: Heat ghee and add a puree of onions, ginger and garlic to it. Add whole garam masala spices: mace, clove, cardamom and nutmeg. Add thickening agents like cashew nuts and poppy seeds. Add milk and let it cook on low heat. Blend it, strain it and freeze.

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Base Gravy Tips In general, avoid adding salt or sugar to your base gravies. You can add them when you make the dish and have better control over the final flavour profile. Always strain the gravy after blending to get rid of all the fibrous husks. They won’t have any flavour left after an hour of cooking. We aren’t looking to maximize the Maillard browning reaction in a base gravy because we will do that when we make the dish.

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Here are some infused oil recipes to get you going: Garam masala oil: Pour hot ghee over whole garam masala spices such as black cardamom, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove and cardamom. Let it infuse over several hours. Filter the spices out. Chettinadu oil: Pour sesame oil over shallots, curry leaves, fennel and garlic. Bengali oil: Pour mustard oil over the panch phoran mix. Sambar finishing oil: Pour ghee over red chillies, fenugreek, coriander and pepper.

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Indian gravy algorithm, combining all the things we have learned so far. Begin by asking yourself these questions: What kind of gravy do you want to cook? Vegetables/meat/legumes/egg/seafood? What style do you want to cook it in? Punjabi/Bengali/ Chettinaadu/Maharashtra, etc.? Prep ingredients (check the section on prepping of ingredients in this chapter): Main ingredients, base spice mixes, finishing spice mixes, base whole spices, tempering whole spices, garnish, fat of choice, acid(s) of choice, base gravy of choice, flavoured oils of choice. Heat your choice of fat and add base whole spices. If your dish involves onions, cook them as appropriate (translucent, light brown, dark brown). If your dish involves ginger or garlic, lower the heat and cook them. Optionally, add a splash of alcohol to deglaze the pan and extract more flavour from the spices. If your dish involves tomatoes, add them. You can also add some ketchup, or tomato paste, and let it reduce. Add the base gravy of your choice and let it cook briefly (it’s already cooked, so don’t cook it for too long). Add the main prepped ingredients. Lower the heat and add the base spice mix. Add the acids (tamarind or vinegar). Add stock (water/stock/coconut milk/yoghurt) with starch. Add sugar and salt, and taste to check for balance. Bring it to a boil. Switch off heat. Optionally, add finishing spice mix. Adjust for thickness and flavour intensity by adding butter/cream/thickeners. Optionally, add a finishing acid like citrus juice. You can also add umami ingredients like MSG, mushroom powder. Temper using regional, dish-appropriate spices and choice of fat. Add a garnish of your choice. Optionally, add a flavouring oil of your choice.

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The gravy cheat sheet: A good gravy is about striking the right balance of flavours in each layer. If you turn the dial to 11 and use a base gravy, fresh spices, finishing spices and a flavouring oil, your dish will be unpalatably over-spiced. I’d say use finishing spices very sparingly and pay close attention to whether you want to use garlic as a paste or roughly chopped. Consider using finishing oils only in lightly spiced dishes. In general, use whole spices early in the cooking process and spice powders later. However, it is not uncommon to add turmeric and chilli powder early in the process because they are primarily used for colour and heat, not flavour. Remember the rules of flavour and always create a three-way balance between salt, sweet and sour to create a memorable dish. These three will elevate the flavours of the spices you add. If you need to thicken your gravy, add starch-based flours like rice, corn or wheat flours, but remember that these will mute the intensity of flavours in your dish. Consider using xanthan or guar gum, as these modernist thickeners work tremendously well in small quantities and do not add any flavour of their own. If your gravy is too intense, you can add fat (ghee, butter, cream or coconut milk) to balance it. If your dish feels too heavy and fatty, you can add an acid to reduce the perception of greasiness.

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We’ve given the world more flavours in food than any other part of the world, but we need to be humble, swallow our pride and learn to make salads like the West.

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That said, it can be argued that Indians salads are simple because our gravies are complex, that it’s just a way to balance out a meal.

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Once you have this mixed, make a dressing. A good salad dressing has six components. The most critical ratio to keep in mind is three parts fat to one part acid. Acid is what makes raw ingredients taste good,

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Culinary acids are mostly watery (lime juice, vinegar) and thus do not stick to plant matter. To make them stick, we use the same principle that we used in a marinade. Fats have excellent sticking properties, which does two things. They make the dressing stick to your salad ingredients, instead of gathering in a sad, watery pool at the bottom of the bowl, and they coat

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Egg yolks, mustard paste and honey are very good emulsifiers. Of course, the food industry uses lecithin, which is the molecule in an egg yolk that acts as an emulsifier. If you are planning to make industrial quantities of salad dressing, get yourself a packet of soy lecithin.

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Here’s the formula: Fat (three parts): Pick a liquid fat of your choice based on regional preferences. Acid (one part): Vinegar, lime juice, pineapple juice, yoghurt, etc. Salt: Common salt, black salt, soy sauce. Sweet: Honey, sugar, molasses, jaggery. Heat: Chillies, pepper. Spices: Garlic, ginger, spice powders.

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A good biryani is not just conceptually but also literally layered with multi-dimensional flavours—of the meat that has undergone the Maillard reaction at the bottom of the vessel, the umami of the glutamates in the animal protein, the fantastic aromas of the rich spices coating the meat, the layering of fresh herbs and flavour-transporting fat (ghee), the textural contrast between the perfectly soft yet fiercely independent grains of rice and the crunch of fried onions, not to forget the top layer that blends the incredible complexity of saffron and the floral top notes of kewra water—that make it the Gaia of dishes, a layered living system of rice, meat, spices and fat, a complete meal by itself that requires no side dish.

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The Biryani Rice Algorithm Wash the rice thoroughly. We want to evict every surface molecule of sticky amylopectin, which is the enemy of good biryani. Do this four or five times, till the water runs clear. Soak the rice for 20 minutes. Then wash and drain again. Soaking the rice will help it cook more evenly. Take a vessel and add lots of water. Since we will partially cook the rice, after fully submerging it, we don’t have worry about the amount of water as long as it is more than three to four times the volume of rice. To this water, it is absolutely critical that you add salt. This is how the rice will get seasoned. If you don’t season it well, the biryani will taste flat. Remember, because we are using extra water, not all the salt will get into the rice, so add a little more to compensate for this. A general rule of thumb is to add salt till the water tastes like the sea. If you have never tasted sea water, please travel to a seaside city like Chennai. A good biryani is worth this effort. You can also add whole spices to the rice if you want to add another layer of flavour, but remember that spices aren’t water-soluble and not much is going to stick to the rice. A teaspoon of ghee will help here. If you want a more intense flavour, and this is purely a personal preference, cook the rice in meat, seafood or vegetable stock. Bring the water to a boil. Once the rice reaches its full length but is still raw inside, turn off the heat and drain the rice into an open plate. Let it cool down. When straining the rice, please remove any whole spice husks. While restaurants want to give you visual confirmation of the fact that they are being generous with expensive spices by leaving those flavourless husks behind, you be a nice person and remove them. No one wants to be navigating through a minefield of cardamom husks when focusing on a mouthful of orgasmic biryani. If you are up for it, take a piece of thin cloth and make a small sachet of spices (a bouquet garni, if

you will) that you want to use. Drop this into the water. That way, you won’t have to painstakingly fish the spice husks out later.

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Here’s how you can go about it: Heat a litre of water (or more, if you are making a large quantity) and add salt (8 per cent of the amount of water) so that it fully dissolves. Let it cool down to room temperature. You can add other flavouring agents too, like ginger-garlic paste, spice powders, etc. Brining will cause salt and the other flavours in the solution to get pulled into the meat. Now immerse the meat pieces into the solution, ensuring that no part is exposed to air. This is crucial to prevent bacterial infections. Remember, meat needs to be frozen for storage, and we are keeping this in the regular section of the refrigerator, which is simply not cold enough to deter meat-loving bacteria. Based on the table on Page 184, calculate the duration for which you need to let it brine. Wash the meat in regular water post brining to get rid of the salty water on the surface.

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The general rules for a good marinade are: Acids: Use at least two acids, one weak and one strong. Yoghurt and lime juice are the traditional choices. Dry spices: Use spice powders made from whole spices, which have been roasted and freshly ground. It’s best to make your own biryani masala using the lessons from Chapter 2. Fresh spices: Use fresh pasted ginger and garlic. The store-bought ones taste terrible thanks to the sodium citrate. Fat: This is crucial. Fat is what helps all the flavour stick to the meat. For the most part, there is enough fat in the yoghurt, but it won’t hurt to add a little ghee or oil. If you want a more intensely spiced biryani, you can heat the fat and add it your marinade before adding the yoghurt, so that the spices are cooked and their flavour molecules get dissolved in the acid. If you are using vegetables or paneer, add a little bit of gram flour as a binder, so that the marinade sticks.

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The typical additional ingredients used are: Fried onions (birista): It is entirely worth frying your own onions. Store-bought ones go rancid in no time. But frying onions takes time and patience. They will seem to take ages to turn light brown, and then all of a sudden, like Usain Bolt at the 70 m line, summon all reserves of browning agility unbeknownst to novice cooks and turn into elemental carbon. Also remember that the onions will continue to crisp after you take them out of the frying pan. Coriander and mint leaves. Masala milk: This is typically a mix of super-delicate spices and flavouring ingredients, such as saffron, rose water and attar, added to mildly warm milk.

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A neat little trick I’ve seen on an excellent YouTube channel—BongEats—is to layer bay leaves at the bottom of the vessel. This not only keeps the meat from burning, but also adds flavour to the biryani. Layer the meat pieces on top if this and then add the rice. Next you pour in the yakhni. Then goes in a layer of herbs, fried onions and masala milk, followed by another layer of rice and a final layer of herbs, masala milk and fried onions. Now, seal the vessel as well as you can to prevent loss of moisture. Let it cook at low heat for 30 minutes. Turn off the heat after that and let it sit for 15 more minutes. If you recall the tips from the previous chapter, what we are doing is letting the par-cooked rice go through a process called retrogradation, where the starches realign themselves to ensure each grain stands out separately.

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So, let’s recap the biryani project plan, with all the science lessons outlined so far. The Rice Track Wash and soak rice for 20 minutes. Washing removes surface amylopectin and other chemicals, such as talc, which are used in the polishing process. Also, soaked rice cooks faster and more evenly. Par-cook the rice in excess water and salt, till it has grown to its full size, while being raw at the centre. Drain the rice and let it cool down in an open vessel. Cooling is a function of surface area. The more the surface area, the faster the cooling down will be. Also, the chances of some of the hotter grains continuing to cook all the way through will lessen. The Biryani Masala Track Dry-roast whole spices such as cardamom, cloves and mace. Heating activates the release of the volatile aroma molecules that make up the flavour of the spice. Grind them to a powder. Chapter 2 has a suggestion for a well-balanced biryani masala, but feel free to invent your own using the principles outlined there. You can, if you are not up to making your own spice mix, get sachets of biryani masala that you can use in one go. You can use the masala when cooking the meat/vegetable layer, and additionally sprinkle it during the layering and dum-cooking process, to add a more intense flavour to your biryani. The Protein Track Use bone-in cuts of meat with some skin on, particularly in case of poultry. Boneless cuts will become dry and rubbery. Brine the meat in an 8 per cent salt solution for the duration based on the brining table. Brining has two advantages: It gets salt into the meat, which makes it tastier, and, in turn, the salt prevents moisture loss from the muscle tissue during the cooking process, which results in moist and tender meat in the biryani. Wash the brine off and marinate the meat in a combination of yoghurt, biryani masala, ginger–garlic paste and any other spice that you fancy. Add some ghee and lime juice, and let it sit for at least an hour. Go easy on the salt in

the marinade because you have already brined your meat. Cook the marinated meat at low heat. Remember that any temperature above 65°C will make the meat tough and rubbery. The idea is to turn some of the collagen in the connective tissues into gelatin, which will ensure the meat stays tender without overcooking the tissues. This process will result in a delicious, melt-in-the-mouth flavour that is the hallmark of a great biryani. This process will also yield yakhni, a rich, flavourful broth of rendered animal fat. Drain it out and store it because this will give the biryani its unctuous mouthfeel. The Onion Track Chop onions into small pieces. You will need more onions than you think because deep-fried onions shrink. If you tear up, use a small hand fan to blow away the irritant molecules. Heat oil up to 177oC and drop the onions into it. Don’t drop all of them in one go. That will cause the temperature of the oil to drop precipitously and make your onions greasy. Fry the onions in batches till they are just short of dark brown. The Masala Milk Track Warm milk at the lowest setting in the microwave for 10 seconds. To this, add strands of saffron, kewra water and attar (optional). The Herbs and Other Accoutrements Track Chop and keep ready other add-ins like coriander and mint leaves, etc. The Dum Track In a thick-bottomed vessel, use bay leaves as the base. Layer 1: Meat pieces. Layer 2: Half the rice. Layer 3: Half the masala milk, herbs and fried onion. Layer 4: Rest of the rice. Layer 5: Rest of the masala milk, herbs and fried onion. Seal the lid and use one of the many tricks you are familiar with by now to prevent moisture loss (using dough to seal the edges, or aluminium foil between the lid and vessel). At low heat, let it cook for 30 minutes. Switch off the heat after that and let it sit for 15 more minutes. Remember that the rice and meat are already 80 per cent cooked before this stage, so keep the heat as low as you can to prevent any scorching at the

bottom. If you smell any burning, turn the heat even lower but wait out the 30+15 minutes. If you are using a heavy bottomed vessel and the lowest heat setting on your stove, it should not burn. Serve to a loved one.

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Once you’ve mastered the art of layering biryani, you can experiment a little more. Rice layer: Cook the rice in diluted coconut milk for a fantastically rich flavour. This will work well with a Malabar-style spice mix. You can also experiment with other regional varieties of rice. While some of them are high in amylopectin, the technique used to cook basmati/long-grain rice can be used on most other varieties too. Spice mixes: It’s the combination of spices that makes a region’s biryani stand out. So, garam masala + saffron + fried onions + mint will give you Hyderabadi-style biryani. Try other combinations as well. For e.g., make a Mexican spice mix using chipotle sauce, cumin powder, garlic and onion powder, and use that for marinating meat. Protein layer: Try different styles of marination using spice combinations from Chapter 2, including experimenting with global cuisines. Herbs layer: Experiment with herbs that combine well and go with your choice of flavours. If you are trying out a Thai-style biriyani, you can use Thai basil and coriander, along with a spice mix that has lemongrass, ginger, shallots, garlic and fish sauce as marinade, and fried shallots for the crunch. When you think of biryani as a canvas, with a template that involves a rice layer, protein layer, region-specific spices, herbs and crunch, the possibilities are endless.

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So, taste what you cook all the time, and keep in mind that hot food tastes milder in intensity.

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A general principle is to always compare the effect of an ingredient with its absence, not with another ingredient. Likewise, if you are testing a technique, it is better to compare it with the way you would normally do it.

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Note: Meat don't like heat

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Note: Tip.

Here is where your grandmother’s till-the-first-knuckle-of-your-index-finger rule is good science.

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Note: Tip.

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Note: Tjip.

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If you want to make a whole wheat loaf of bread in India, your best bet is to use 70 per cent maida

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molecule of fat is like a flagpole with three flags. The flagpole is a small molecule called glycerol and the three flags are fatty acids. While they are called ‘acids’, they are pretty weak.

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Note: Til

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Note: Til

And, by the way, rancid oil only smells and tastes bad. Consuming it has no known serious, negative health effects.

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Note: Til

2 Science of Spice and Flavour

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Note: CH.

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A rather common question people have is how to fix a dish that has been over-salted. Allow me to use state-of-the-art science to finally give you the highly anticipated answer. You can’t.

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If you hear a mild sizzle, your oil is ready. A loud sizzle indicates close to frying temperatures, while no sizzle indicates that the oil is not hot enough.

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Note: Tip

If a recipe calls for amchoor alone, try using half the quantity mentioned and squeeze lime at the end to bring about a more layered and richer flavour profile.

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Note: Tip

A key thing to remember about citrus is to never add it early in the cooking process. Cooked citrus juices develop strange, nasty, bitter flavours. This is why they are added right at the end.

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The flavour of tomatoes is improved significantly by concentration (removal of water) and sustained low heat over long periods of time.

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Note: Tip

Journal Everything If you didn’t write down what you did on the day you made the perfect chapatti, you won’t be able to replicate it with ease. Let me give you an example.

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Apparently, during the golden era of pressure cooker manufacturing, cookers would make perfectly cooked rice in three whistles, whereas the modern ones tend to be temperamental.

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However, it is not uncommon to use pressure-cooking with tougher cuts of red meat, such as beef or mutton, to save time. But if you are looking to get the best flavour, low and slow is the way to go.

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When the bran is removed, we get white rice, which has a fantastic shelf life. That is what we mostly eat.

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White rice, like most starchy foods, has two kinds of starch molecules: amylose and amylopectin. Amylose is a smaller, linear molecule, while amylopectin is larger and branched-out.

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The Indian subcontinent mostly uses two kinds of wheat flours: maida, which is made just from the endosperm, and atta, which includes a little bit of the bran.

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If you want to make a whole wheat loaf of bread in India, your best bet is to use 70 per cent maida and 30 per cent atta for the best results.

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Maida forms stronger gluten structures than chakki-ground atta, which is why chapattis made of maida are chewier than those made using atta.

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This is why we store chopped vegetables in a bowl of cold water after cutting them, preventing access to air. Squeezing some lime juice into the water also prevents oxidation.

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Fat by itself is tasteless, but it transports flavour and thus makes meat taste better.

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Muscles that are used regularly take longer to cook (like chicken legs), while parts of the animal that generally Netflix and chill tend to cook really fast (chicken breast).

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Fun fact: H2S is also the primary smell of black salt (kala namak), which has a tiny bit of H2S in it.

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but there is an inordinate asymmetry in the obsession to reduce fats in our diet compared to the real villain, carbohydrates.

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And, by the way, when you heat oil, any fancy aroma that an unheated expensive oil has all but disappears. So, buy expensive oils only as finishing oils, not cooking oils.

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It’s also important to understand how oils go rancid. In general, oils with more unsaturated fatty acids are more likely to go rancid.

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As long as the fatty acids are attached to the glycerol, things are fine, but if they happen to escape the flagpole and loiter about on their own, things get nasty.

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Consider coriander. Its name comes from koris, the Greek word for bedbugs, because the ancient Greeks

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Consider coriander. Its name comes from koris, the Greek word for bedbugs, because the ancient Greeks thought that the seeds smelt like the insect.

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Umami is the fifth taste that has recently been added to this list. It is the savoury, lingering, meaty taste that comes from the presence of salts of a specific amino acid called glutamic acid.

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This is why a pinch of sugar is a good idea in any dish, because it balances saltiness.

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Our preference for crispy and crunchy sounds in food comes from the evolutionary preference for fresh plant products.

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yet it is the only substance we eat that did not originate in a living thing.

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At the very least, use iodized salt when making gravies and non-iodized salt when deep-frying.

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I’m afraid, water won’t be of much help. Capsaicin is not water-soluble, it only dissolves in fat or alcohol. A glass of milk, a spoonful of sugar or honey, or some wine, will be more efficient

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Heat alleviates richness or fattiness in dishes. When your dishes are too greasy, creamy or heavy, heat will reduce the perception of richness.

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The Latin word ‘unus’, which means ‘one’ is the likely origin of the word ‘onion’.

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We tend to use a large number of contrasting flavouring ingredients, and rarely just onion or garlic.

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when heated, is converted to another molecule called MMP (3-mercapto-2-methylpentan-1-ol, if you want to show off to your friends). MMP lends the meaty, savoury and luscious

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If you add a pinch of salt at this stage, it will dehydrate the onion even faster.

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The catch is that pressure-caramelized onions don’t taste as good as the 60-minute open-pan version

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One of the compounds produced when you cut into garlic is allyl mercaptan, a close cousin of ethyl mercaptan, a chemical so smelly that our noses can detect even one molecule in an entire room.

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So, remember, your entire body will have a lingering, garlicky aroma for up to twenty-four hours when you eat a ton of garlic.

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But Indian cuisine wouldn’t have included potatoes had it not been for the Portuguese colonizers. In fact, the Marathi word for potato is literally the Portuguese word: ‘batata’.

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We sauté in the range of 110–150oC. Frying temperature starts at about 170oC.

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crust. As the insides heat up, the starches gelatinize,

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Green, unripe tomatoes are more predictably tart, but they are not always available.

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Adding a pinch of baking

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When you ferment things, ethanol is almost always produced. There is no escaping it.

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You can also collect the malai (cream) that floats on top of milk every day. Once you have enough, just put it in a tall microwave-safe vessel (so that it does not overflow) and microwave it for 7–8 minutes. You will get ghee once you filter the brown milk protein. 5. If you crave chickpeas one day but forgot to soak them, worry not. Simply microwave the chana in water for 20 minutes (at a low power setting) and then let it sit for another 20 minutes in the same hot water. You will have chana that is as good as the one soaked for eight hours. Pressure-cook it and use it as you please. 6. You can also dry fresh herbs and turn them into powder in the microwave oven. Do this for curry leaves and mint, which usually have a very short shelf life, even when refrigerated. 7. Let’s say you crave some rice late at night (who doesn’t!), but who wants to cook a single portion in the pressure cooker and then have to clean all the vessels. What if I tell you that you can make instant pulao in the microwave just by adding some ghee, whole spices, washed rice, salt and water. Simply let it microwave for 10 minutes at high power, and then 10–15 more minutes on a low setting, and it will be done. If you remember the method to cook rice perfectly from Chapter 1, the first step is about gelatinizing starches, which happens at about 80°C. The second step is about lowering the temperature and letting the gelatinized starches absorb water till they become nice and soft. That’s exactly what we are doing here too. Once done, squeeze some lime juice, because acids improve everything, and if you want to take it to the next level, sprinkle some MSG or mushroom powder for the umami hit. A caveat: don’t try to feed your entire family. Remember how microwaves have 12 cm wavelengths and create dead spots? Using a large amount of rice risks uncooked or undercooked portions being left in some places, so this method is ideal only for a single serving.

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The second question to ask is: How do you want to make this dish?

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I’d like to see what’s in my fridge and pantry and make the best of

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I’d like to see what’s in my fridge and pantry and make the best of it.

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A general rule to keep in mind is that things that cook at different rates are better off prepped and cooked separately, before they are ultimately brought together to finish a dish.

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You can refer to the table in Chapter 1 for soak and

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The algorithm for flavoured rice is dead simple. Make steamed rice using the method described above.

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There are three building blocks for our modernist gravy dishes: Base gravies. Spice combinations (both for use at the start and end of a dish). Choice of fat and flavouring oils.

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We’ve given the world more flavours in food than any other part of the world, but we need to be humble, swallow our pride and learn to make salads like the West.

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That said, it can be argued that Indians salads are simple because our gravies are complex, that it’s just a way to balance out a meal.

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you will) that you want to use. Drop this into the water. That way, you won’t have to painstakingly fish the spice husks out later.

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So, taste what you cook all the time, and keep in mind that hot food tastes milder in intensity.

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