Masala Lab - Krish Ashok

 

Ever wondered why your grandmother threw a teabag into the pressure cooker while boiling chickpeas, or why she measured using the knuckle of her index finger? Why does a counter-intuitive pinch of salt make your kheer more intensely flavourful? What is the Maillard reaction and what does it have to do with fenugreek? What does your high-school chemistry knowledge, or what you remember of it, have to do with perfectly browning your onions?

Read about this and more, by Krish Ashok in his 'Masala Lab', The Science of Indian Cooking. Written by a man, who is not a cook, but a musician by passion  and engineer by profession working with TCS. This was my 106th of 2021

The art, craft and science - physics, chemistry and biology of cooking is covered in this book. Cooking is essentially chemical engineering in a home laboratory, known as kitchen, with an optional lab coat known as apron. Everything has chemicals in it, and those who say, "I don't want to eat anything that has chemicals in it" will have to fast indefinitely. While there are a million different chemical reactions that happen when we cook, ones that are worth understanding are: starch gelatinization, protein denaturation (paneer at 60Degree), hydrolysis (protein breaks down)  and the Maillard reaction (browning of food). 

Art is and should be hard to master, but if the craft is hard to get right, then the documentation is probably inadequate. 

For any cooking "Patience. That's the main ingredient. If you give anything enough time, it will turn out delicious. You can approximate all the other ingredients."

This covers:

1. Zero-Pressure cooking : Cooking is ultimately the application of heat to physically and chemically transform ingredients into food. Understanding the basic physics of heat and the chemistry of water would help.  It says how pressure cooking is not just to cook rice and dal, but can produce an astonishing range of flavours when done right. Cooking something dry on a metal pan is the fastest way to cook (or burn) food, while boiling something in water takes more time, and baking in an oven take even longer. Microwave works by heating up the water inside foods, which is why they don't work for food items that don't have enough moisture. 
2. Science of Spice and Flavour:  Spices lose flavour in couple of weeks. A low cost coffee grinder will help add fresh spices to food. You can only taste things soluble in water. 
3. Brown, baby, brown: Maillard reaction is described in the context of onion and garlic and other deep frying. 
4. Dropping Acid: Understand the pH level. Yogurt, tamarind, Vinegar, lime juice and more, knowing how to use them will unlock a universe of new flavours. 
5. Umami, soda, Rum: Some ingredients like MSG and Sodium bicarbonate  are precious magic wands in the kitchen, they are not harmful, if used in small amount. You can use alcohol when cooking, a practice quite common in the west.  
6. Taking it to the next level : New cooking techniques and equipment's are introduced here.  
7. Burn the recipe : Concept of Metamodel is introduced here, kitchen time-optimization techniques that restaurants use are covered here. 
8. The Biryani: Good Biryani, and all those endorphins is ultimately chemistry. 

Masala Lab by Krish Ashok is a science nerd's exploration of Indian cooking with the ultimate aim of making the reader a better cook and turning the kitchen into a joyful, creative playground for culinary experimentation. Just like memorizing an equation might have helped you pass an exam but not become a chemist, following a recipe without knowing its rationale can be a sub-optimal way of learning how to cook.

Exhaustively tested and researched, and with a curious and engaging approach to food, Krish Ashok puts together the one book the Indian kitchen definitely needs, proving along the way that your grandmother was right all along.