To be an experimental/ curious cook or to cook for survival?

Vegetable Korma - first attempt

To those who say cooking is an art form or an ability to express yourself through different elements in food (be it, taste, smell and plate decor), I'd completely agree with you all. I still remember my first attempt at cooking - I had cooked Vegetable Kurma (which is basically flavored vegetable stew) completely on my own for my family at home on a fine summer day at the age of 12 and it was a completely satisfying experience since I had used a well established recipe and had followed the right instructions step by step.

NITK Block I Mess

Many of you know - I decided to live away from home for my undergrad years - I had enrolled myself in many vegetarian messes (basically, messes are dining halls and were akin to their names - they really were a mess with 'healthy' food options that you HAD to enroll yourself in if you were a hosteler) around campus to support my tummy since we were not allowed to cook within our hostel rooms citing safety and cleanliness concerns - Block I, Block III, PG Block, Mega Mess and the Block VII mess were my survivability options because as an undergrad, we really did not have time to think about the food we ate. More often than not, the food was below-par in all these messes - mostly because they had to make their food in bulk for a lot of students and to hasten the cooking process, had to add baking soda to the food - which made sense for some time. Messes/ Dining Halls at public universities like mine are held under contractors and there have been disputes of a completely monopoly in giving out these contracts - I know there were attempts made to change that, but am unaware if something happened about it. Other than that, there were multiple other options around campus - Amul, International Hostel Mess, Night Canteen, GNPD, and Ocean Pearl restaurants - again, more as a means of survivability if we wanted to eat outside of our usual mess food. I still remember the days when every student was craving for their monthly GDs (Grand Dinners) since that was usually the only day when the food was supposedly the best - they gave out cornettos for Pete's sake.

As for my first real attempt at cooking, it all started during my internship at HEPIA, Geneva. I had again stayed at CUG's (Cite Universitaire de Geneve) hostel set up and they luckily gave us a shared kitchen option where we could cook whatever we wanted to. As an intern (at the age of 20), I again had to cook for survival since there was again no time to experiment with the limited knowledge I had about cooking. However, during one of the weekends, when we decided to chill out (we had been continuously traveling around Europe every other weekend), I decided to experiment with some food.  As you may have figured, Switzerland is one of the most expensive countries to live in both in terms of paying the rent as well as eating outside - hence, it was essential that we did our groceries every 3-4 days while we returned back home from work. The base ingredient in most South Indian dishes is Rice - and most dishes have onions and tomatoes as core ingredients (with added spices) and some special vegetable to enhance flavor. Usually, most Indian dishes have some core spices to use - chilly powder, turmeric, garam masala, cumin seeds, coriander powder - and some other special spices as you seem fit and of course, the right amount of salt. That was when I decided to put on my mad hat and experiment with all these different spices and what amount of each spice would enhance the flavor of each dish that I made everyday - when I mean experiment, I mean that I do not follow a recipe - and tried to make paneer tikka masala (paneer was damn cheap in Dairy land!) without a recipe - something outside my comfort zone. Here's the result - visually, it looked stunning; as for the taste, it was a good attempt. I then started to experiment with food - to infuse different types of cuisine into Indian - starting with Sri Lankan cuisine where I had introduced coconut milk in one of my curries, followed by Thai cuisine through the introduction of bamboo shoots. That was a whole new experience altogether.

One thing I finally understood from most of these dishes is the fact that food is something that unites all of us - whatever happens, everyone needs to have some food to survive - and cooking is a means to connect with everyone around the world. To express yourself through cooking is to cook some good food without a known recipe - it could be a recipe for disaster, but more often than not, if you put your heart and soul into it, you'll literally come out with flying colors. So, as I faced the challenge to move abroad for grad studies at USC where we had to live off-campus, I decided to take cooking to the next level - I started to make things I had never done before - again through experimentation (I had my guinea pigs of course). Gobi Manchurian,  Aloo Bonda, Onion Pakoda, Paneer Manchurian, Vegetarian Manchurian - were just some of my specialties in case we wanted to have something out of the norm (for us, it was sambhar, dal, rasam rice :p). For the summer, we even tried different types of chaat - Bhel Puri and Sev Puri - samosas, aloo tikkis, pav bhaaji and vada paav! All made from scratch! And once I moved to Folsom, I didn't stop - these continued to be my go-to signature dishes. For the first time ever, I even tried making Egyptian Street Food (Koshary!) using Indian ingredients and it was amazing - especially, the Dakka adds so much more flavor - we Indians need to incorporate that into our cuisine!

Some of my best experiments!

Experimentation is an excellent teacher honestly - you tend to understand how much of each spice you need to add, how much salt needs to be added for n group of people, how much water to add to allow for something to be cooked under pressure, and of course how much to cook so as to avoid wastage. This is not something that is needed to survive but something you garner out of experience and experimentation. You can always follow my Instagram stories to check out anything out of the norm that I may prepare and probably you will get inspired too!