The Art of Cooking for Bachelors - I

Over the last few years, I've discovered many ways of cooking food that is nutritious, healthy and fast (or easy) to cook.

But please remember "faster, easier, better, choose any two". You can't have your cake and eat it too.

The First Principle of cooking:

"Cook in a pressure cooker wherever possible."

Here's why.

1. It cooks faster.
2. Retains aroma.
3. The food is more nutritious (usually) than its counterpart cooked in open utensils.

The Tao of Pressure Cooking:
1. When trying to cook food, let it heat up till the boiling point without the whistle on the vent. Put the whistle on the vent when the steam just starts to escape. (This creates an environment inside of water vapor, instead of air, and it cooks faster coz water vapor has a greater specific heat)
2. Most food items don't require 3-4 whistles. Heat only upto the point that the whistle might blow up. Switch it off, and let it cool down on its own. The steam trapped inside would cook the food over the next 10-12 minutes.

The Zen of seasoning:
1. Do not prepare seasoning after boiling lentils, and add to it. Do it at the time of boiling. Fry ingredients like jeera, chopped onions and diced tomatoes in the pressure cooker, then add the bulk of lentils, water and bring to boil. Add the spices, stir well, and close the lid.

In the "conventional" cooking, they boil lentils separately, and then add seasoning to it later. They create the seasoning by heating together ingredients like oil, jeera (cumin seeds), chopped onion, some spices and then add this to the boiled lentils later. They love the aroma this generates. However, the aroma in spices comes from "essential oils", which vaporize at relatively lower temperatures. When you expose them to an open environment and heat them, you have effectively vaporized the oils before adding the seasoning to the lentils. The place for the aroma is the food, not the kitchen.

This is a Control-A Control-C Control-V of what I posted for my friend Somik at http colon slash slash www dot stanford dot edu slash tilde somik slash bachelorCooking dot html.

The Tapes !!

With all this brouhaha over the Salman-Ash tapes, there are some things that hit me in between the eyes:

1. Ash knew that their conversation was tapped, and warned Salman against "spilling beans" . Does this means she knew about Salman's undeworld links? If she did, and she did not disclose this to the police, is this not betrayal of the country? In all cases, she did come to know of this after Salman told her. Should she not have reported it then? I am not sure about India, but in US, its the duty of anyone to report a crime, failing which is a culpable crime.

2. Even now Ash is maintaining a "dignified" silence. Is this not aiding and abetting the "crime"?

3. If Ash could listen to the words used in the conversation, it just goes on to show that the freedom of the women in India is a sham and Indian women still listen to horrible abuses from men without complaining. If someone who represents the next generation of India women is like this, just go on to think about the common populace.

4. With the veracity of the tapes still in question, the Mumbai film industry is trooping in to support Salman. What the heck? If the tapes are true, and if Salman is indeed guilty, then these people who earn millions from the Indian junta are supporting a criminal and a traiter. This makes them traiters themselves. Why should we watch their movies? Why should we support them?

Of course Salman is a brat, a criminal, but to be fair to him, he should not be tried in a people's court. Let the facts come out in public. Let there be a proper investigation. Let him be tried in a court of law. Do not proclaim him guilty untill proved innocent.

The London Blasts

Heard about the London blasts today. It was the terrorists' way of saying "it ain't over yet", in response to the Coalition's "you asked for it". Indeed a pretty tragic incident by Western standards. In India, we go through incidents like these pretty routinely.

Just surfing the internet today about the blasts, and saw some posts in indiatimes blog, where people say if this is religion, I think there should be no religion.

I just wanted to say, I couldn't disagree more.

Just because some Physicist made an atomic bomb doesn't mean there should be no Physics !! I see the generation-X making more comments like these. Partly because they don't know what religion teaches; and partly because they couldn't care less.

I find the basic idea that "absence of religion would mean people would not have reasons to kill each" other fairly ridiculous. This also assumes that only people of different religions kill each other. Well, I don't have statistics (but the statistically inclined can go ahead and do the number crunching) but just see the proportion of people of one religion killed by people of another religion (and that too because of religious hatred), in the total number of people killed.

In a world without religion, a human being is just another animal. What then, prevents someone from killing another human being for revenge, robbing, hatred, or even just pleasure as long as the culprit doesn't get caught?

My religion on the other hand tells me that God watches everything. That every human embodies God. That the good you do gets you Good Karma and the bad you do gets you Bad Karma. That no one can escape from the judgement handed out when they die. That even if someone has wronged you, you don't have to seek revenge, because God is the saviour of the poor and the week, and the wrongdoer would be punished by the God.

Are these not extremely beautiful thoughts? Even if there was no God, they are extremely effective religious chain of thoughts that keep people's beastly inclinations in check, and contribute to a non violent society?

How can someone then make such utterly irresponsible statements that they wish there were no religion? Most possibly they don't know what religion means.

Contrary to popular beliefs, the terrorism that exists today is not all religious terrorism. Kashmir is religious, but ULFA is not. Veerappan was not. MCC is not. Naxalite terrorism is not. Even the LTTE's brand of terror wasn't religious.

Any form or brand of terrorism or extremism requires some fundamentals, and the most important of them all is an idea of a group - something that its members can identify with. Religion is but only one of these identities. Region (like Jharkhand, Nagaland, Gorkhaland, Khalistan), Language (Tamil for LTTE), economic strata (Ranbir Sena, MCC, Naxalites) or even a political alignment (the MCC) can give an identity to a terrorist or extremist group.

If you ask me, whats the point I am trying to make here. My answer is I am not trying to make a point here. I am trying to tell that the point you are trying to make isnt exactly true. Because there's more to it than meets the eye.

Of course, coming to the issue of Islamic terrorism, it IS very much real. It just cannot be wished away. I speak from experience, as happened in India, with Sikhs - when people started to equate every sikh with terrorism, and Punjabis and Sikhs were seen with suspiscion. Unless the so-called moderate Muslims actively come forward and denounce the Islamic terrorists' activities, and distance themselves actively and publicly from the extremists, they are likely to be clubbed together with the extremists, and suffer the same fate as their other not-so-tolerant religionmen. It is time for the muslim world to realize that by allowing a bunch of idiots to hijack their religion, they're going to commit a blunder.

And then they'd be only themselves to blame.

Political stuntsmanship over destruction

It was reported recently that Ms Gandhi undertook a 1-day tour of Gujarat and slammed the government over flood relief.

Ms Gandhi, in all her political stuntmanship, does a great disservice to the people of Gujarat by demoralizing the state government machinery, and distracting the relief and aid being provided to the people in this hour of need.

Ms Gandhi realizes well that in a nation of poor people she would get votes by pretending to espouse the cause of the poor, as the Left have done for decades. And of course the result is for all to see.

It is impossible for Ms Gandhi not to know the state of the state. As such, she didnt need to do an arial survey just to be able to make trivial complaints about doles not being paid promptly at some places, and 3/4th of the state being under water.

Had she not wasted the resources on the airplane and the press conference, they could have been used for some more food packets dropping sorties.

It should also be investigated if only as an MP and a non-constitutional post of leader of the opposition was she entitled to use air force airplane.