From adapting to the sous vide cooking technique to using exotic ingredients in our cooking, chef Jaideep Mukherjee deconstructs the details to understand the survival time of everything new in culinary art
Now this one really got me thinking! Thinking and revisiting old premises and prejudices that I have made my own over the years I have been cooking as a pro!
Grass fed animals, organic oats, desi ghee, fox nuts or makhana, amaranth, quinoa… and a dozen other ingredients are trending today! It’s fashionable to sport them on menus, even more so to cook with them and eat them! Much new about themIJ I don’t think so! TrendyIJ Are you kidding meIJ My grand-mum cooked with them; knowing full well they were great for body and soul! We’ve just lost reference to context today and also our connection with eons of heritage as far as what we eat is concerned! Were we to go back to our roots here, they would suddenly appear very trendy!
A trend, by the very nature of the word or its significance today, is something that changes almost instantly as it gets up there… But is it sustainableIJ I don’t think so! Wouldn’t be half as much fun if it was!
The excitement is in humming new tunes and whistling a different melody every now and then! It’s much like traveling to new shores! The endless adventures and experiences along the way suffice to make it memorable! Experiences in food and the opportunities that come along with every new product - trending or headed there, are exactly the same!
Cocktails in ice spheres, gels that went up in smoke, orbs that looked like yolk but were mango and umpteen such creations adorned menus of happening restaurants worldwide. Alginates, gums, lecithin and agar decked up every chef’s pantry till a few years back. If you ask my opinion, Few people did it well, many more just rode the bandwagon! Chemically and physically restructured food was here to stay, said the bloggers and food media. Fortunately however the world let those olive oil pearls and citrus foams slip away, kissed the raita spheres and liquid nitrogen goodbye.
Sous vide came in all with all guns blazing shortly thereafter… a brilliant way to cook food, completely scientific, treated every molecule with the respect it deserved, the floodgates opened and every kitchen worth its smoked Himalayan salt had a circulator buzzing!
Again some chefs did it really well and cooked meats and veggies to amazing levels of tenderness, some chefs just loved the way ‘sous vide’ sounded and had to add it to menus… the procedure is a trend no more, though many of us swear by it! Pacojets, smoke guns, thermomixes and dehydrators — I have loved them all, very dearly! But somehow I have not had the heart to replace most of them when they died in my kitchens a few years later. The old fashioned pot and pan still holds centre stage! I have loved every minute of the trendy ride though!
Black seeds and bentonite clay — was something that I read about this morning. Poke pronounced ‘poke ay’ and a resurgence of Jewish food in world cuisine was huge a few weeks back! Trends of the season, you may askIJ Completely! Are they here to stayIJ No, and thankfully so!
A happy, crazy, fun-filled joy ride through cultures and cuisines, culinary adventures at every turn… now that’s what ought to become a trend and stay for good!
the author is the executive chef of Indigo Deli