food – Page 13 – Pertinent Observations

Of Pepsi and Perk

Can be best described by looking at the “objects” that defined our bets at different points in time. Most of those phases seem to have faded away, but I clearly remember two of them – the Pepsi phase and the Perk phase.

The Pepsi era started with their “nothing official about it” campaign during the 1996 World Cup. It was a brilliant campaign, and had all of us 13yearolds hooked. This became our excuse for any little crimes we would commit (like i would hit someone and say “nothing official about it”). I’m not sure if we used it as an excuse for larger crimes, but I suppose we would’ve used it quite regularly as an apology.

Pepsi seemed to have done a good job of identifying itself with this slogan, as soon Pepsi too became our “weapon of choice” when it came to settling bets, and suchlike. This was the period of time when a tiny bottle of Pepsi had just become affordable by saving up on pocket money, and it was put to good use. The unofficial inter-class cricket tournament became “the pepsi cup” – the losing team was supposed to sponsor a bottle of pepsi for each member of the winning team. If my memory serves me right (it usually does), the tournament never got completed.

This phase lasted for almost all of my 9th standard, if I remember right. Maybe it was briefly replaced by other phases, but this was the defining brand of that academic year. All bets were settled with pepsi. Whenever we went out, usually to play cricket, we would refresh ourselves with pepsi. It was the time of life when people had just started courting. Budding couples would go out to have – a Pepsi.

I don’t remember the exact date, but by the time we had moved to 10th, Preity Zinta had struck. With her “thodi si pet pooja”. Perk was the thing now. Considering that a chocolate bar is a much better device for putting blade compared to aerated cola, the number of “couples” also increased. Also, in 10th standard, the number of people going for tuitions increased, and this seemed to cause an increase in the general levels of pocket money.

There were people in my class who would stay in class for lunch break (when everyone else went out to the field) because knew they knew that raiding a certain classmate’s bag would yield them a rich haul of perks (the guy was simultaneously blading some four females, so his stocks always remained high). Then, unlike pepsi, perk could be consumed discreetly. Copious quantities of it were consumed while sitting in class (i used to sit in the first bench so that I could have unhindered view to a certain junior classroom, but that didn’t stop me from eating perk in class).

I remember that on a certain day in August that year, the shop near the school ran out of Perk stocks. It was the day after rakshabandhan, and given the quantity of unsolicited blade that was happening then, the number of rakhis tied had seen a sudden increase. And that had to be reciprocated – with Perk of course. Some rakhis weren’t acknowledged, which meant that this was probably the only day in more than a month when certain people DIDN’T give Perks to certain other people.

The first four of my five “pursuits” were low-cost (three of those were in school; and even the fourth was before I had drawn my first salary, so you can’t blame me). All four of them put together, I don’t think I spent more than a hundred rupees on blade. This included ten rupees that I had spent on a perk for #1. She had dodged me all day, and by the time I gave it to her at the end of the day, it had melted in my pocket.

I think I should incorporate this scene in one of the movies I’m going to make. Boy chases girl all day, trying to give her a Perk. She skilfully dodges him all day, and evades his offer of Perk. And each time she evades him, he is shown putting the perk back in his pocket. Finally at the end of the day, they meet. It’s time to go – in the distance you can see her father on the bike, waiting to pick her up. And he gives her the perk. She opens it. The perk has melted. And then her heart melts. Ok I must stop now.

Bangalore Trip

So I went to Bangalore on Thursday. And returned yesterday afternoon. It was a fairly eventful trip – just that most of the events that took place during the trip were planned. There weren’t too many surprises – either positive or negative, and this lack of volatility meant that it was a good trip overall.

I had ended my last post hoping that my bike would start. And start it did, dutifully. Unfortunately, it was to tell Jai later during the day, when it abruptly stopped somewhere in Gandhibazaar market. It was quite hot and I had to push it around a fair distance to find a garage that was open in order to get it repaired.

The thing with automobile repair shops is that most of them are owned by Muslims, and thus have their weekly holiday on Friday. While it might be convenient in normal times since you can leave your bike for service on a Sunday, it can be death when your bike breaks down on Friday afternoon. I had to go past two or three closed auto repair shops that day before I found a “Sowmya bike point” where my spark plug got replaced.

Two of my three breakfasts were consumed at Darshinis. Actually, on Friday, I had my breakfast in three installments. Saturday was the usual Masala Dosa at the Adigas in Jayanagar 4th block. Dinner on Saturday was at Shiok, the first time I was visiting it at the new location. The food, as usual, was excellent. One extremely under-rated starter at Shiok is Choo Chee Potatoes. I strongly recommend you to try it out the next time. I left the choice of my drink to Madhu Menon, and he recommended some pink stuff for me.

I met Baada, Harithekid and PGK at Shiok. I was meeting PGK for the first time. I was already a bit disoriented when I had arrived at Shiok (my head had gone blank a couple of times earlier that day, leading me to take an auto to Shiok rather than putting bike), and combine that with the pink drink and I think I’ve forgotten what PGK looks like. All I remember is that he too had a pink drink – which was different from mine.

I managed to submit address change requests at most of the places I had intended to. I went to SBI and Karnataka Bank, and extended my fixed deposits – taking advantage of the insanely high prevailing rates. I visited one aunt for dinner on Friday, and another for lunch on Saturday.

The only time during the entire trip that I was consumed by NED was when I went to inspect my house in Bangalore. It was after a gap of almost ten years that I was seeing the house empty. It was at that moment I think – three months after I moved to Gurgaon – that it hit me that I don’t live in Bangalore any more. And that I don’t intend to return for a while. It took a maddening auto drive to Shiok to cure me of this bout of NED.

Friday evening was spent in the cantonment area, though I regret to inform you that I visited neither of MG Road and Brigade road. I met Udupa and Woreshtmax Vishnu for tea at Koshy’s, and on either side of tea, raided the Premier Bookshop. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pics as I had planned. The only picture of Premier that I now have is the one taken with Neha Jain’s wrist that appeared in the ToI on 26th July 2004 (I don’t have a scanned copy; a few hard copies of the clipping are there somewhere in my house in Jayanagar in Bangalore).

I spent all my coupons, and Shamanth’s coupons also. I still have Lakshana’s coupon with me, and I intend to mail it to her. Here is what I bought:

The Human Zoo – Desmond Morris
The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins
An artist and a mathematician (a book about the fictional mathematician Nicholas Bourbaki; forgot the author)
India: A History – John Keay
Longitude
The Stuff of Thought – Steven Pinker

Once again, thanks to all those who recommended books to me. Unfortunately, a large number of those were not available at Premier. i’ll probably order them from Rediff Books once I’ve whittled down my have-and-unread list.

On Cooking

For a little over a month, I’ve been living alone. And since Gurgaon doesn’t offer terrific variety of options in terms of cuisine, I’ve been cooking. Actually, I’ve been having a combination of cuisines every day – breakfast is continental (cereal with milk), lunch is north indian (eat it at the office cafeteria) and dinner at home is south indian. This arrangement will last for a couple of weeks, after which my mother will be joining me here.

I’ve often received queries as to how I can find so much time to cook. Others say that time can be managed, but how I can find the enthu to cook. A fwe others advise me to not bother with this and to employ a cook. The reason I don’t take the last bit of advice is because I’m usually fussy about what I eat. And then, one month of Gurgaon meant that I was bored of North Indian food, and needed something else for dinner (and how many cooks can you find in Gurgaon who can cook something else?). There is one really good South Indian restaurant here, but I can’t keep going there everyday, can I?

What I do in order to get the time and enthu to cook is to employ concepts such as economies of scale and law of conservation of willpower. I’ve talked about the former two posts back, when I gave a possible reason for only South India having a well-defined breakfast cuisine. The latter can be found in a NY Times article written in april which I’ve linked to several times from here, and now don’t have the enthu to find the link.

The basic unit of South Indian cooking is rice. It is extremely easy to make, and requires you to spend not more than a sum total of five minutes in the kitchen. Hence, it can be easily prepared in the evening following a long and tiring day at work. the next most important item, curd, can be purchased off the shelf. I have pickles which I’d ordered from Sri Vidyabharathi Home Products in SringerI (blogged about it but too lazy to put link). However, rice, curd and pickles doesn’t make a complete meal. You also need sambar or rasam to go with that. And making that is a non-trivial process.

This is where economies of scale comes in. The amount of effort to make five litres of Sambar is only marginally greater than the amount of time taken to make 1 litre (you need to cut more vegetables). My fridge works quite well, and Sambar or Rasam, when stored the right way, can last for about two weeks. So you know what is to be done (actually my grad student friends in the US tell me that this is what they’ve been practicing for ages). Whenever you get the enthu to cook (we’ll come to this in a bit), you make enough to last a week. Only thing is that you shouldn’t have qualms about eating stuff that has been inside a fridge (if you are a strict observer of the maDi-mYlge-musare-enjil practices, you may not be willing to do this).

Speaking of enthu, this is where the law of conservation of willpower comes in. Cooking is a fairly mechanical process, and there isn’t any scope for creativity, especially if you are making “vanilla” products such as rice, rasam, sambar and curry. Hence, for someone like me who is more idea-oriented and not execution-oriented, it can consume a lot of willpower. One attempt at cooking can be quite exhausting. So you better make sure you don’t spend all the energy that you get from eating in cooking the next meal.

My policy so far has been that I shouldn’t do any kind of major cooking more than once a day. By major cooking, I talk about processes that take more than 10 minutes of kitchen time (this excludes making rice, heating stuff, etc.) .I broke that rule today, and have ended up totally tired. However, as long as I follow that rule, I know that sometime or the ohter i’m going to feel enthu and go into the kitchen. This wya, I dont’ end up spending too much will power when im in the kitchen. And I get to eat good food every day.

Why Breakfast is an integral part of South Indian cuisine and not in North Indian

I suppose the more perceptive of you would have noticed this – that breakfast forms an integral part of South Indian cuisine, while it is totally absent (apart from parathas) in the North. The more inquisitive of you would have asked yourselves this question, and would have perhaps asked some friends and relatives and acquaintances also. The luckier among you would have found some answers. I think I belong to this category, too. And I hereby share my theory with you.

The fundamental concept here is that South Indian food is predominantly rice-based while North Indian food is roti-based. Yes, you have the accompaniments – sambar and dry curry in the south, and dal and sabji in the north. But let us focus on the staple component here. Let us think back a few generations, when large joint families were the norm. Division of labour meant that most women would spend most of their time cooking.

Now, those of you who have cooked, or even observed someone cooking, would have noticed that the process of cooking rice is “scalable”. On the part of the cook, cooking 10 kilos of rice takes only marginally greater effort compared to cooking 1 kilo of rice. On the other hand, rotis are non-scalable. There are minor economies of scale in terms of time taken to get the stove going, but the amount of effort involved in cooking is directly proportional to the number of rotis to be made. Roti-making is thus non-scalable. Also, observe that roti-making is high-involvement. It requires the undivided attention of a cook. On the other hand, you can just set rice to boil, and go sing a song while it gets cooked.

So the funda here is that given the non-scalable process of making rotis, whenever there were large families involved, North Indian women would have to spend a large part of their time making rotis. The long and tedious process meant that women had little time left over after cooking lunch and dinner. Contrast this with the rice-eating South, where due to the scalable process, women had a lot more free time compared to their Northern counterparts.

Another thing we need to remember here is that rice is more easily digestible than wheat, and hence doesn’t “last as long”. Hence, the rice-eater will need to eat at more regular intervals as compared to the wheat-eater. The wheat-eater can easily survive on two meals a day, but this is not the case for the rice-eater. There is the need for that one extra meal.

So, people, this is why breakfast, which is an integral part of South Indian cuisine, is practically absent in the North. There was demand – rice-eating south indians couldn’t survive on two meals a day. There was also the requirement for variety, for one couldn’t eat the same thing thrice a day. And there was supply – the free time the South Indian woman had, thanks to the scalable process she adopted for making lunch and dinner. This explains why South Indians evolved such an excellent breakfast cuisine, while people in the North eat bread.

Recipe for disaster

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been staying with some relatives. For most of this period, my aunt has been out of town, and so there’s no “natural choice” to cook (my 24-year old female cousin has put total NED wrt cooking, and so has my uncle). So my uncle arranged for a professional cook. Unfortunately she’s been so irregular that on a number of days we’ve had to eat bread for breakfast (if you are a South Indian, bread is the last thing you’ll want to eat for breakfast; there are so many other awesome options).

On the other hand, it’s been bugging me that I’ve been bugging these people too much by staying on in their place for longer than I had initially planned for (i’ll talk about househunting in another post), and so I should do something to “compensate” for this. My first thought was to help out my 20-year old cousin, who is writing CAT later this year. However, he spends most of his time in his hostel, so there isn’t much impact that I can have.

I love cooking. I may not love it as much as Madhu Menon, but I still like to cook. The only other time when I had an opportunity to cook on a consistent basis was when I was in bombay 2 years back. But a floyd job, and a floyd house meant that I put full NED, and ended up just heating MTR ready to eat stuff. And yeah, I like to experiment.

Putting two and two and two together, I volunteered to cook. My uncle was initially sceptical but most of the scepticism vanished after I had made onion rice on Tuesday night. Then, he figured that the cook he had arranged for could come only in the evenings, and since then I’ve assumed responsibility for breakfast. Uppit (upma) is one thing that I’m really good at making, so I proceeded to make that yesterday. And as usual, did a splendid job. Then, this morning I decided to make poha (avalakki). For the first t ime in my life.

I had called up my mother last night and asked for basic directions. Based on this, I set out to work in the kitchen this morning. The bad news is that it didn’t come out too well. The good news is that everything that could possibly go wrong with my cooking went wrong this morning. So hopefully the law of averages will mean that I’ll get back to making excellent food from tomorrow. Here is what was wrong with today’s poha:

The poha was soaked too much. So it was a bit soggy
When I boiled the potato, I didn’t remove all of the water. This ended up making the poha even more soggy
I didn’t put enough oil in the pan when I was boiling the onions. Hence I’d to keep them boiling for too long. A part of the onion got a little burnt. Not that burnt, but it went brown – and looked bad.
There wasn’t enough salt
There wasn’t enough sourness in the poha. I made amends on my plate by adding a bit of lemon juice, but the others refused to heed my advice.
There was no coriander or curry leaves. But this isn’t my fault, since there were no coriander or curry leaves in the house.
There was no coconut – which is so essential to give that sweetness to the poha. Again not my fault – there was no coconut in the house
In a flash of inspiration, I had decided to put tomato. It ended up making the thing even more soggy, but not sour
There was no chana dal or urad dal in the house. Hence I didn’t add it in the seasoning thing. Again not my fault but it took away some taste from the poha.

My uncle decided to ignore all these faults and cribbed that the poha was too spicy. Yes, I’d underestimated the power of the Delhi chilli and put a bit too much, along with the usual quota of the red dry Guntur Chilli. But then, this was the least of the faults of the poha.

Anyways, despite the disaster, my uncle has agreed to my suggestion that I cook pongal for tomorrow’s breakfast. I found some MTR vada mix in the fridge, so probably I’ll make some Vada also. And hopefully all my bad whatever got exhausted in today’s poha and I’ll continue to make awesome food tomorrow onwards.

Buffet versus sit downs

During lunch today, I was talking to my mother about what would be the ideal method of serving food during functions. She has always been a major proponent for sit-down lunches with food served in courses, while I was arguing in favour of buffets.

My mother’s argument is that people won’t feel free serving themselves at a buffet. She argues that we are culturally used to being served, to being pampered by hosts, and hence we would eat better if food was brought to our table rather than if we were to go to get the food. She says that in a buffet, a number of people feel hesitant to ask for a refill and the size of the plate (after all, it needs to fit on one hand) combined with this means that most people won’t eat well.

She mentioned in passing that holding out your plate asking someone to put food on it (enjil/jhoota fundaes mean that in most buffets in India there is someone next to the food who serves you) is seen by many people as being akin to begging, and that their “honour code” means that they don’t want to be seen asking for more.

I have several other arguments in favour of buffets, but what I talked about today was that at a sit down lunch, you need to eat in a hurry. Food is served in batches, and hence it is important that everyone finishes eating in good time; good enough time so that those that couldnt get a seat in this batch aren’t kept waiting for so long. The cooks who are serving the food take responsibility of ensuring that a “batch” finishes eating in good time. Rather, they decide when the batch is supposed to end and the cleaners then come in forcing people to wind up.

My argument is that in sit down lunches, the amount you eat is directly proportional to the speed at which you eat, given that the time for each batch is fixed. This implies that if you actually want to have a good meal, you need to eat in quick time, and hence won’t be able to savour it as well as you could. And if you want to savour every morsel and eat slowly, well, you can be rest assured that you won’t have your fill.

Then there is the trade-off between dishes. In a sit down meal, items are brought in courses, and a particular item is served only when it is “in course”. The way the cooks are organized means that it’s extremely tough for them to break course and bring something that only you wanted. Or go back and forth between different courses. More importantly, when you are eating something, you don’t know what is going to follow. Actually, given certain “conventions” you sometimes have a good idea as to what might follow, but no clue regarding the quality of the thing. This point is elaborated by Ravikiran in this blog post.

So my take on sit down meals is that you sit down and mechanically wolf down whatever the cooks serve you. The only choice you have is to waste some food. You need to predict the quality of an item as it is being brought, and then get yourself served the appropriate quantity. And you also need to keep in mind the several items that haven’t been brought yet, and also predict the quality of those.

In a buffet, there are no such problems. You go once and fill your plate with a bit of everything. Then you know what you like. And go again to get more of that. You can eat at your own pace, for there is no one waiting to grab your seat. You can savour every morsel as you ingest it. You even get to choose the order in which you can have the stuff. The only flip side is that each time you want something you might have to stand in a line. However, if the hosts have estimated the numbers and planned well, this too gets eliminated.

So what is your preference? What do you think makes more sense for a largish gathering? Please leave your comments here.

Why fine dining costs so much in Bangalore

Blame the Bangarappa government of 1993, which took a decision to stop issuing more liquor licenses, a decision that still continues today.? According to

themadman

?(who runs the excellent Shiok, currently temproarily closed), the only way one can start a restaurant serving liquor in Bangalore is to buy a permit from someone who is shutting shop. In other words, the number of establishments serving liquor in Bangalore has remained constant for some 15 years now, despite the population growing by a large amount.

Apart from the fact that the supply of licenses is scarce, a bigger problem is in matching buyers and sellers. It is reported that officials in the excise department double up as a clearing house for these licenses, charging usurious commissions up to the tune of 25% of the transaction value. Adding to this the official costs of licensing, transferring license and other sundry costs, a liquor license is estimated to cost approximately about Rs. 30 lakh.

What this means is that existing establishments can continue to overcharge on liquor without the fear of a new competitor who might threaten to lower the prices in the industry. However, given that liquor consumption, especially at restaurants, is highly elastic, there is only so much by which the liquor can be marked up. Thus, for the thousands of entrepreneurs who have started thousands of fine dining restaurants in the last few years, the only way in which they can recover their liquor investment, and make a profit would be to mark up the prices of food items.

Another thing with fine dining is that restaurants that serve liquor vastly outnumber the ones that don’t. This is mainly because of the clientile of these? restaurants, who usually prefer a drink to go with their food. This market (fine dining) is highly elastic to the availability of liquor – restaurants stand to lose considerable business if they don’t serve liquor. What this means is that restaurants serving liquor are dominant in this market, and they are the price setters. So when you have the high-cost players in the industry being the price setters, it is clear as to why prices are on the higher side.

On the other hand, when it comes to fast food, south indian food and south indian – north indian food (north indian food made in south indian style), the presence of restaurants that serve liquor is negligible, almsot non-existent. Hence, the price setters in this market are low-cost players, which explains why they are very reasonable.

Then, in Chennai, the? government has a monopoly over liquor distribution, which means that restaurants aren’t allowed to sell liquor. This makes it okay for a fine dining restaurant to run without serving liquor, and hence the price setters in the market are not high-cost. This probably explains why fine dining is much more reasonable in Chennai compared to Bangalore.

The only missing piece in this puzzle is the Andhra style restaurants – most of them serve liquor and are yet extremely reasonable. Or is it that they serve only beer which has a separate license that is available more freely? Can someone tell my why this is the case?

And interestingly, Bangarappa, who put a freeze on further liquor licenses, belongs to the Idiga community whose traditional occupation is to brew/extract and distribute liquor.

Carrot Halwa

Last night my mother was making carrot halwa. She called me and asked me to taste it and check if the sugar is right. After I’d done that and given my approval she said “now all that is left is to put in some cardamom and raisins and cashews”.

“Don’t put the cardamom”, I said. “its smell will dominate and spoil the taste”.

(my mother has the habit of putting? bucketloads of cardamom and saffron into any remotely sweet item she makes. the worst case is with the nimbu pani which has very little of the nimbu taste)

“No but if I don’t put cardomom then the halwa will get an extremely carroty smell. Do you want that?”

“But isn’t that the whole point of carrot halwa?”

Finally the compromise is that some halwa will be set aside for me and cardamom will be added to the rest of it.

Hotel Dwaraka

In its earlier sit-down avatar on Bull Temple Road, it was known for doling out copious quantities of chutney in buckets. No sooner had you emptied half the chutney on your plate, a waiter would materialize and pour a bucket of the stuff into your plate. The main item on the menu here was the “khali dosa” (not to be confused with “plain dosa”). No sambar no palya no saagu. Just enormous quantities of chutney.

Continue reading “Hotel Dwaraka”

Death Markets

I wrote this in a mail to the Satin group. This was in response to a mail by Amit Varma talking about priests in Haridwar who conduct the pre-ashes-dunking ceremony, and their fees, and the bargaining, and what could be a decent solution for the problem. I thought it might make sense as a standalone post, so I’m reproducing it here.

Continue reading “Death Markets”