flavour – Pertinent Observations

Coffee Cultures

I realize each place has its own coffee culture. And coffee culture varies remarkably across short geographical distances.

America likes it large and watery. Even our office coffee machine here describes “americano” as “espresso with hot water”. And the less I say about the “traditional brewed American coffee” the better. Few people make coffee worse than these guys.

Oh and they like it large. The smallest size on the Starbucks menu is “tall”, though there is a “short” option available if you ask for it. I don’t know how often Americans like their coffee.

Turks like it really thick and strong, and in small quantities. It seems like they don’t like to filter their coffee. But whattan awesome coffee it is! Full in flavour, and the thickness means the taste lingers for a really long time.

Probably the best coffee I’ve had on this trip was at an Ethiopian restaurant (I’m thinking of going back there tonight) and it is not surprising since the coffee plant was first tamed there. Again it is strong and hot, and I was given the option of having it with a little milk and sugar. It is filtered I think, for there was little residue in the cup after I’d emptied it.

Madras likes it strong, with sugar and rich creamy milk (hence the “degree”). And Madras likes it large. I’m told most Madrasis have coffee just twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. The quality of milk, though, means that the Madrasi coffee looks light, though it’s quite strong.

I don’t remember too much about coffee in London, but I do remember that Costa’s there served fairly awesome coffee. Again it was all espresso based, which probably implied the quality. Though I do remember cribbing (maybe on this blog) about it. I remember drinking tea in my office there because I found the coffee not strong enough.

Bangalore likes it hot, strong, small and frequent. If I go to any of my father’s relatives’ houses, I usually have at least three coffees before I leave. All small shots. With a little milk and sugar.

At home, nowadays, I’ve been using a percolator I’d bought in Cafe Coffee Day to make my coffee (talking in singular since the wife thinks I make fairly horrible coffee). The problem with the thing though is that it keeps toppling over and I’ve to stand there holding it on the stove while the coffee brews. Any pointers as to where I can get better and more stable percolators will be appreciated.

I don’t know why but today as I was returning to my desk with half a glass of espresso and steamed milk (I’ve figurd out how to structure coffee in this office machine) I was thinking of Baba Budan. About how his efforts have made it possible for us in South India to enjoy this wonderful drink.

Jai Dattatreya.

Joint Blogging

So the more perceptive of you would have noticed a major change in this blog overthe last couple of weeks. It has now become a multi-author blog with my wife Pinky joining me here.

The chief motivation for this is feedback I received over the last one year that my blog had become boring and one-dimensional. Considering that I’ve been going through some sort of a mental block over the last few months, and am unable to produce posts with the same quality and frequencyas i used to earlier, I decided that the best way to spice up this blog was to bring in a co-blogger.

Around the same time, I got married to Pinky, who is herself a blogger, so it was natural to bring her in. And in the last couple of weeks, since I added her as an author, she has responded spectacularly, producing posts (albeit of a different flavour compared to what I produce, of course) with significnatly better regularity and quality compared to me.

So I just want to make it clear that the decision to make this blog a joint one is a conscious and well-thought out one, and not one that has been made due to marital compulsions or anything. Yes, we have markedly different writing styles, so you need not even look up or down to check the author’s name at the bottom of the post or the top of the RSS feed.

This decision to make this blog a multi-author blog is irreversible (yeah, I won’t rule out future expansion, if we are to get suitable co-bloggers; but that won’t happen for a while). So those of you who are trying to debate about the quality changes in the blog because of this change (in the comments section) are just wasting your time. And if you think that the quality is dropping for whatever reason, there is the “unsubscribe” button that your RSS feed aggregator offers you.

I’m working on producing author-specific RSS feeds, so that might allow people to selectively subscribe to posts. Essentially we are looking for a way by which our posts will appear on our respective facebook pages, rather than on everything appearing in mine. If anyone knows how to do that for a wordpress.org blog, plis to be letting us know.

Fighterization of food

One of the topics that I’d introduced on my blog not so long ago was “fighterization“. The funda was basically about how professions that are inherently stud are “fighterzied” so that a larger number of people can participate in it, and a larger number of people can be served. In the original post, I had written about how strategy consulting has completely changed based on fighterization.

After that, I pointed out about how processes are set – my hypothesis being that the “process” is something that some stud would have followed, and which some people liked because of which it became a process. And more recently, I wrote about the fighterization of Carnatic music, which is an exception to the general rule. Classical music has not been fighterized so as to enable more people to participate, or to serve a larger market. It has naturally evolved this way.

And even more recently, I had talked about how “stud instructions” (which are looser, and more ‘principles based’) are inherently different from “fighter instructions” (which are basically a set of rules). Ravi, in a comment on Mohit‘s google reader shared items, said it’s like rule-based versus principles-based regulation.

Today I was reading this Vir Sanghvi piece on Lucknowi cuisine, which among other things talks about the fact that it is pulao that is made in Lucknow, and now biryani; and about the general declining standards at the Taj Lucknow. However, the part that caught my eye, which has resulted in this post with an ultra-long introduction was this statement:

The secret of good Lucknowi cooking, he said, is not the recipe. It is the hand. A chef has to know when to add what and depending on the water, the quality of the meat etc, it’s never exactly the same process. A great chef will have the confidence to improvise and to extract the maximum flavour from the ingredients.

This basically states that high-end cooking is basically a stud process. That the top chefs are studs, and can adapt their cooking and methods and styles to the ingredients and the atmosphere in order to churn out the best possible product.You might notice that most good cooks are this way. There is some bit of randomness or flexibility in the process that allows them to give out a superior product. And a possible reason why they may not be willing to give out their recipes even if they are not worried about their copyright is that the process of cooking is a stud process, and is hence not easily explained.

Publishing recipes is the attempt at fighterization of cooking. Each step is laid down in stone. Each ingredient needs to be exactly measured (apart from salt which is usually “to taste”). Each part of the process needs to be followed properly in the correct order. And if you do everything perfectly, you will get the perfect standardized product.

Confession time. I’ve been in Gurgaon for 8 months and have yet to go to Old Delhi to eat (maybe I should make amends this saturday. if you want to join me, or in fact lead me, leave a comment). The only choley-bhature that I’ve had has been at Haldiram’s. And however well they attempt to make it, all they can churn out is the standardized “perfect” product. The “magic” that is supposed to be there in the food of Old Delhi is nowhere to be seen.

Taking an example close to home, my mother’s cooking can be broadly classified into two. One is the stuff that she has learnt from watching her mother and sisters cook. And she is great at making all of these – Bisibelebhath and masala dosa being her trademark dishes (most guests usually ask her to make one of these whenever we invite them home for a meal). She has learnt to make these things by watching. By trying and erring. And putting her personal touch to it. And she makes them really well.

On the other hand, there are these things that she makes by looking at recipes published in Women’s Era. Usually she messes them up. When she doesn’t, it’s standardized fare. She has learnt to cook them by a fighter process. Though I must mention that the closer the “special dish” is to traditional Kannadiga cooking (which she specializes in), the better it turns out.

Another example close to home. My own cooking. Certain things I’ve learnt to make by watching my mother cook. Certain other things I’ve learnt from this cookbook that my parents wrote for me before I went to England four years ago. And the quality of the stuff that I make, the taste in either case, etc. is markedly different.

So much about food. Coming to work, my day job involves fighterization too. Stock trading is supposed to be a stud process. And by trying to implement algorithmic trading, my company is trying to fighterize it. The company is not willing to take any half-measures in fighterization, so it is recruiting the ultimate fighter of ’em all – the computer – and teaching it to trade.

Preliminary reading on studs and fighters theory:

Studs and Fighters

Extending the studs and fighters theory