The science of cooking
| Published date | 02 January 2021 |
| Date | 02 January 2021 |
| Publication title | Paisley Daily Express |
"It's also always unexpected," he adds. "You never know what you're going to walk into and that's what I love."
COVID has put a hold on much of that, however. LA's been badly hit and Nik misses the restaurants - and simple things like "going to the store, picking things out, the tactile feeling" of holding a lemon before popping it in a basket.
Like most of us, he's been cooking a lot at home. But as a food writer who cooks at home for a living anyway, he admits during the pandemic he's had to remind himself he "can't make desserts all the time, I need to cook savoury food..."
" Nigella is a fan (she even lent him a no-churn ice cream recipe for his new book), but if you're new to Nik's food, he describes it "adventurous and fun" and "unbound by any shackles or rules. It's more dfined by what flavour is - and what it could be."
" At its core is an awareness of science and the role of science in the kitchen. With his new cookbook,The Flavor Equation, he's "trying to show that science and cooking coexist harmoniously in the kitchen" and that neither side needs be afraid of the other. "I want people to see the kitchen is a lab," he notes. "What you're doing in the kitchen, it's actually science."
Born in Bombay, Nik relocated to the US to study molecular genetics, before deciding food was the one for him. Writing recipes that he shoots and styles himself, his work appears in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and on his blog, A Brown Table.
The Flavor Equation follows his debut cookbook, Season, and sees him using science to extract deliciousness; investigating how perception affects how we eat; and considering the impact of emotion, sight, sound, mouthfeel, aroma and taste on flavour - .
The recipes, meanwhile, "provide experimental basis, and they're fun" says Nik - essentially, they're the practical portion. We learn about fieriness through chicken lollipops, savouriness via stir-fried cabbage, sweetness thanks to masala cheddar cornbread, and bitterness due to a shaved Brussels sprout salad - picking up snippets of science with each page.
It's sensible, useful stuf f too; not complicated formulas your science teacher would have thrown at you.
Beyond the science, when it comes to cooking, Nik thinks an...
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