Cooking Tips for Grad Student Life
Sudipta has a humorous post on his misadventures in the kitchen. Suyog replies with his tips on making perfect Grad student dinners. Its really a funny take on bachelor / graduate student life. Eight years, twelve roommates and ten apartments later, I feel glad to be out of this life.
I am a person who enjoys cooking and prefers a clean kitchen. I have had my share of horrors. I have lived in apartments having kitchen sinks overflowing with unwashed utensils. I have shared cooking turns with roommates who make generic two-onion-four-tomatoes-ginger-garlic gravies with a ton of garam masala and food overcooked and cooked still longer.
However, it does not have to be this way. There are some really amazing sites sharing simple to make recipes. Check out Indira’s site for some awesome Indian recipes. Food network has some awesome recipes and important cooking techniques. You don’t have to be a cooking enthusiast to learn some knife skills. A lot of you cook occassionally. Learning the “right” way of cooking will help you (i) reduce the amount of time you spend in cooking and cleaning, (ii) improve the taste, (iii) reduce the chance of injury, and most importantly (iv) make cooking fun. In fact, I found myself cooking more often when under a greater work related stress; cooking acted as a stress reliever for me.
With that, I present to you my first tip: learn recipes that avoid the use of onions and tomatoes. Its sad but true that the general perception of Indian food is about a onion-tomato based curry. All food ends up tasting the same, no matter what ingredient you use. You tend to overcook food and the food loses its own taste. What you taste is the generic gravy. But the biggest reason: these are the most time consuming recipes.
Believe me, whenever you have an onion-tomato based recipe, it takes you far more time to prepare the food. First, you have to chop onions and tomatoes in addition to chopping the veggies or cutting the meats. Next, you have to cook onions until they are golden-brown, followed by cooking tomatoes until you get the gravy. Next, you add veggies and cook them. To speed up the process, you increase the heat. If careful, you end up with overcooked food, if not, you end up with burnt food.
In the next few days, I will try to write recipes for some quick and easy dishes. These include: (i) Koshimbir, (ii) Matki/Moong usal, (iii) Dal and (iv) French beans. All these recipes involve no onions. While some may have a preparation time (eg, you need to soak Matki for a day for them to sprout), the actual cooking time is less than 30 minutes, including the time required for cleaning.