Eat, Drink, Man, Woman

Perhaps the one thing that separates man from immortality is food. Well, that and air, and a few other vital necessities. After all, if one is immortal, food is no longer necessary, right?

But so long as people need food to survive, there's a sense that we might as well make this a pleasurable experience. Historically, women seem to do all the cooking. This doesn't prevent guys from cooking, and certainly great chefs of the world tend to be men, at least, when cooking moves beyond the perfunctory need to simple feed one's family, to an art form meant to satisfy kings.

I've been pondering a few things lately. One is arranged marriages. The first reaction for many Americans to arranged marriages is the shock that you'd let anyone, let alone your parents, decide who you should marry. Within traditional cultures, having your parents decide makes the most sense, however. They raised you, they tried to do what's best for you. Who else would even do a good a job as your own parents? One of the commandments say "Honor thy mother and thy father".

Still, many an American teen finds that they argue with their parents, who they feel have an old time view of the world. And what criteria would they have to pick a wife or a husband.

Indeed, that's an interesting question. To answer it, let's ask what criteria people normally have when they are trying to find someone to marry, or even minimally, to date. Usually, one highly desirable quality is attractiveness. It's perhaps no surprise that celebrities, whether they be athletes or actors, seem to pick women that are more noted for their beauty, almost to declare to the public at large, that they've acquired someone stunning. This can be determined by a simple glance.

What if they weren't so attractive? Perhaps a bit heavy-set? But they had a, you know, great personality (when anyone says "great personality", the implication is the person is borderline ugly--after all, why not get great personality, and attractiveness).

And those basic qualities, attractiveness and personality pretty much win out over a lot of things. Sure, you might prefer intellectual compatibility, and often that happens just because you are likely to meet people of similar backgrounds in whatever station of life you're in. But it doesn't have to be a necessity. Indeed, I find people who date where, say, the guy knows a ton about some subject, and his SO knows almost nothing of that subject. It doesn't seem to affect the relationship.

Let's now move this decision making to parents. What might they decide? For a parent of a son, it might be compatibility. Did she study what he studied? If he's an engineer, it might make sense that she is one too. Similar religion? Similar income level? Can she cook? Will she be nice to my son?

Indeed, if parents make the decision, than issues of politeness become far more important, and parents begin to place a premium on politeness for their kids. After all, if the kid is short-tempered, likes to argue, likes to criticize, this will make them far less attractive as mates (especially if women have such traits). Women must, therefore, bear the burden of modesty, yet show grace.

But what parent would want their son to marry a woman that couldn't cook? Surely, cooking must be a minimum requirement!

Throughout the 50s and 60s, with women gaining more independence, being able to take jobs beyond secretary and teacher and nurse, another side effect was that women found themselves working 9-5, and at the end of the day, feeling fatigued, having to cook for their husbands after the daily job.

There was an industry set up to take care of these issues for women, from those who made frozen dinners, to canned foods, to fast food restaurants. And women began to embrace these ideas. It wasn't so important for women to know how to cook, and so many women simply didn't learn. In the meanwhile, as women gained some equality, this meant a larger rate of divorce, and a generation of men scared to get married, and also men who felt it was fine for a guy who knew how to cook.

All that to get to point I wanted to make, and that was my journey to cooking food.

A few weeks ago, when I was at my parents place, I watched a segment off a DVD of America's Test Kitchen. The episode was about two curry traditions: India and Thailand. I decided that the Indian curry wasn't so hard to make, at least, the way they showed it.

The basic recipe went something like this. Cut up some onions in slivers. Fry until brown. Add a ginger-garlic paste by using ginger and garlic in a mini food processor, then add that to the onions, add spices (a cumin, coriander, turmeric, salt mix), add yogurt, add water, and the meat (chicken, shrimp, or beef) and cook. Add cilantro.

When I tried this, the curry was pretty watery. So I got some advice to do things in a different order. Instead of simply creating onion slivers and cooking til brown, mince the onions very fine so it can be the thickener for the curry.

I took this one step further, because I'm lazy. I used a food processor to chop this to a paste as well.

So the new basic recipe I have is to create a garlic-ginger-chili pepper paste by using a food processor (next time, I'll use less water so this paste is thicker). Fry this up, then create an onion paste, and add that to fry up. After five minutes, add spices, then either yogurt or tomatoes (or both), and eventually add the meat to cook.

That's basically it.

The difference between what I did (based on a coworker's advice) was to first, move the frying of the garlic and ginger and chili peppers earlier on. The reason given was to make the garlic taste less strong by frying it longer. A second key was to make an onion paste. Traditionally, one would mince this up by hand into small bits, but it's so much quicker to use a food processor. I suppose you could still keep some parts of the onion as sliver so you can see it in the final result. I've yet to do this.

The only issue after that is what kind of spices to use. Minimally, the spices are cumin, coriander, turmeric, and maybe cayenne pepper (and salt, of course). Certainly, you can add up to another dozen different spices or herbs. You can get away with about 4-5 spices if you want your life simple.

I figure that's a reasonably good base to start learning Indian cooking.

Now, this isn't spectacularly quick, but it's probably quick by Indian standards. I can have something basically ready in 45 minutes. To be fair, a quick Indian dish would take that long too, but I'd say it take closer to an hour and a half to make proper dishes.

Hopefully, I can take that, and make some other variations.