As we’ve discussed already, we eat with our eyes first. The appearance of a dish can greatly influence our appetite, and colour plays a particularly important role. This week, let us explore the role of colour in food, ranging from the aesthetic to the psychological. Let’s start with the obvious. Just as a beautiful garden,…
Art on a Plate
Food and the Senses (Part 4) As the saying goes, we eat with our eyes first. Sight is one of the first senses to be engaged when we are presented with a plate of food and hence plays a very vital role in our decision of whether or not to engage the other senses at…
Going Bananas
After reading my article on Nose to Tail eating a couple of weeks back, one of my friends said “I wish you had written a little bit more about the veggies. Also, I can’t believe you missed the banana. There is no better example of nose to tail cooking in the vegetarian world than the…
Undercover Veggies
“Eat your veggies or you can’t have dessert”, might be one of the most common threats made at the dinner table. Indeed, dessert is everything that vegetables are not: it is sweet, it is delicious, and it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside; while veggies, especially if made poorly, tend to be bland,…
Nose to Tail, Root to Stem
“If you’re going to kill the animal it seems only polite to use the whole thing”, says Fergus Henderson in his award winning 1999 book “Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking”. It deals with the philosophy of using the whole animal and not just the prime cuts. In today’s conscious society, aimed…
The Magic of Kosha Mangsho
Kosha mangsho is one of those great Bengali inventions, that special occasion dish we all look forward to, especially during Pujo. It is one of my absolute favourite things to eat. A kosha mangsho, if made well, will have tender, melt-in-the-mouth meat with a rich, flavourful sauce clinging to it. Eating a good kosha mangsho…
Aroma Therapy
Food and the Senses (Part 3) So far in our FATS series, we have examined the five basic tastes. But when you taste any food, say a slice of cheese or a piece of dark chocolate, it is not just the taste buds in your mouth that give you the full experience. In fact, taste…
Not Too Sweet (Part 2)
The sweet side of Miso and Wasabi In Part 1 of this two-part series, we looked at two desserts and saw how sourness and bitterness can elevate a dessert. This week, we will examine two other desserts which emphasize the role of other tastes in balancing out the sweetness in a dessert. Salt plays a…
Not Too Sweet (Part 1)
Sugar, Lime and Bitters Consider a gulab jamun, that magical orb of khoya or milk solids fried in hot oil and dunked in a sugar syrup. It has a thin crust and a rich, luscious interior. You could elevate it by flavouring the syrup with saffron, rosewater or cardamom; or by stuffing it with dry…
Sour, Bitter and More!
Food and the Senses (Part 2) Last time in our FATS series, we looked at how salt and sugar affect our eating experience. In case you missed it, check out part 1 first . With that sorted, it’s now time to move on and deal with the other three tastes, starting with sour. On the…
The Gourmet Glutton 