Took up cooking as an artform (hold on, let me try to explain this the way I see it) over the last year and a half or so. When I mean “artform”, I mean this as a quantifiable manner, at least to me. So, while you’re inevitably going to be let down in terms of how I appear to be dramatizing things, I mean this more in the sense that… I think quality’s an intrinsic target for any objective agnostic of domain (since when does someone not seek to be the best at what they’re trying?), which leaves us with (the only expansive opportunity of) quantity’s cross product across means of quality; If you can’t measure for the quality you’re touting, there’s no real conveyance – stating that one’s a “good programmer” by exemplifying for well-written projects is “good”, but the lack of metrics by which it came to be, is as critical as what one’s touting in the first place. If don’t know how “much” you can deploy for “how much” you’re offering (in any artform), it’s not as real as it probably deserves to be.

That being said, I now run the risk of sounding like an absolute retard, I’m aware. But, I’ve got experience in sounding this way and hoping for the best 😉

What I prized most about cooking was being able to do the following:

1. For how many? (people)
3. With how many? (from ingredients to kitchen resource like burners and so on)
4. Over how many? (hours since a given a start)

Being able to cook for “a specific number” of people varies with what you’re doing – I doubt it’d be justifiably possible to make, say, Rasam for just one person in the same quality as you’d be able to make for say, atleast 3. Likewise, there’s an upper limit for this, too (which I find more interesting to negotiate). Now, there’s the “with how many”. Being able to run with what you’ve got in a kitchen is something I look up to a lot. I tend to spatz out if there’s something missing by a single measure or mark, and that’s what made me want to prize being consistent despite despites as this. Then, the final metric which rolls each prerequisite mentioned into a final form – how many hours do I have (to serve (and plate for) said number of people, given kitchen conditions) ?

Over time, I’ve tracked per-cooking-session’s time taken for everything from cutting to caramelizing to plating to table-setting… hoping to obtain a stable running average (which it kinda did towards off late). Personally (maybe pettily), I’ve got time measured for vegetable chopping (measured over sets of 500 gms, crossed over vegetable type and reduction type (diced, etc)). I’m hoping to share these over time. Lastly, there’s this hand-drawn menu I’ve got for my kitchen, which serves both as a memory marker, of sorts (given how guests get to customize their food to plating by pencil markings on the menu (recorded by date and company))… accruing loads of polaroid-shot photographs to day-specific anecdotes across the menu.

In any case, I chose to drip out these writings and images as I have time, instead of hoping for an overnight site rehaul. I’ll start with showcasing for what my friends claim is their favorite making of mine:

French Onion Soup and breakfast