Cooking needs an image makeover

Human bias - we show least respect to those whom we love the most.

If there is one art form which we experience daily in our lives, then it is food (cooking). Yes, cooking is an art, making good food is no less than playing mozart on piano, or singing rafi in bathrooms or outside. Yet, we rarely discuss about food. Especially in literature. I have read poems, poetical verses having similes comparing sunrise to beethoven's symphonies or something to Frida Kahlo's paintings etc. But what i have never read is something as .... as delicious as chocolate truffle cake.

It gets worse in Indian cuisine which btw is better any other world's cuisine because simply it has got more variety and each one is a 5.0 out of 5.0. We have bollywood, thousands of songs are written every year, even then you can hear comparing eyes of a lover with the crescent moon, yet the moment i write, my love is as deep as the chashni in jalebi, it becomes not only hilarious but bad.

Food - the art form which we all grew up with, which we savor almost everyday, gets the least respect from us. One reason i think is that we take good food to be granted. This is a totally bad assumption as food, like any other art form, requires perfection and it is not easy to be perfect. How many times have you eaten in a restaurant and didn't like the food? Yes, there has been countless such experiences but we over look this fact.

I think cooking needs a good PR who can transform its image. In school, we have music classes, sports periods, arts periods etc but there was never a cooking periods. Why? I agree that it does not make perfect sense to teach cooking. But the least we can do is atleast acknowledge this art form and start describing it in an aesthetic fashion.

Before i sign off, i would like to say this. Cooking is one of the best stress busters out there. And the scope of experimentation is enormous. I do not remember who but some artist said this - "Every time i perform a raag, i do it differently and i learn something about it. It is impossible to have two same renditions.". This is applicable to cooking as well and we should be lucky that we can also participate in this blissful practice everyday.

And here are some of my favorite recipes (In case you ever invite me for dinner)
Any recipe having lots of spinach or methi, chinese fried rice, kadhai paneer, baigan bhartha, bharwa shimla mirch, any stuffed parantha, paneer bhurji....well on more thoughts, the list is going to be endless.