Perzen Patel
@perzen
I want to take you beyond butter chicken. Indian food advocate, small biz owner and story-teller by passion. Communications professional and writer by trade. Mom to two boys with 1,000,000 questions daily 24/7.
Perzen Patel
perzen.substack.com
On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
Harold McGee • 2 highlights
What’s the difference between herbs and spices? Herbs are the leaves and stems of plants. Spices include all the other parts: bark, fruit, buds, seeds, roots. That’s the difference! That’s it!
Hilah Johnson • Learn To Cook: A Down and Dirty Guide to Cooking (For People Who Never Learned How)
Strangely, it never occurred to Western cooks to dry roast and grind together peppercorn, fennel seed, cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon, then throw that spice mix into oil along with mustard seed, garlic, and onions to make a masala, the foundation of any curry.
Abraham Verghese • The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club)
In practice, most cooks keep their flavorings at room temperature. As long as they aren’t regularly exposed to strong light, whole spices keep well for a year, and ground spices for a few months.
Harold McGee • On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
If our nose is blocked by a cold or pinching fingers, it’s hard to tell the difference between an apple and a pear. So most of what we experience as flavor is odor, or aroma. Herbs and spices heighten flavor by adding their characteristic aroma molecules.
Harold McGee • On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
No, my worry is that, you won’t put enough really excellent stuff into your brain. I’m talking about what you might call the “theory of maximum taste.” This theory is based on the idea that exposure to genius has the power to expand your consciousness. If you spend a lot of time with genius, your mind will end up bigger and broader than if you spen
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When the social code is spelled out, when it is turned into a one-night-only game, you don’t have to know certain unsaid things, you don’t have to have been raised in a certain way
Priya Parker • The Art of Gathering
When it comes to dominant and submissive postures, the research participants were more likely to adopt a complementary posture rather than mirror the same posture. Dominance triggered submission, and submission triggered dominance.