Tsampa, puffed ragi, agar agar: Swetha Sivakumar on tinkering with new ingredients

How adventurous are you within the kitchen? Do you end up shopping for an ingredient you’ve by no means used, just because a recipe for it caught your eye? PREMIUM How unusual is simply too unusual? That’s a subjective query. Agar-agar, as an example, can be utilized to make these, errr…, fascinating fruit jello muffins. (Pixabay) Do you could have puffed ragi or agar agar strips tucked away within the pantry; does it secretly trouble you that you just may by no means use them? Let’s be sincere: not each ingredient goes to be successful.Take tsampa. This roasted-barley flour is a staple in Tibetan delicacies. I paid good cash for some and tried utilizing it a few occasions. Now it simply sits there. I can’t fairly determine find out how to incorporate it into my cooking. I’ve learnt to just accept that’s okay. For each tsampa, there’s a miso or tahini or maple syrup that I hadn’t even heard of rising up, and is now one thing I cook dinner with each week. For my mother’s technology, soy sauce might have been as unfamiliar as tsampa is to me. That’s how pantries evolve… the unique turning into the on a regular basis, in small, curious steps. For the house cook dinner, a really actual problem at present is figuring out which substances, from the huge listing at our disposal, can really enrich their meals. The subsequent large step is discovering methods to assist the household embrace new tastes and textures. A technique to do that is to contain everybody within the grocery buying. My youthful daughter, as an example, is a fan of cooking exhibits and baking experiments and I observed on latest excursions that she had grow to be actually interested by cheese. I sometimes persist with paneer, Swiss and cheddar. However the final time we went grocery-shopping collectively, we explored the cheese part of a elaborate retailer. I discovered it overwhelming at first, however the individual behind the counter was type, and beneficiant with samples. She defined textures and flavour profiles to us. We took a number of cheeses residence and didn’t find yourself loving each wedge, however it was a place to begin. What made the expertise actually treasured was the reminiscence of my daughter and me, standing in our kitchen with a cheese plate, pretending to be connoisseurs. We gave dramatic suggestions and introduced pretend rankings to an imaginary viewers. We nibbled and giggled and had a really memorable afternoon. What I’m attempting to say is, this can be a lengthy recreation. It takes time to determine find out how to develop one’s listing of favorite substances. The excellent news is it’s yet one more factor to carry the household collectively over, and it doesn’t have to interrupt the financial institution. For instance, I now know that fermented chilli pastes equivalent to gochujang and harissa could be relied upon to carry a posh, umami-rich flavour to easy starches equivalent to rice and noodles. I’ve discovered that yellow vatana makes for wonderful dal vadas (a lesson I learnt once I realised, mid-cook, that I had run out of chana dal). It’s a explicit thrill studying from one’s errors and wins, moderately than from a cookbook. I like to consider it as working experiments in my very own lab, and constructing a private library of tastes and textures. So go forward, purchase that ingredient you’ve by no means cooked with. You’re not losing time. You’re honing a ability. In my guide, that’s a ardour price pursuing. (To succeed in Swetha Sivakumar with questions or suggestions, electronic mail upgrademyfood@gmail.com)