What's cooking?

It is always an enriching experience seeing an Engineer cook. What makes one an Engineer is a different thing. Not everyone with a piece of paper that says they graduated with a Bachelors in Engineering qualifies to be called an Engineer. They are atmost engineers. Well! I am talking of this breed of 'engineer superiori' a.k.a. Engineers whose lives and the air they breathe reek of engineering. I have the misfortune of having surrounded my life with engineers and Engineers (and very few of the other endangered species).

I meant to talk of an enriching experience, so forgive me my circumlocution. It all began when I was at this friend's place, and believe me when I say he is a rank exhibit of Engineers. With a capital E.

My friend offered to cook for me to showcase his cooking skills. Apparently, he wanted to convince me that he was ready to get married. I usually enjoy cooking and would have offered to help but seeing how much it meant to him, I let him cook and satisfied myself with the role of the observer.

What struck me the most immediately was the preciseness of his cooking. If the recommended ratio of rice and water was 1:2, it was "1:2". Water was measured to an accuracy of plus/minus 5ml. Allowances would have been given to the hardness or softness of the water but for want of reliable data about the variation of quantity of water to the hardness of water (imagine an excel chart with hardness on the x-axis and quantity of water on y-axis with coloured dots throughout). It was better to be on the conservative side and use the standard specifications. 'City of cooking' might be used as a proxy for the hardness value but day-to-day variation of water quality were unaccounted for.

Another important factor affecting the ratio is the quality of rice. Recent literature survey points out, there is a dearth of measures, qualitative or quantitative for the quality of rice as related to water required to cook it. Region-specific and brand-specific measures are at best ad-hoc alternates. At this point, no other factors were known to affect the ratio in a significant manner. These are ascribed for future research work.

Next, he was emboldened by the unqualified success of the 'Rice experiments' to try out a Gulab Jamun mix. And I think it was around this time that it stopped being funny and became sad.

The readiness of sugar syrup was measured by the viscosity of the aforementioned syrup. Loose definitions of "as thick as oil" are severely frowned upon. There are oils belonging to a wide spectrum of viscosities and the precise nature of the oil is paramount to preparing required consistency. Cook for five minutes meant... wait for it... yeah! you guessed it right, cook for 300 seconds. When time reached 290, his hand was in position, on the knob to avoid any time lag. Similarly instructions on the packet require that the dough be fried at 165 degrees. Since there were no reliable temperature measuring devices in the kitchen (since, after about 80 degrees, hand was not a reliable device and returned only a totally inadequate "unbearably hot" response), a small quanity of dough was dropped into the frying pan. If it became golden brown, it meant that the oil was ready. However, maintaining the heat at this precise temperature poses a problem. Keeping the stove ON would, obviously increase the temperature but it is believed that the loss function due to the transfer of energy to the dough would compensate for it. The exact setting of the stove knob has to be determined empirically, depending on the diameter of the dough balls and the number of balls simultaneously fried.

At the end of the day however, I have to admit, the food was delicious.

To all Engineers... you make life livable.