10 Things You Definitely Did Not Know About Me

The coffee I drink every morning is called 'Monsoon Malabar'. It is sourced from my home state of Kerala about 8000 miles away from where I currently live.

I spray cologne before going to bed just because I like smelling good.


I buy a bottle of coke before heading into a movie theater. I can never justify paying $5 for soda. I do however buy the $6 popcorn.


It has taken 12 alarms to wake me up every morning ever since my mom stopped giving me wake up calls.


I've never asked a girl on a date.



I hide $20 bills in different places in my wallet just in case I run out of money.


My wardrobe has hardly changed in over 4 years.


At one point in my life, I was so delusional that I thought I was god.


I am yet to meet someone who's read less books than I have. I will however write my own book some day.

Yet Another Blog?

Here's the link to my latest blog, Memoirs of a Cook.

http://memoirsofacook.blogspot.com/

The Passing of a Cherished Friend

As I sit in my room distanced from my hometown half way across the world by over 8000 miles, I feel eternally helpless. One of Cochin’s best caterers and the pioneer of stand-alone restaurants in the city is no more. But this man was more than just all that. He was warm, ever-jovial, kind-hearted and above all, a beloved friend.
This man has influenced me in a plethora of ways. He trusted in me at the risk of his own business, and let me experiment and stray away from the norms of running an event, let alone a food festival. He gave me a chance to express myself in my own style, no questions asked. He treated me like a dear friend, and shared with me his many experiences. We shared a common love for good food and a passion to feed. I clearly remember the several conversations about food and culture and politics and the hospitality industry that we’ve shared over delicious lattés at his cute landmark of a café. He was a sincere man – honest to himself. He’s had many hardships both in his personal life and his career, but he stuck through it all, brave and perseverant. He set a quiet example during his time on earth that life may take several unexpected twists and turns which we have little or no control over, but it doesn’t decide for you how to live – you do. In the midst of all that was going on around him, he lived his to the fullest.
As many do every day, I cannot help but wonder why this gem of a man was chosen amongst us. It’s one of those times when you think – and surprise yourself at your own absurd intellect – why the nicer amongst us have to leave first. Why is it that those who’ve done so much for others and been a constant source of support for everyone around are called to the supper before the rest of us? Is karma after all a big hoax?
I have never before had to face up to the death of someone I even vaguely know, and I knew it would be hard when it finally happened. And it truly is. But this I’m grateful for this; I’m grateful that he has left us all with memories of his kindness and generosity – something that is more eternal than life itself. I last saw him towards the end of December 2008 when I had gone over to say goodbye before I left for the US again. Our meeting was brief that time but he wished me the best of luck and hugged me goodbye. May this great soul rest in peace.

I Had Fun at the Cafe Wha?

Finding the right bar or club to go and have a great time is seemingly difficult, even in New York City. For example, there's the typical college student's bar filled with people constantly falling and spilling drinks all night and loud mundane music playing in the foreground. There's also the classy expensive bar where one is expected to maintain an illogical level of decorum within the constraints specified. Not to forget the gentleman's bar which might sound appealing to “gentlemen” but is definitely not for an Indian born-and-raised with a shallow wallet to spare. Then there's the occasional miracle pub you come across. A place with some sort of a character; one where people actually seem to be having a great time. I decided that I had to find myself one such place built around and for the appreciation of good music.

To those of you who know the history behind Cafe Wha?, the place is more than just a great party spot; it is a legendary iconic establishment. Most 60s rock music aficionados all over the world know the real relevance of this New York City club. Being a hardcore classic rock fan myself and a temporary resident of Manhattan, I made my way there to experience it first hand.

Located in the heart of Greenwich Village in Manhattan just a couple of blocks away from Washington Square Park, Cafe Wha? at first glance seems not too different from other clubs in its NYU neighborhood. Music enthusiasts however have been frequenting this institution of sorts ever since the 1950s when it started out as a venue for live bands to perform. Today, this cult of a club has three different acts performing during the course of the week with occasional comedians entertaining the early birds.

Perhaps the most notable claim to fame for Cafe Wha? is that it was the original stomping ground for several very famous musicians and comedians especially during the revolutionary Beatnik era of the 1960s. Legendary performers like Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Kool and the Gang and Bruce Springsteen all began their careers here. So did outstanding comedians including Woody Allen, Joan Rivers, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor. Cafe Wha? was also frequented by Allen Ginsberg, the famous American poet and activist who fought for gay rights and legalization of marijuana.

Having grown up with an addiction to great music, I had always wondered whether such a place really existed. I eventually made my way to Cafe Wha? one Friday night with tremendous zeal and enthusiasm over the little I'd researched and read about it. A flight of stairs down led me to the arena where history was written and continues to be. Weekend nights usually have The Cafe Wha? Band performing and it got pretty crowded by the time the band started playing. I was crammed into my table with five strangers (who I eventually became buddies with) and the rest, as they say, is history.

The band played a mixture of classic rock, R&B, Reggae and Funk made possible through the diversity in talent of its nine members. The sheer energy that the band vibrates through its music resonates through every individual in the crowd. Whether it was a song by The Beatles, Prince, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Led Zeppelin or even the club's theme song, “I had fun at the Cafe Wha?”, everyone found themselves either singing along or dancing ecstatically and more than often doing both.

I knew every song the band played and was not bothered for even a second that I had come alone. In those few hours of sheer exhilaration, I felt transported back into time to the days when rock music had a bigger and more genuine following. It seemed to me at that instant that the rest of the crowd shared a similar perception.

Cafe Wha? may still have some kind of a reminiscence effect from its historic performances and guest appearances in the past. But what made my night at Cafe Wha? memorable was because it let me as a rock music lover spend an unpretentious evening singing and dancing without a care in the world. It was raining heavily that night and I walked back home at about 2 am slowly taking it all in and completely oblivious to how drenched I really was. After a fun night of drinking plenty with strangers and dancing away to my favorite tunes, I woke up the next morning asking myself, “Who? When? Where? Cafe Wha?!”

The Extern's life in NYC

I now live in New York, a city many claim to be the centre of the world. I do not completely disagree. The lights are as bright as they say they are and it does have it's charm. The restaurant count runs well about 25,000 and I find myself interning in one of the better upscale ones.

Restaurant Cru and Shea Gallante are held in high regard among fellow CIA comrades and rightfully so. The style of cuisine at Cru is Modern European. The food is rooted in classic French and Italian culinary techniques, incorporates a few Asian ingredients and uses modern concepts to give it its avante garde character. I should also mention it has a 4300 strong wine list unmatched by any restaurant in the city which obviously lends itself to attention from oenophiles from all over.


Over the past several months, I've been toiling away behind the doors of this Michelin star. Of course, Bruno gave 'us' 3 stars as well; the 'experimental' desserts accounted for the loss of a star which subsequently led to Shea firing the then pastry chef Will Goldfarb (who went on to open the famous Room4Dessert which closed down as well). The kitchen at Cru is not unlike most top notch kitchens in the city, using the best produce, finest in equipment and employing some very talented cooks. The hours aren't any better either. I work from 11 to 11 five to six days a week and get paid half the minimum wage - brutally tiring yet truly inspiring at the same time.

It isn't the first time I've lived the life of an extern. When you're at the bottom rung in a kitchen, you're basically everyone's bitch - needlessly facing the brunt of everybody's stress. One could easily break in such a situation lest he holds strong and stands the beating. I pulled through, now aware that I can take it.

Meat, meat and more meat

Meat and Seafood Identification and Fabrication is not particularly the ideal kitchen class to start with in any culinary school, let alone the CIA. Considering that most of the students starting school have hardly any experience working in a kitchen, does it make sense to put tenderloin P.S.M.Os and racks of veal for them to break down before teaching them adequate knife skills first? We were all nevertheless very excited, for this really marked the beginning of our culinary education here.

It was mid-November and the fall weather was perfect. I witnessed the Hudson valley change colors from green to yellow, sunset orange, and eventually a very rustic red. Walking across campus to the meat kitchen at 1:30 in the afternoon was a treat in itself. It was 'Day One' (of many to come) and we all anxiously waited outside the "Meat Room" for the AM class to get done and leave.

All classes at the CIA are duplicated into AM and PM, and depending on whether you're a morning person or not, you find yourself either waking up and rushing droopily into class at 7 am to cook lunch for the school or striding in at a more comfortable 2 pm to cook a very early dinner. Of course, while the early birds are done with classes at 1 and have the rest of the day to while away, PMers like myself cook away till 9 at night. Both have their cons but let this be said - I loved not having to wake up that early every day.

Compressing a plethora of meats, its cuts and fabrication techniques into seven days would seem unfathomable to anyone who knows what it entails. But somehow at the CIA, they still do it. Every day found us breaking down primals of Bovine, Ovine, Porcine carcasses into portion cuts and learning about quality criteria and culinary applications, not to forget random assignments on famous steakhouses, angus beef, exotic ducks and pork farms and some hands-on sausage making fun. Who better to train us than a second generation butcher who’d been toying with meat for over 30 years.

Chef Thomas Schneller is a tall lanky forty-something year second generation butcher with a mustache and glasses which makes him remind you a lot of Ned Flanders of the Simpsons fame. What’s strange is that he talks and acts like him too. The man has been butchering meat for over three decades now and isn’t even close to being sick of it yet. His passion for protein is still very much alive and somewhat contagious. The man would go through loins and ribs like he was carving blocks of butter. Though seven days was nearly not enough time for us to get to that level, we all came out this class a lot more comfortable at handling meat and being able to distinguish a great cut from a poorly fabricated one.

Sadly, the last I heard, he was transferred to the fish kitchen to teach the Seafood class. I cannot imagine how painful that must be for him; maybe I can.

What's eating America: 'Organic' Today

Let’s face it. Organic is now becoming what was hoped it would be an alternative to. The very contradictory term, “industrial organic” - an outcome of large corporate conventional farms trying to grab their slice of the organic pie - is fast replacing its more genuine precursor. We evidently have a serious problem at hand – a dilution and possibly complete erosion of what organic really stands for. Should we continue to fight for this seemingly lost cause or has enough damage been done already?

When you think “organic”, like almost every other American consumer, you picture a small local family farm with happy cows grazing on ever-green pastures, chicken running about pecking at worms in the soil and pesticide-free vegetables of different kinds interspaced beautifully across the landscape. Open your eyes and embrace today’s ‘industrial organic’ farm. Acre after acre of the same crop (most likely corn, lettuce or broccoli) sucks all life out of the very soil it thrives on. Cattle have ‘access’ to the outdoors but are still fed on ‘organic feedlots’ instead of the much preferred pastures they’re actually meant to graze. And worst of all, this same ‘organic food’ consumes as much petroleum as its conventional counterpart does to eventually reach the supermarket – a reality which could more adversely affect global warming than your body.

Understand that in the mid 1900s when the ‘organic movement’ came about and long before the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) got involved in the organic scenario, the term meant that the food not only be free from synthetics and genetic engineering but also promoted sustainability (capable of maintaining productivity and usefulness to society indefinitely) in the long term. Having acquired renewed focus from a 1962 book (Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring) documenting the negative implications of chemical use in agriculture, ‘organic’ began to grow rapidly due to expanding consumer opposition to chemical pesticides coupled with a desire for food that was produced without harming the environment. By 1990, an estimated sales of more than a billion pushed the Congress into passing the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 (OFPA). This Act established the framework to create the National Organic Program (NOP) which implemented a stringent NOP certification for organic labeling in October, 2002. According to this USDA certification:

“Organic food is [that which is] produced by farmers who emphasize the use of renewable resources and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations. Organic meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones. Organic food is produced without using most conventional pesticides; fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge; bioengineering; or ionizing radiation.”

But how can promoting large corporate organic growers whose produce travels thousands of miles to reach the supermarket instead of the small local farms who probably cannot even afford organic certification, be considered as emphasizing the use of renewable resources? How can growing hundreds of acres of the same crop on the same piece of land clearly ignoring the implications of not carrying out crop rotation be regarded as enhancing the environmental quality for future generations? Why even have a requirement for cattle to have ‘access to pasture’ and poultry ‘access to the outdoors’ when these loosely defined terms fall at the exploitation of these corporate organic growers?

Now don’t get me wrong. USDA certified organic food is still considered better both for our health as well as for the environment. By eliminating the massive quantities of toxic pesticides and synthetic fertilizers (figures placed in millions of tons) used in conventional farming, organic methods help protect the health of our air, water and soil. The exclusion of synthetic pesticides in produce and growth hormones in livestock also reduces risks of cancer, birth defects and damage to the nervous and reproductive systems in humans.

There are however other relevant issues at hand here. Firstly, the USDA "organic" label only addresses the production-side of farming (i.e., the use of fertilizers, pesticides and Genetically Modified Organisms). It does not check the long-term effect of these farms on the environment and water systems. For example, farms can grow the same crop on the same plot of land over and over again without crop rotation which is essential to maintain the soil’s fertility.

Another issue of significance is that of exports. As sales of organic food products continue to grow by nearly $2 billion each year, U.S. companies are increasingly being forced to rely on foreign imports in their effort to meet consumer demand. But serious questions remain about the integrity of the inspection and certification process in some countries, especially China. The USDA, in fact, has yet to make an inspection tour of China's government-controlled certification system, even though the United States is already importing huge amounts of Chinese organic products.

However, the subject of utmost concern today is the industrialization of organic – or at least its consequences. After thirty five years of building a multi-billion dollar replacement for industrial agriculture, large corporations, aided and abetted by the USDA and members of Congress, are now moving to lower organic standards and seize control. According to journalist Michael Pollan of The Omnivore’s Dilemma fame, “Organic is just a word and its definition now lies in the hands of the federal government, which means it is subject to all the usual political and economic forces at play in Washington. Inevitably, the drive to produce organic food cheaply will bring pressure to further weaken the regulations.”

One thing is certain. The word ‘organic’ has been tainted. Today, it’s nearly impossible to buy something that is ‘organic’ in the true sense of the word. Then why bother paying so much (about fifty percent more) for something that is questionable. I am in no way suggesting abandoning ‘organic’. I only implore you to first look at your options closer home. Buying phenomenally fresh local produce from the closest farmer’s market may not always be convenient or even pesticide-free. But it supports the small scale farmers handicapped by the corporates and carries only a fraction of the foods miles its ‘industrial organic’ counterpart does. An even better bet would be to get involved with CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) like Poughkeepsie Farm Project or Phillies Bridge Farm Project Inc. in New Paltz where members make a financial commitment to a farm and receive a weekly or monthly basket of produce, eggs, milk or any sort of different farm products. They may not be as easy as choosing certified ‘organic’ but most of them have very sustainable farming systems in place. Go for the certified ‘organic’ in the supermarket when these options are not viable but try and find out about the company’s production methods and make a responsible, informed decision. More importantly, try and stick to what’s available in the season and hence most likely local. Remember, the key word here is local, not organic. As renowned author Wendell Berry puts it, “Eating is an agricultural act.” Treat it that way.