Our kitchen is one huge chemistry lab. The colours, aromas, flavours, textures and taste of everyday cooking are all an output of nuanced chemical reactions taking place in the mysterious cauldrons that hold the broth – our humble cooking utensils. Be it the pyrolysis reaction crunching up complex sugars while caramelising onions, the mellowing of allicin in garlic, ginger giving birth to zingerone as it cooks, lycopene of tomatoes teasing the starch in the potatoes, ascorbic acid of tomatoes romancing the proteins in the peas, the battle to save sinigrin of cooked cauliflower from obliteration – it’s all happening here!
So this post is not about the recipe (though the text in each image does give away what’s cooking!) but rather the visual splendour that even a humble Aloo Gobhi Matar evokes as it evolves from simple ingredients in a few easy steps.
A Sliver of Life 