"You sort of get closer to perfection with each failed attempt" Nik Sharma
Nik Sharma is the man in the photo and author of three cookbooks now.
And here's a complete aside. The dog. There are so many food bloggers who feature their pets - most usually a dog. I guess we are virtually all suckers for dogs and the fact that those bloggers are all photographed with their dogs, make them seem like really nice people in whom we place our trust. Nagi Maehashi of Recipe Tin Eats is a supreme example, as her dog Dozer is featured on just about every recipe.
But back to Nik Sharma whose book Veg-Table - a now not so recent purchase - has been sitting on my desktop waiting for it's mini review. Well I'm not a very good reviewer - it's more a few musings on the book with a few recipes thrown in.
I'm not quite sure now which of his recipes pushed me into buying this, his third book. I know I have made his version of chicken butter cream - which may well be the best of those I made as it was pretty simple and very delicious - but he had also featured in The Guardian newsletter a few times, with interesting recipes - sort of Ottoleghi-ish. So I bought it, and have now decided it is a book that simultaneously delights, slightly bores and befuddles and also slightly irritates. Overall however, I'm glad I bought it and there are certainly several recipes I shall try: Orecchiette with spiced peas on the Star Books Blog; Butternut squash sauce, crispy leeks + farfalle;  Golden za'atar onion rings with buttermilk caraway dipping sauce; Garlic miso steak with roasted bell pepper sauce - this one is not online but looks and sounds absolutely fabulous and Spaghetti with roasted tomato miso sauce, Collards patra/Epicurious
I see that there are three pasta recipes in the mix, which is interesting, because somewhere he said that it's "my first cookbook with PASTA recipes, I don’t know why it took me so long!" I also see that miso features in several of them which I think I put down to my incapacity to know how to use miso - something I might reflect upon more fully some other time. Crispy garlic oil too.
Re the pasta I also see that I have already tried another recipe featuring both pasta and miso - Pasta with broccoli miso sauce, the recipe for which you can find on a website called That One Dish. I wonder if I have picked several pasta and miso dishes because of my own interest, or because Nik Sharma himself is a bit besotted with the two. The other flavourings are different in each recipe I should stress. I see I gave this recipe 3- 3 1/2 stars which suggests a little disappointment perhaps, although I see that I note that the addition of some chopped preserved lemon at the end was a nice touch. Maybe it's because I'm not that huge a fan of broccoli, although I recognise that I should eat it from time to time. And mostly I do indeed cook it with pasta.
Back to the man and my title about so many talents. Herewith a very brief summary of his career so far. He was born in India - in what he still calls Bombay - to a North Indian Hindu father - a photographer, and a Goan Catholic mother which he, quite rightly calls a mixed culture marriage. In the book he tells rather endearing little stories of trying to grow things and failing - I empathised - and which taught him to keep at it and to learn from failures. Now in his Southern Californian home he has a thriving vegetable garden. His joy at seeing plants grow from seeds led him to a love of biology
"my love of seeing things grow and live meant I fell in love with biology at school. I majored in microbiology and biochemistry and moved to the United States for graduate school to study molecular genetic and later public health policy."
Elsewhere he intimates that it was partly because of being gay and the prejudice that ensued, which made him leave for America where:
"No matter what academic program I was in, I learned that food played an important role in both the prevention and development of diseases."
I confess he didn't really say where his love of food came from, but it drove him to work in a local patisserie whilst still working in pharmaceuticals, which didn't really engage his interest. There he learnt how to become a pastry cook simply by observing and practising and loved it so much that he left the very prestigious molecular biology world for cooking. Initially he was a pastry chef, but then became a blogger - initially on Instagram as A Brown Table, which still exists, and now, on his website Nik Sharma Cooks, where you will find lots of his recipes. I think I have subscribed to his newsletter, but really you need to pay to get the full thing, so I suspect it will just be publicity that I get. We'll see.
His love of science has not been completely left behind however. Some of his posts on his website focus on a particular science aspect of the recipe. As does his book, which is divided into biological families - as illustrated on the inside covers of the book, and the facing pages. Throught there are scientific explanations, and an introduction which, I confess I partly skipped over because I got bogged down in scientific terminology. There was also a lot about equipment and technique, origins and definitions of vegetables and so on. If you are interested it's valuable stuff, and his little cook's notes that go with each recipe are also valuable. Sometimes it's about technique, sometimes about timing and planning, sometimes about variations.
The most irritating thing about the layout is that he does not have an ingredients list, followed by method. The ingredients are just highlighted in bold text as you come to them. He maintains this is easier. Reader it is not. And the commenters on what forum kind of site also did not like it. They are minimal complaints however.
So far we have a person who obviously has a brain. You don't go to an American University of note to do postgraduate work in molecular biology without a brain. Then you manage to somehow teach yourself to cook and moreover devise recipes which are original and innovative. Then you write recipe books which win the highest of cookery book awards, and are invited to contribute columns to prestigious publications and websites such as Serious Eats and The Guardian.
The final straw, if you like, is that he then taught himself to take photographs and style food. This is just one of the very professional photographs that he took to illustrate this book. All - and I mean all - of the photographs within are taken by him. To a very high standard.
"I initially started out photographing ingredients and the final dish but over time, I realized that I missed an essential component of what I wanted to convey in my work, emotion! And as a cook, I knew I felt several different emotions when I prepared food in the kitchen. From excitement, to anxiety, to joy, to frustration, I go through a series of emotions when I’m cooking a dish, so why not share how I feel through my photographs."
I'm not sure that the emotion he felt when writing and cooking his recipes is always conveyed, but the photographs are always high class. Some better than others of course, but mostly wonderful. The charred or semi-dried corn above is just wonderful.
Like I said in my title - it's not fair. It's not fair is it that some people seem to be good at everything, even when those everything things are so disparate - science, cooking, photography? Although, of course, they are all connected. We live in a very connected world, both naturally connected and human-made. Ironically, on this day and at this time there is a major world wide outage causing major problems. So far, crossing fingers, not in our house.
I'll end with a few quotes, which might give you a glimpse of his philosophy of cooking:
"My goal is to introduce people to new ingredients and make them comfortable using them in the kitchen, especially if they're not already familiar with them. I want people to be able to use that ingredient in a hundred different ways – not only in my recipes but in their own, too."
Maybe if I follow him a bit I'll eventually get how to use miso. So far I have only ever used it in actual recipes written by experts. I have never experimented with it myself. I will experiment with all those flavours I grew up with as a child and experimented with as a young adult, but I am very shy of experimenting much with the more unfamiliar ones.
"Everyone should learn how to make a cake. Just a simple sponge cake. The reason for that is that it teaches you patience and, I know this sounds cliché, but patience is a virtue."
Indeed it is and it's one I am sadly lacking in. My biggest battle with patience in cooking is caramelising onions, and setting jam. I get fed up with waiting and give up too soon. On the rare occasions that I have persisted it has been such a joy to see that it can be done - real caramelised onions and set jam that is. I'm better at the jam than the onions.
"Just this morning I saw a video on how to make mayonnaise at home. Why would you make it at home when you can buy it? You make this giant batch and then you have to eat all that mayo within a certain time period. Condiments—and spices especially—are the easiest way to make a meal more interesting. Just buy them from the store; it’ll probably actually taste better."
I'm sure there are a lot of chefs and cooks out there whose hackles would rise at that. Maybe dear old Nigel for a start and Elizabeth David would turn in her grave. I actually like making mayonnaise - it's magical. But he is right about then having a lot of it that has to be used.
POSTSCRIPT
Back to those years gone by for the 19th of July. What was I thinking about back then?
2023 - An ancient wine, new to us. Aglianico that is.
2022 - A new lucky dip - an old book - Vogue French Cookery that is.
2021 - Zoom lessons
2020 - missing from the web but the subject was: Fat hen - a nutritious weed, not a chook
2019 - Liqueurs
2018 - a day off it seems
2017 - Arriving back from that holiday in France - too tired to write I think
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