☀️Dispatch: Would you use a🌞Solar Cooker? 📖New food-books, 🌧️Monsoon Recipes and 🍫Cocoa
Entanglements, Solar cooking, Food
(#1) Would you use a Solar Cooker?
In a recent piece, Vikram Doctor talked about a running meme attached to increasing temperatures across the world - one that shows frying eggs on the hot pavement surface or roasting papad in the hot desert sand of Rajasthan. Although shared as a way to laugh, the meme is a poignant reminder of climate change. However, the concept of cooking using the sun’s heat is not new; many have tried and failed to use it directly to cook food in a manner that is sustainable, feasible and most importantly, convenient.
The first prototype of a solar cooker was made in the 18th century by Swiss scientist Horace de Saussure who trapped heat in glass-topped insulated boxes. In India, the idea gained traction with William Adams' arrival in 1870, culminating in his successful trial cooking a 'neck of mutton, potatoes, and green peas.'
Subsequently, Dr. Rajendra Prasad discovered Manindra Kumar Ghosh’s designed solar cooker in 1945 and presented it to the newly established National Physical Laboratory (NPL). But, the use of solar cookers didn’t become common until in the 1980s when the Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources (MNES) promoted solar box cooking with a subsidy of 30% (only to be completely removed by 1994). In the span of 12 years, 3.4 lakh solar cookers were sold in India because of the subsidised price due to the global oil crises. Yet this technological advancement failed to take the market by storm. High dependability on the weather, inability to make chapatis or fry stuff, and the added effort of cooking outdoors made it more inconvenient to cook when compared to LPG.
LPG continues to be promoted under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), a government scheme launched in 2016, to distribute LPG connections as a way to move people away from polluting cooking fuels such as wood, dung and crop residue and reduce indoor air pollution. Over the past eight years, the government has distributed 101.5 million LPG connections. However, approximately 41% of the Indian population still relies on wood, cow dung or other biomass for cooking, emitting approximately 340 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. Additionally, LPG is non-renewable and depleting. As one of the few heavily traded fuels, it adds to the concerns related to energy security.
Women who used it religiously claimed to see benefits such as reduced financial burden, less carbon footprint, natural taste from ‘slow cooking,’ and the relief of not standing in front of the stove, stirring constantly. “I used to bake cakes in the solar cooker, I want to buy a new one now, do you know anyone selling them? ” said a woman from Jodhpur, Rajasthan who uses the solar cooker regularly.
Almost like an instant pot; just assemble everything and let the sun do its magic…Solar cooker could be the future of cooking.
(#2) Shelf Update
Usha’s Pickle Digest
The Indian art of pickling has raised culinary art to such a high level of sophistication that it has acquired an exotic, almost legendary reputation. One of the most striking aspects of Indian pickling is the great variety and range it offers for all seasons and occasions. Even the humbles of vegetables are transformed into a delicacy, through the subtle use of spices.
Usha R Prabakaran
As pickling, preserving, fermenting and well, cooking became a worldwide phenomena during the pandemic; Usha’s Pickle Digest found a new life. This self-published mammoth book with 1000-pickle recipes is more than just a cookbook, it is a cultural artifact.
The story of how Usha’s Pickle Digest came to be is almost comical, given how iconic it has become today. The book almost willed itself into being. She never meant to write it at all. It began as a collection of 25 recipes that she scribbled into a notebook, and would transcribe copies of, for friends..“How does one do it? Write such far-reaching books?” I asked her. Well, this is the Usha Prabakaran way: Eat with curiosity. Ask your friends, relatives, and neighbours to share their recipes. If you taste a delicious rasam at a wedding, ask the caterer. If a pickle catches your eye at a restaurant, ask the chef. Your son’s math teacher’s sister-in-law has a recipe? Ask her. Don’t take no for an answer. Take notes. Rush back home, try them out. Tweak, tweak, tweak until the salt, sweet, spice and tang are balanced to your satisfaction. Document the recipe. File it away. Repeat a thousand more times. It only takes a few years.”
Excerpt from Goya Journal
Sai Tulasi Neppali wrote a profile on Usha in Goya Journal, head there to read more.
Send Chinatown Love Letters
A community zine imbued with emotions of love, hope and belonging to New York city’s very own Chinatown, celebrates the neighbourhood that has been home to “three, four, five generations” Chinese Americans. In the editor’s note, Justin & Nat talk about the shutting of storefronts, the empty abysses and drought-like streets that took over the ever-bustling Chinatown. In one of the chapters ‘Chinatown: Stronger than the Evil Spirits,’ writer Karen Huie laments the anti-Asian hate crimes that especially targeted women and elderly following the blame thrown at Chinese Americans for the coronavirus. This zine is a tangible testimony of the resilience of this community.
It reinforces “the cultivation of community and the fact that the ways in which we were torn apart pale in comparison to the ways in which we have come together.”
Broadly Speaking
Still in the to-read ‘Broadly Speaking’ is a culmination of stories of women in the hospitality business. Dana Cowin, former editor-in-chief of Food & Wine, is the founder, who also runs a podcast by the same name: Speaking Broadly podcast.
Excited to read this one.
What have you guys been reading? Tell us and we’ll make a list of community curated food-books.
And if you want to read more, join dhoop’s book club. This month we are reading Jessica Fanzo’s ‘Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet?’
(#3) Cocoa
A few weeks ago, when cocoa prices shot up world over, farmers, businesses and bakeries put out enough information to give consumers a BTS into the scene.
What's really behind Cocoa prices?
Screenshot of MadrasCoffeeMovement’s Instagram story
(#4) Monsoon Recipes
What have you been cooking? Here, in Mumbai it rains cats and dogs one day and is hot on most other days.
One pressure cooked meal of khichdi/pulao has been a saviour on workdays. Try this badi pulao the next time you are as confused as the weather outside.
A 3-D Dal by Keertida uses coriander in three ways: seeds, stems and leaves. What’s not to love?
Apricots are in season and this recipe of apricot chutney or ketchup by Sangeeta Khanna is too cool for you to not make!
All recipes in The Malabar Tea Room’s repertoire are amazing, this week I am trying the Vietnames-ish eggplant, a sweet-sour-sticky situation over a bed of rice is all I want this season.
Khichdi moodboard
And that’s everything for this week.
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Interesting Read.................. Great Job