My Culinary Philosophy: Embracing the Art of Intuition and Evolving Flavors

What food would you say is your specialty?

What food would I say is my specialty? That’s a question that has lingered in my mind, dancing through the corridors of my culinary experiences, as if searching for an answer that feels right, yet defies the simple. It’s not that I haven’t cooked enough to have one; it’s more that, like the act of eating itself, the idea of “specialty” shifts with time, mood, and place. It’s an avant-garde concept, really—the notion that a dish, or an entire cuisine, can be mastered in a world that’s constantly reinventing its relationship with food.

In the quietest moments of reflection, I find that the answer to this question is never straightforward. My kitchen has never been one to bow to the rigid lines of recipes; it’s more like a playground where I let my imagination roam free. The ingredients are my companions, the spices my confidants, and the flames of the stove a roaring muse. So what is my specialty? The answer, perhaps, lies not in a single dish, but in the dance I perform with food.

Let me take you on a journey—a journey that might explain why narrowing down a specialty feels so elusive to me.

The Dish That Changes With Me

There was a time when I might have confidently answered, “Paneer.” But not just any paneer. I’m talking about a paneer dish that evolves with my own state of being. Paneer, for me, isn’t a static ingredient. It’s a shapeshifter. Some days, it takes on the form of a rich, creamy malai paneer, with fragrant cardamom, the soft tang of tomato purée, and the slow heat of cumin seeping into the cubes like whispers of something sacred. On other days, it’s a spicy, fiery stir-fry of paneer tikka, charred just enough on the outside, doused in lemon and herbs, a dish that dares you to eat with your hands.

To claim paneer as a specialty, though, seems like capturing only a fraction of my culinary relationship with food. It’s like saying that one day of the week is my favorite when, in truth, every day holds its own promise. My paneer dishes are reflections of the internal shifts I experience—sometimes indulgent, sometimes playful, but always deeply rooted in my desire for exploration.

The Element of Surprise

If I were to claim a specialty, perhaps it’s in the element of surprise. Cooking, for me, is an act of constant discovery. I might enter the kitchen with a vague idea—broccoli, bell peppers, and maybe paneer today—but by the end of it, I’ve emerged with a dish that feels entirely new, even if the ingredients are old friends.

There was one instance, I remember, when I set out to make a simple stir-fry with capsicum and broccoli, a humble vegetable dish that I imagined would be served with rice. But as I cooked, the flavors began to demand something different. The capsicum, red and yellow, grew sweeter as it caramelized, and the broccoli, crunchy and vibrant, suddenly needed the creaminess of freshly grated paneer to balance it. I added a splash of coconut milk and a pinch of nutmeg, which elevated the dish into something unexpected—a hybrid of Indian and Southeast Asian flavors, a fusion that felt both comforting and exotic.

This is how I cook. I let the ingredients lead me, never fully committing to one path. My specialty, if I have one, is to create something unexpected from the familiar. It’s the thrill of improvisation that I thrive on—the knowledge that a dish can surprise me even as I make it.

Cooking As a Form of Meditation

Cooking is, in many ways, a meditation. It’s about being present with the ingredients, paying attention to the smells, the textures, the sounds of a simmering pot. When I’m cooking, time bends. Minutes stretch into something fluid, where the ticking of the clock fades into the background and all that remains is the act itself.

There’s a spiritual element to cooking for me, one that defies the traditional concept of “specialty.” I don’t cook the same way every time; I cook based on what feels right in that moment. I’ve been known to make the same vegetable curry three times in a week, each time tweaking it slightly—maybe adding more coriander one day, or frying the onions longer the next, allowing them to turn a deep caramel brown before adding the spices.

This process of iteration, of perfecting a dish not to a standard but to a feeling, is where my specialty lies. I’m not aiming for mastery in a traditional sense; I’m searching for that fleeting moment when the dish and I are perfectly in sync. When the scent of cardamom in the air matches my mood, or when the sound of mustard seeds popping in hot oil feels like a celebration. This is my specialty: the ability to translate emotions into flavors.

Flavors of Memory

Food, for me, is always tied to memory. The flavors I gravitate toward are often those that remind me of something deeper, a moment from the past, a connection to family or to a place I’ve traveled. There’s a dish I make, a simple bowl of dal, that always takes me back to my grandmother’s kitchen. The smell of the lentils simmering, the ghee melting into the spices—it’s a time machine of sorts, bringing me back to her, to the warmth of her home, to the lessons she taught me not just about cooking, but about life.

Is dal my specialty? It could be, in a sense, because it’s the dish I make when I need comfort. It’s the dish I turn to when the world feels overwhelming, when I need to reconnect with something fundamental. But even here, I hesitate to claim it as my one true specialty, because the dal I make today isn’t the same as the one I made last year, or the one I’ll make tomorrow. Like me, it changes. It grows.

The Non-Specialty Specialty

So, what food would I say is my specialty? The avant-garde answer, I suppose, is that my specialty isn’t a dish at all. It’s an approach, a philosophy. It’s the way I move through the kitchen, the way I treat each ingredient as a possibility rather than a fixed point. It’s the way I let my intuition guide me, the way I allow myself to make mistakes, to veer off the recipe, to explore.

My specialty is in the act of creation itself. It’s in the joy I find in cooking, in the way I can lose myself in the process and emerge with something that feels both personal and universal. It’s in the way I connect with the food, in the way I let it speak to me, tell me what it wants to become.

In the end, my specialty is less about what I make and more about how I make it. It’s a conversation, a dialogue between me and the ingredients, a story that unfolds on the plate. And that, I think, is the essence of my relationship with food—a never-ending journey of discovery, where every dish is a reflection of the moment I’m in, and every bite is a reminder that food, like life, is always evolving.

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