First Look

Aside from causing my mouth to water, leafing through East makes it clear that there will be a lot of recipes in the coming weeks that are well outside my comfort zone. Now, nothing is outside my comfort zone to eat. I’m talking about recipes that are going to require skills I probably don’t have. Chef Sodha is going to ask me to put an egg inside a loaf of bread. You might as well be asking me to put the caramel inside the Caramilk bar. There’s an entire dessert section inside every cookbook that I rarely lay eyes on. This time I won’t have that option, and this one’s full of fancy (scary?) terms like tarte tatin. As for the snacks section, have you ever made dumplings yourself? Yea, me either.

There are a ton of recipes that fit right into what I expect I can tackle. Noodles and curries? Those sound like things we can handle just fine in this apartment. Although, how do you keep ramen noodles from going soft in the hot broth? It’s one of the issues I forsee facing me in the near future. I hope to learn on my way through the book. Chef Sodha often prefaces a section with a basic breakdown of the fundamentals of what’s to come. I won’t be skipping those pages. The nerd in me loves to know the different applications for each variety of rice.

I’ll be putting up a list of dishes shortly, and crossing them off as I whip them up here in de facto lockdown in Toronto.