What food would you say is your specialty?

Food! The very word is enough to tempt anyone hungry. Food connoisseurs and gastronomes hop from place to place to explore and get new, unique tastes. It has played a crucial role in defining history. Had it not been good if the topic was open and not confined only to a point? I am not a cook but know well how to cook. My cooking does not involve any specific dish but a general Indian “Thali”. I am going to give an account of food as I perceive it.

Saying that food is essential would be repeating the same old phrase that has been told, taught and preached since Aeon. Since the dawn of civilization, food started finding places in devotional offerings. Because of the vitalizing properties food deserves well to be worshipped and respected.

At the onset, I make it clear that I am not a food blogger, nor a historian. I am an amateur who start reading and learning about things that intrigue me. As a student of life sciences, I have studied evolutionary history. History is a topic which is like a salt in food, essentially found everywhere and make the understanding more lucid.

From wayfarers to settlers and from cave dwellers to organized settlements, the history of human beings has been a Rollercoaster ride, thrilling and evolving. One common thing has been the food. From the day people learnt the use of fire and found that it had the power to make food palatable and healthy, he became a cook. His first prepared meal might have been a roasted wild animal, just hunted down. The day might have been a day of celebration when they would have celebrated the occasion of cooking and enjoying their meal! What do you feel? How might our ancestors have felt jubilant? Please comment in the comment box below.

With the dawn of civilization, humans started a well-organized life. The findings of grains from the sites of the Indus Valley Civilization testify that they used grains to feed upon, and evidence indicates that they cooked food properly before consuming it. The thrill our first humans felt must have been great, and so are the later humans who started organized and, again, luxurious lives. Yet, with time, the line between haves and have-nots started yawning, which gave rise to a different culture where people started hiring domestic servants to do household jobs, including cooking. As this trend grew, doing their work was considered unsatisfactory and poor. Cooking was probably not of much importance.

Human journey and history can be better traced by carefully observing the food they ate, and how they cooked and served it. It is an interesting study. In his iconic book “Ben Hur”, Lew Wallace vividly described the food people of that period consumed. It chiefly consisted of milk, honey, and boiled meat. Cooking was limited to boiling or baking. Since the time of Jesus Christ, food processing, preparing, and cooking have seen a steady evolutionary trend. The area-specific food was spread by traders and travellers. Their food mingled with the new environment became a Novelty. It gave rise variety of cooking techniques of food. Baking, roasting, frying, deep frying, stir-frying – the list is long.

Fusion of different foods of different regions at different time period gave rise to a new variety of food and a cultural blend. The war monger Moguls when entered India, needed a quick cooking food that should contain enough protein and carbs for their armies. They mixed meat with rice and cooked it. This is how “Biryani” came into existence. According to necessity and availability of ingredients it’s was changed and eaten by different sub categories of “Biryani”.

Traders travelling on the silk route not only traded but exchanged their food and love with that. Food has been a chain and messenger of love, culture and tradition. I would ask my food blogger friends to comment upon my observations.

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