Microbial Alchemy of Indian Kitchens.
You enter an Indian kitchen, with its idli batter left overnight, pickles cooking in the sun at the window, milk slowly turning to curd. It feels ordinary.
But what in case it is not?
What would happen should this be biochemistry in action?
The core of these processes is fermentation in which microorganisms convert simple ingredients into nutritionally supplemented, digestible, and tasty foods. Lactic acid bacteria like Lactobacillus turn carbohydrates into acids and gaseous substances in idli and dosa batter, so that they form the softness and typical tang.
Another example is the formation of curd Lactobacillus bulgaricus can be used to break down lactose to lactic acid, which enhances lactose digestion and gut health.
And chariots, and chariots.
What is the secret of lasting months without contemporary preservatives?
Salt and oil provide discriminatory environments which inhibit both harmful microbes and promote those which are beneficial- a natural, natural microbial control based preservation system.
And this is the emphasizing detail:
Such procedures have long been in practice, presumably without laboratories, without scientific knowledge of any kind.
Take it home to-night, it will come better to-morrow.
But a basic command, and very scientific.
Indian kitchens are therefore not mere cooking places. They are living laboratories and the intersection of microbial activity, enzymatic reactions, and traditional knowledge and the modern microbiology seamlessly intersect.
What may seem to be ordinary cooking is in fact a sophisticated kind of microbial biotechnology- secretly designing nutrition, health and culture.
MBH/AB