Cooking

I learned to cook in 2018 after spending two years in the US. I did not have access to good South Indian food in Boston, and taught myself out of necessity. There were many failed attempts - including a week where I kept adding fennel instead of jeera to dishes and wondered why everything tasted like toothpaste. Note - I largely eat vegetarian food, and have no idea how to cook meat outside of boiled chicken breast for when my dog is sick.

Things I've learned along the way

I basically cook to recreate food I grew up eating. I rarely have the energy to invent new recipes (although one of my greatest hits was a truffle oil chinna vengayam sambar - it was 🔥!). I wonder if this is the difference between trying to be a good craftsman versus a good artist.
It is pivotal to understand ingredients, especially vegetables. These are usually learned by trial and error. For example, cooking cut okra with water makes it sticky and soggy. The ridges in ridge gourds are bitter - always worth scraping off. Potatoes boiled with baking soda get crispier. This is a huge factor in making food that tastes good.
Regional Indian cuisines are defined by their tadkas. What makes Tamil food Tamil is usually a combination of sesame or coconut oil, mustard seeds, hing and curry leaves. Masala Lab by Krish Ashok taught me a lot of this, I highly recommend it. Fun fact: hing or asafoetida in India is largely imported from Afghanistan and has a onion-garlic umami flavor when cooked in fat. Indian subcultures that avoid onion and garlic use hing to add umami.
I'm still learning to better layer acids. Tamarind, tomatoes and lemon all add sharpness, but have distinctive flavor profiles. Combining them often creates the complexity I remember from childhood.
Language shows up in unexpected ways. The word I use for vegetables displays my polyglossic upbringing (a concept I learned from Wanderers, Kings and Merchants) - if my mother discovered a word growing up in Tamil Nadu, I use the Tamil word today. If she started using the vegetable in her forties in Bangalore, I use the Kannada word. If I encounter the vegetable in restaurants, I end up using the English word. The captions for these pictures illustrate this well - I promise I wasn't trying!
Baking requires precision and patience that I do not have. Cooking, on the other hand, forgives a lack of precision as long as you're generally following guidelines. In contrast, I know fabulous bakers who are not great cooks. I wonder if there's something deeper here that might explain these preferences.