Cooking: a nice hobby - Part I -

Do you like cooking?

I think only certain people like cooking, that choose it as their hobby.

And if I ask you; do you like eating?

I am sure that more people say “yes”.

What is your answer of this question; do you do eating everyday?

Absolutely you will say “yes, I do”

Eating-cooking. That is a pair of words that should be combined every time. People cook the food for eating, isn’t it?

Well, what is cooking?

Cooking is one of techniques to preserve food from the fresh one (raw food) to the “ready for eat” food. It is right some of foods can be consumed at raw food – without cooking. But, many of them have to be cooked. For exemple: rice, potato, kangkung, beans, beef, fish, etc.

Why do we need to cook some kind of foods?

There are three purpose of cooking. First, to kill bacteria. This is important to have an heatlhy food. Every food is potential to be contaminated by pathogenic microorganism. By cooking, that microorganism difficult to destruct our immune and it will causes diseases. The second, giving better taste. This purpose is concerned to the food that could be cooked or not. For exemple: carrots, cucumber, cabbage, and others else. Third, make a variation of meals. This is the creative point of cooking. More than billion recipes of food were created by cooking began from staple food, snacks, dessert, repast, pastry, cake until dairy.

How do people cook?

There are several methods of cooking: boiling, blanching, steaming, frying, grilling, baking and somany other techniques. All have the same principle; make the food to be ready for eat, to preserve food better. What is the differences of them? They are different in the using of medium, different “process” involved, and different products results. The cooking using water or steam gives the soft texture, safe for consumption, and easier to spoile. Baside that, boiling in the high temperature and long cooking may damage the nutritions. Steaming with a great heats can cause the soluble vitamin losses of food; especially vegetables. Moreover, frying, baking, and grilling offer the better taste, the better appearance and more shelf life. But, they produce some harmfull by-products such as high colesterol and carcinogenic agents. They have to be conducted in the low temperature and short time, depending on the food materials. In the other word, it is not easy to decide and to do the right cooking. Why people stil like cooking even it is difficult? Ya... that is the art of cooking. Cooking is a hard work but very nice to do and such as mentioned before, it is important to cook the food before eat that food.

What do you think about cooking as a hobby? Does it interest? Why?

Well, we will discuss about it for the next article.

                                                 "Cooking done with care is an act of love."