TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

As always, thank you for listening to the show and for rating and kindly reviewing and following on social media. It’s very much appreciated, and I’m truly grateful. So, did you ever have that ultra cool teacher who just found a way to simplify the most challenging concepts? You know who they are because they’re just superb at taking complex and dense knowledge and often through storytelling and offering contextual background, help you synthesize it into retainable information. And at the end, students and learners are often left mesmerized by a new lesson, and are eager to share this knowledge because it's compelling, memorable, and most importantly fun. This is exactly how I’ve felt when I’m watching and learning from Krish Ashok, the author of Masala Lab: The Science of Indian Cooking. Ashok is an engineer who leads the advisory and consulting function of the AI.Cloud unit at Tata Consulting, which unto itself is quite cool and noteworthy. But it’s his deep curiosity and exploratory nerdiness in the kitchen that led him to research, experiment, develop a working expertise, and share culinary knowledge with others to make for better cooking and turn the kitchen into a joyful playground. Indian food lives at so many different intersections and is anything but monolithic and so Ashok artfully weaves elements of history and the tradition of our grandmothers and physiology and local culture and nutritional and medical science into thoughtful and playful storytelling that ultimately helps provide a rationale for the many intricacies of Indian cooking. When reading his book or watching his terrific videos, naturally, there’s a lot of aha moments involved for everyone, including those that Ashok had himself in his own journey of exhaustively testing, confirming, and myth busting his way through Indian food. What’s disarmingly impressive is Ashok’s discipline for using scientific reason and curiosity to help guide a very subjective experience like food, especially that which often plays upon our feelings of nostalgia, comfort, and adventure all at once. It was really great to catch up with him for a conversation about everything from food identities in India, to how his time in the US informed him, to irritating misconceptions, to AI and fact checking. But I first wanted to know, given his background and curiosity, if he finds himself constantly thinking of questions when he’s eating a meal?