Sense of touch in cooking and eating food – We rely too much on one or two senses like taste and sight when picking and eating food. But there is another, more enriching, ways. (colour contrasting / sixth sense of a chef/ art of plate presentation) from my previous posts.
People have forgotten to engage all their senses when selecting and eating food, meaning they are “disconnected” from it and their senses have become “lazy”. They are exploring ways of getting people to engage with food instead of just relying on sight. Some of them which we never noticed are:
- Feel of the restaurant or the place you eat.
- Feel of the glass ware
- Feel of the plate ware
- Weight and feel of the cutlery
- And most important texture – can be accessed through touch. When food is placed in the mouth, the surface of the tongue and other sensitive skin reacts to the feel of the surface of the The sensation is also known as mouth-feel. Different sensations are felt as the food is chewed. The resistance to chewing also affects texture, e.g. chewiness, springiness. The viscosity is also a factor, e.g. runny, thick.The mouth also detects temperature, which plays an important stimulus, e.g. cold icecream, hot soup etc
Sense of touch has a great role in cooking as well. Here in this post I am illustrating the finger test to check the doneness of a sirloin steak. This is one of the easiest ways to practice.
Open the palm of your hand. Relax your hand and push on the fleshy area between the thumb and base of the palm. This is how you feel it when it’s raw.
Now feel with rest of the fingers. Trust me friends you won’t go wrong.
RAW
RARE
MEDIUM
MEDIUM WELL
WELL DONE
When is steak is nearly medium, it will start sweating
My chef experience in cruise ships brought my life’s 6 years closer to my grave. So hard is the job, though I learned a lot from there. I worked in all the international cuisines, worked with world renowned chefs, learned many languages, culture and more over seen the world.
Grill and roast was my favourite kitchen, where you need a great accuracy in cooking. We used to cook 250- 300 steaks in half an hour. End of the service I used to feel like coming out from the ships engine room, very very well gone!!
Spiced stir fried sirloin steak
Serves 3- 4
Preparation time – 15 minutes
Cooking time – 15 minutes
Ingredients
Sirloin steak – 400 grams
Small piece of ginger – chopped
Garlic cloves- chopped 3 nos
Cooking oil – 3 table spoon
Green chillies – chopped/ to taste
Curry leaves – 2 sprigs
Salt – to taste
Chopped coriander to garnish
Lemon juice – half a lemon
Pepper- red/ green/ yellow (sliced length wise)
Red onion sliced -1 nos
Fresh corn, water cress and rosemary for garnish
Spices to marinate
Cumin seeds- ½ teaspoon
Coriander seeds – ½ teaspoon
Dries red chillies – to taste
Ground turmeric ¼ teaspoon
Fennel seeds – 1 tea spoon
Garam masala powder – ¼ table spoon
Method:
- Dry roast all the spices in a pan and grind together.
- Marinate the steak with the spices and keep in the refrigerator for at least half an hour.
- Grill the steak(to rare) and keep aside to rest for 3 to 5 minutes
- Heat the remaining oil, rest of the ingredients, slice the seared steak in to strips an toss in the pan. Sprinkle the coriander leaves and serve immediately.
Looks great!
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Thank’s a lot Tresniet:)
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This is really helpful Sumith … I never get the length of cooking quite right – either too rare and has to go back in the pan or over cooked… I resort to slicing it to check… I’ll be trying out your way next time! I can’t imagine what it would be like to cook so many steaks in such a short space of time – I struggle doing 2 at once!! xx
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Wendy trust me you won’t go wrong, nor have to cut to check. Used to love cooking steaks in large numbers:)
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I’m impressed Sumith – as always!!! xx
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Thank you very much Wendy. In between I need to contact you. Any chance to give me a buzz on sumithpbabu@yahoo.com
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This recipe sounds delicious and is so informative. It’s awesome that you helped Suzanne out too.
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Thanks a lot Julie for your inspirational words:)
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This is a great guest post for Suzanne!!! What a truly wonderful excellent post & grans tasty recipe of course, too!
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Sophie, it was an honour for me to do a guest post for Suzanne. Thank you Sophie.
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How nice of you to guest post for Suzanne! Great post, following!
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Hi Kathryn, thank you for stopping by. Glad you like my guest post in Suzannes blog. I am looking forward for your posts too..
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Reblogged this on MAXIMUSOPTIMUSDOMINUS.
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Thank you:)
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You’re welcome!
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Great tips!!
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Thank you Anu:)
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Just lovely Sumith!
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Thank you Cheryl:)
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A very joyful dish!
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Thank you Chris:)
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Great dish Sumith….Beautiful presentation, wonderful selection of veggies as the color of veggies makes it vibrant. Good one 🙂
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Thank you Rateka. Yes, true colours of the veggies made it vibrant!!
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Great looking dish! I see you roasted your corn, which I recently discovered gave it a lot more taste than boiling it. Very good!
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Hi Alex, roasted corn not only gives the flavour, it looks great in presenting the dish as well. Thank you for the compliments.
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You’re right. It gives the dish a dynamic (on account of the varied color of the corn).
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😊:)
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That is fabulous advice for testing the doneness of a steak and I will watch for it starting to bleed as well as reminding myself how it should feel with my fingers! I cannot imagine cooking all those steaks for customers on the high seas – I imagine the kitchen was quite a frantic environment. I look forward to learning more about your time on cruise ships (and of course more of your delicious recipes and tips for the kitchen!)
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Hi Osyth, thanks for taking your valuable time to read my blog. Cooking in a cruise line is a fun, I used to love it. After this busy kitchen we used to have a midnight buffet in the galley which is more interesting. I can’t paste the photos here other wise I would have shared it here.
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This reminds me of a very happy time in my life when I made friends with the guys from the Indian Restaurant in our village. Saturday evenings, after closing several of us used to be invited to enjoy snacks and dancing in the flat above. Excellent fun and I used to stagger home about 1 a.m to sleep in with a doggy bag of foil containers to enjoy as brunch on Sunday!
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At least I could jogged you through some nice memories!! Enjoy life, make the most of it!!
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Always!
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I am so glad you do not have to cook so many steaks now Sumith!
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Thank you Brigid. Now I don’t need to touch the steak. By seeing I could say which one is which😂😄
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Gorgeous colours and you are so right about texture! I wish I had some now as am just about to cook some dinner but this looks much more interesting! 🙂
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Thank you Petra. Your words really ment for me!!
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Working in cruise ships kitchen is indeed one of the hardest in the industry. I’m glad you look at the positive side of this experience. You have wonderful tips here. Great looking dish! 🙂
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Thank you Ronit. That hard work really polished my career. A note from you is a real honour for me thank you:)
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Lovely Sumith! Great pics as always!
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Thanks a lot Rashmi:)
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It was interesting to read your thoughts on the sense of touch. It’s as aspect of cooking I hadn’t much thought of before.
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Bun Karyudo, its true most of the time we never think of these aspects nor enjoy this while we eat.
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Great recipe, Sumith. Thanks
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Thank you Sophie:)
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Very nice presentation
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Thank you Richi. Appreciate your comment.
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Sumith besides the beautiful presentation you have gone one step forward and explained with the hands and also how one must really enjoy the decor of the restaurant and how to enjoy eating food. Amazing loved every bit of your post.
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Glad you like the read Kamal. You are always very motivational:)
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You are always welcome Sumith and yes your post was very motivational too. The work with the hands was so good.
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Kamal try this next time when you cook steak. You will love this experiment😂
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For sure Sumith will give it a try.
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😊:)
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I’ve seen this method of judging doneness before it’s a bit tricky to memorize unless you cook steak regularly. I don’t but luckily I only have to know the test for rare. 🙂
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It’s an easy method to judge the doneness of a steak. I need one for a medium one:)
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Very nice presentation !👌
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Thank you Payel:)
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It is said that look and presentation of a food should be appetising before one taste it….the look of your food is making me squirm in my stomach….lovely….
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Thank you breathingpark:)
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Lovely insight into one of most important senses.Beautiful presentation as usual.
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Thank you Anuradha. You are very inspirational:)
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