superchaddi

I'm a big fan of your 'let's scientifically understand why this does/doesn't work' methodology but being from India, a lot of your techniques and recipes cover ingredients and dishes that are rare-to-nonexistent in cooking here. Do you know of people (in the popular sphere or even academics/scientists) using a scientific approach with any kind of Indian cooking, or actually, any other regional cuisine? Most I've found are very US-American which means, at best, partial coverage of cuisines closer to my home. Basically a Food Lab for Indian techniques, ingredients, and dishes?

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Appreciate your work and your Twitter Eddie Izzard references! Thanks, Kenji.

Giddy with the power of having arrived at this AMA early, I'm going to double dip and ask another question:

What dish did your time as a service industry worker ruin for you? Conversely, which dish did you leave that time of work with a newfound respect for? I'm curious about the effect of 'how the sausage is made' of non-sausages.

The ultimate soapbox rant. Wish more people with real soapboxes shared this view. Western material prosperity is a zero sum game.

I'm rarely this early to an AMA, so hope I can get my question in.

I deeply enjoy your celebration of non-fancy things! Do you have a favourite combination of fancy and non-fancy? A wine pairing for a diner burger? I'm curious about what the ideal 'mixed meal' would look like for you, if you had to obey no constraints to prepare it.

Thank you for sharing your joys and sadnesses, Rax. You're a gifted writer and I think more people should read you.

I am not arguing for food to be too expensive for the poor. Everyone should have access to free nutritious food.

The argument is that merely removing the higher levels of profiteering that corporations participate in from the current system would not make it more equitable. Current supply chains in the Global North are parasitic on the lives of people in the South, and that is an environmental reality separate from the profit those supply chains generate for capitalists.

It is not possible to have the absurdly wasteful abundance of food the North's grocery stores have without ruining things elsewhere. It is not the Northern consumer's fault primarily, but the Northern consumer will have to learn to forego absurd abundance in exchange for comfortable sustenance if the rest of the world is to have a chance.

I agree that corporations should be blamed and regulated, but you cannot expect the problem of overconsumption to be solved without a reduction in consumption.