Honey I shrunk the food
A food engineer
dehydrates home cooked food that can be stored and used for up to a year.
Food assignments usually take you to places with well-designed
interiors, music that goes with the ambience, polite waiters, and, of course, great
food that scores big on taste and presentation.
However, this is an assignment unlike any other. I am on my way to the office of Tech Know Consultants, a firm that dehydrates home-cooked food, allowing customers to store and use it for up to a year. The office is located in an industrial estate in Ghatkopar, an eastern Mumbai suburb. C-217, my destination, is the last shop on the second floor. Here, I enter a dimly-lit office. There are empty cubicles to my left and large rooms to my right. It looks more like a lab rather than a place that handles food.
However, this is an assignment unlike any other. I am on my way to the office of Tech Know Consultants, a firm that dehydrates home-cooked food, allowing customers to store and use it for up to a year. The office is located in an industrial estate in Ghatkopar, an eastern Mumbai suburb. C-217, my destination, is the last shop on the second floor. Here, I enter a dimly-lit office. There are empty cubicles to my left and large rooms to my right. It looks more like a lab rather than a place that handles food.
The problem with drying
Lalit Meisheri, founder of Tech Know Consultants, comes across
as the geeky scientist in films like Flubber and Honey I Shrunk The Kids. He is
a chemical engineer from IIT Bombay and has, for the most part of his career,
been involved in food technology. When I enter, he asks the office help to
bring in the samples, which are wheeled in on a trolley.
There are several plastic containers on the trolley. Meisheri opens one containing dehydrated green chillies, and asks me to take a whiff. A pungent aroma tickles my nose, and I stifle a sneeze. Later, Meisheri hands me a container that has sliced, dehydrated strawberries. I pick up a strawberry wafer and put it in my mouth. “Don’t chew it at once. Let it hydrate in your mouth for some time.” The wafer slowly softens, but it never quite recovers the juiciness of a fresh strawberry.
There are mangoes, turmeric, and all sorts of food ingredients on the tray. “In order to perfect my system, I have tried dehydrating everything, even idlis, chutney and sambhar,” he says. “Dehydration is usually done in high temperature or in vacuum. In both scenarios, food first loses its aroma, colour and then nutrients. I have perfected a system where the food is dehydrated at room temperature. That’s why the food loses neither its aroma nor nutrients.”
How is that possible, I ask. “During monsoons, in a coastal city like Mumbai, the humidity is very high. This means that the air is full of water molecules. Although it takes time, our clothes dry nonetheless. How does this happen?” I shrug. Meisheri doesn’t elaborate further. “Well, I use the same mechanism, and through engineering have managed to control the process.”
His system was met with much scepticism from the scientific community. But Meisheri claims that he has his method vetted by the Department of Science and Technology, as well as by Southhampton General Hospital.
Sampling the dehydrated food
Meisheri decided to branch out into dehydrating home-cooked food, when a friend was worried about his daughter not having access to home-cooked meals in the US, where she was studying. Today, students studying abroad remain his biggest clients.
Then there are customers like Ketan Mehta, additional professor of surgery, MP Shah Medical College, Jamnagar. Mehta, a staunch Jain, was worried about food during his recent month-long trip to South Korea. “Earlier, on such trips I would carry ready-to-eat meals. But they would add to the luggage weight and because of preservatives wouldn’t taste good. I avoided all the problems by carrying dehydrated food.”
Mehta’s wife prepared 20kilos of food, which, after dehydration, weighed seven kilos. “When I hydrated them, it was just like home-cooked food. I no longer worry about travelling anywhere.”
Meisheri gives his customers tips on cooking food for the best results. “For instance, potatoes should be chopped into small pieces. Or if they are using chhole, they should be slightly overcooked.”
I have some samples of my own, prepared specially for the test. There’s one portion each of potato and drumstick sabzi, dal and corn soup. When I receive it two days later, I can hardly recognise the shrivelled up versions of the food. On the packet are precise instructions on the amount of water I should boil before adding the dehydrated food.
Three weeks later, I put them to test. The dal is near-identical to the original. The drumsticks look like they’ve already been sucked on. But their flavour has seeped into the sauce. The potatoes haven’t regained their original size, and are a tad chewy. And while the soup retained its flavour, the corn is not chewable. This could be because I had used Indian corn,which is quite hard.
Overall, the food has great flavour, but scores low on presentation. It certainly isn’t close to a freshly-cooked meal. But it’s certainly the closest you can get to a home-cooked meal, when away from home.
There are several plastic containers on the trolley. Meisheri opens one containing dehydrated green chillies, and asks me to take a whiff. A pungent aroma tickles my nose, and I stifle a sneeze. Later, Meisheri hands me a container that has sliced, dehydrated strawberries. I pick up a strawberry wafer and put it in my mouth. “Don’t chew it at once. Let it hydrate in your mouth for some time.” The wafer slowly softens, but it never quite recovers the juiciness of a fresh strawberry.
There are mangoes, turmeric, and all sorts of food ingredients on the tray. “In order to perfect my system, I have tried dehydrating everything, even idlis, chutney and sambhar,” he says. “Dehydration is usually done in high temperature or in vacuum. In both scenarios, food first loses its aroma, colour and then nutrients. I have perfected a system where the food is dehydrated at room temperature. That’s why the food loses neither its aroma nor nutrients.”
How is that possible, I ask. “During monsoons, in a coastal city like Mumbai, the humidity is very high. This means that the air is full of water molecules. Although it takes time, our clothes dry nonetheless. How does this happen?” I shrug. Meisheri doesn’t elaborate further. “Well, I use the same mechanism, and through engineering have managed to control the process.”
His system was met with much scepticism from the scientific community. But Meisheri claims that he has his method vetted by the Department of Science and Technology, as well as by Southhampton General Hospital.
Sampling the dehydrated food
Meisheri decided to branch out into dehydrating home-cooked food, when a friend was worried about his daughter not having access to home-cooked meals in the US, where she was studying. Today, students studying abroad remain his biggest clients.
Then there are customers like Ketan Mehta, additional professor of surgery, MP Shah Medical College, Jamnagar. Mehta, a staunch Jain, was worried about food during his recent month-long trip to South Korea. “Earlier, on such trips I would carry ready-to-eat meals. But they would add to the luggage weight and because of preservatives wouldn’t taste good. I avoided all the problems by carrying dehydrated food.”
Mehta’s wife prepared 20kilos of food, which, after dehydration, weighed seven kilos. “When I hydrated them, it was just like home-cooked food. I no longer worry about travelling anywhere.”
Meisheri gives his customers tips on cooking food for the best results. “For instance, potatoes should be chopped into small pieces. Or if they are using chhole, they should be slightly overcooked.”
I have some samples of my own, prepared specially for the test. There’s one portion each of potato and drumstick sabzi, dal and corn soup. When I receive it two days later, I can hardly recognise the shrivelled up versions of the food. On the packet are precise instructions on the amount of water I should boil before adding the dehydrated food.
Three weeks later, I put them to test. The dal is near-identical to the original. The drumsticks look like they’ve already been sucked on. But their flavour has seeped into the sauce. The potatoes haven’t regained their original size, and are a tad chewy. And while the soup retained its flavour, the corn is not chewable. This could be because I had used Indian corn,which is quite hard.
Overall, the food has great flavour, but scores low on presentation. It certainly isn’t close to a freshly-cooked meal. But it’s certainly the closest you can get to a home-cooked meal, when away from home.
R Krishna DNAMAG120603
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