January 2008
Divine food for brilliant minds
It’s often difficult to verbalize the aspirations we have for Common Kitchen, but one goal I sometimes have is to make the list of eminent companies Guru the Caterer mentions on their home page.
Guru’s core business is delivering boxed lunches to a number of drop-off locations around Cambridge and Somerville. His main clientele are Indians working in the area’s technology companies and/or graduate engineering programs, hence his tagline, “Divine food for brilliant minds.” In the past year or so, the business has expanded to include take-out from the Teele Square storefront (on Broadway in Somerville) where the business did its cooking.
The menu is not limited in the long term, but on any given day Guru only has a few dishes available, generally a vegetarian combo and a meat combo. This means that for people like me, with a very limited knowledge of Indian cuisine, it’s simple to order: meat or vegetarian, and then we take what we get. The combos include flatbread, rice, and a vegetable side dish.
We tend to work on our own in the mornings, then meet and tag-team on thorny problems in the afternoon. At least for the past few months, this has meant I’ve been going by Guru’s storefront at lunchtime on a regular basis. As I’ve noted, I’m not an experienced critic of Indian food, but I learned years ago not to ask too many questions before I’ve done some eating, and Guru has kept us coming back on a regular basis. A smiling face in greeting (which sometimes, I’ll admit, belongs to the owner’s four-year-old daughter) never hurts, either.
It’s not a storefront which inspires instant confidence, but if you’re looking for lunch in the western end of Somerville, it’s worth taking a walk over to Guru’s.
John Thorne and exploring a dish
I read an article a few weeks ago in the Daily Hampshire Gazette’s Hampshire Weekly insert about John Thorne and his work at the Hungry Ghost bakery in Northampton, MA. Thorne, the author of several books and a newsletter, Simple Cooking, I’ve mentioned here before, but the part of this article which leapt out at me had less to do with his writing and more to do with his approach to recipes. (I’d link the article, but the Gazette restricts articles on its website to subscribers.)
Thorne told the author that he tends to pick up a recipe and make it over and over again, tinkering with it and refining it, until he arrives at a point where he thinks further refinement isn’t worthwhile. (This is probably not uncommon.) Cooking can be a work of inspiration for him, but not necessarily.
This is encouraging for two reasons; first, it shows an example of the trial and frequent error (or at least, infrequent brilliance) that most of us can actually maintain in the kitchen. But second, Thorne appears to have wholly freed himself from the idea of variety in his menu. Certainly his tastes are wide-ranging, but he finds variety on a monthly or weekly scale, not a daily one. Many of us make the same breakfast for months, if not years, but Thorne expands that approach to lunch and sometimes dinner.
I like this because it essentially gives me permission to eat the same thing(s) repeatedly, with minor variation. I get easily bored with the same dinners, but I’ll make the same sandwich over and over, with every new idea (hey! I should try a different mustard!) making it something new and re-setting the variety clock.
Of course, this doesn’t lead to someone posting a lot of recipes to Common Kitchen, but perhaps removing the performance pressure of making something new each day can lead to more interesting and refined ones.