A Durga

Of the many joys of life, the mighty Mysore Pak surely holds a special place for many hailing from the south of India. When cooked and set to perfection, this dessert is soft yet not fudgy, sweet yet not simply sugary, and melts not like a chocolate but slowly, allowing one to taste every crumbling granule to its fullest. 

When cooking metals and minerals too, we strive for that perfect texture, with atoms settled into their comfort zone, so that they may be used to make knives for cutting that Mysore Pak into perfect cuboids or even sharpening that knife! But can we use our cooking skills to solve metallurgical problems or the other way round? 

My journey, both of cooking food and cooking metals, began over a decade ago. In the early days of my cooking on a cooking plate when I moved to Europe, I struggled to cook even the basic staple dishes I was used to eating back home in India, where cooking usually happens on a gas stove. And then I attempted the mighty Mysore Pak. I ended up, not with soft, perfect cuboids, but a porous, crumbling mass that could not hold any shape…read more on NOPR