Kitchen Tips: How to elevate home cooking to Michelin level

Adwita Surana is a dynamic and innovative line cook currently making her mark at The Modern, a prestigious two-Michelin-star restaurant in New York City. Hailing from Delhi, she specialised in baking and pastry from The Oberoi Hotels and Resorts under their STEP programme. She also worked at Diva, Delhi under the aegis of Michelin Guide Chef Ritu Dalmia.In an exclusive interaction with Etimes Lifestyle, she delves into the details of how to elevate regular home food to Mischelin standards.
Art of Pairing: Michelin standard is pairing a multitude of components to make a dish more delectable. Experienced chefs have been cooking for a long time and they understand how to match multiple tastes in a beautiful harmony and cohesion. For beginners, avoid going over you might end up overcrowding and confusing the palette. An easy way to create an entrée is - a protein/vegetables, a sauce, a carb like potatoes or pasta, garnish and some oil to finish.

Have Patience: Do not rush with things that should take time. Marinating, brining, infusing, steeping, confit- great ways to develop flavors. But let them take time.
Use Good Fats: Cooking with homemade clarified butter is very practical. It has a high smoke point, allowing high heat cooking and gives a rich buttery flavour. Brushing at the end with brown butter is also a game changer. To make brown butter is very simple- you put it on very low heat and forget about it until it changes colour to brown. Then you simply decant it. The aromas will make you forget about any store bought air fresheners. Bring the finesse in your preparation knife cuts. Proper dices, brunoise, cuts on chives make a difference

Play with Sauce and Garnish: These are the two components you play with. Garnish could be micro herbs, finely chopped nuts, dehydrated powders. But remember, garnishes are not just for the eyes, they impart flavour as well and in most cases, they are the first things that touch a guest’s tongue.

For sauces - go to the French techniques. Basic way to develop flavor is to reduce the cooking liquid, add herbs, some acid, and mount with butter at the end. It creates a beautiful gloss and shine. The magic butter sauce is quite quick and simple to enhance an otherwise boring blanched asparagus. My go-to ratio of cold butter to hot stock/water is 5:1, whisked on medium heat to emulsify to make a glossy sauce. Add some salt, pepper and a little bit of parmesan cheese off the heat and glaze your veggies after cooking, just before serving.
Art of Using Crockery: Avoid using the whole plate/bowl space to plate. Plate the dish tighter instead of covering the whole space. It gives a cleaner, neater and sharper look. But be mindful of the quantity - it should look substantial with reference to the plate in question. Also, avoid conforming to geometry and symmetry on the plate. Components plated on the dish in odd numbers like 3 basil leaves or 5 pieces of pearl onion halves look better than even numbers.

Art of Plating: Use a green herb oil to finish the dish. Green oils are easy to make and can be made pretty much with any herbs - basil, mint, parsley, cilantro, dill. It adds a burst of colour to the plate.
Use Salt: Always finish with finishing salt - Maldon salt, smoked salt or fleur de sel. Sometimes fresh lime or lemon juice with salt is also good for enhancing tastes.

Use Good Produce: Cliché but good produce takes less effort to bring out its flavors. Simple can be most rewarding. In-season cooking should get more credit. Let the fruits and vegetables of the season shine, like tomatoes in the summer. You can play around with different varieties of tomatoes, instead of finding different ways to cook it. There are beefsteak, plum, vine, cherry, heirloom, sungolds to name a few.
Practice is the Key: Work on some dishes that you can perfect overtime- could be your invention or a replication. This could be deemed as your style of cooking. After perfecting, you would understand the tastes and flavours so well, that creative juices would start flowing and this is when R&D happens naturally. From this, you might just extract your OG recipe or style that you could somehow utilize in other dishes.