STATE TIMES NEWS
JAMMU: Prasenjeet Kumar, the lawyer-author son of the senior IAS couple in J and K—Arun Kumar and Sonali Kumar, has attained another landmark, with the Portuguese translation of his first book: “How to Cook In A Jiffy Even If You Have Never Boiled An Egg Before” hitting all prominent on-line book stores of the world, like Amazon, Apple iTunes, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Nook, Scribd, Gardner, Chegg, Inkterra etc.
Translated by Patricia Chamorro and published by Babalcube Inc., this translation is expected to meet the demands of the Portuguese speaking populations of Brazil and Portugal for a good “College Cookbook”. As already reported, “How To Cook In A Jiffy Even If You Have Never Boiled An Egg Before” is supposed to be “the easiest cookbook on earth” which attempts to teach the magical art of cooking to even such novices who can’t even boil an egg properly.
Originally launched by Amazon, in October 2013, this Survival Cookbook by Prasenjeet Kumar, recounts, with wit and humour, the author’s own semi-autobiographical experiences of participating in a “finding me a meal ritual…….(and) bumbling about in the wonderlands of cooking” in London, where he was pursuing for four years an LLB (Honours) degree as well as Legal Practice Course (LPC) Diploma.
Where this book scores over other How To Cook books is in the manner in which it treats no question as “too stupid”. Its next USP is its very logical and structured approach in which it follows a step by step “graduation” process.
“You start with some very basic cooking techniques such as how to break, poach, fry, boil (and peel) an egg, learn how to handle chicken, vegetables and fish and then ‘graduate’ to making such ‘complicated’ recipes as cheese omelette, vegetables au gratin, baked chicken or French Onion Soup”, says the author.
The progression taught is logical and almost common-sense. For example, once you boil an egg, you are taught how to make an egg sandwich and then graduate to making a grilled egg sandwich. Similarly, you are first taught how to boil a chicken, and then use the stock to make a chicken sweet corn soup and the boiled chicken for making KFC-style breaded chicken.
Most uniquely, the book claims to teach the concept of “sequencing and parallel processing” in cooking that should enable busy people to create a 3-4 course meal in less than 30 minutes.