Dr Hector Perera     London

It is possible that anyone can cook but cannot gain the experience just like that. I can remember back home in Sri Lanka they employed rural poor people as servants because they do not have any other way to earn a living so they become domestic servants. To have a servant or two in a house is not an unusual thing. Now the things have changed and the servants are gold dust. Those people are employed in different jobs such as in cooking, baby sitting or even as drivers. They know cooking because they normally cook at their houses than getting any takeaway food. Now plane loads of so called kussi ammas gone abroad for better paid jobs to Middle East and similar countries.

British TV cooking demonstrations

Nearly on daily basis they show cooking programmes and demonstrations in British TV but I have my doubt if any of them really apply any science in cooking. All the food we eat and drink are nothing but very complicated chemicals. Some chemicals cannot be mixed together in certain conditions. You might add some coconut oil to a curry but one cannot allow the oil to be heated to the flash point and add even a drop of water, it will be too dangerous.  I am sure some people know what I mean. When we warm some oil in order to fry something like papadams or dry red chillies soaked in salt water, you must have seen the reaction with hot oil and red chillies. The initial reaction is so much it gives out some chemicals in chillies in the frying pan and gives you cough, make you sneeze, watering the eyes then drool comes out of the nose, sometimes smelly gases leak out from the other end. This is a part of cooking some servants have to do while cooking. Now who would like to cook that way? What about frying dry sprats or dry fish? Very likely any British do not understand what this is about but any Asian such as from Sri Lanka quite understand what that is about. Have I got to describe the smell given out while frying these things? The chemicals move in a globular fashion than in a straight line. If one controls the fire while frying these things then one can control the size of that chemical globe that means fry them in a controlled fire in order to reduce the chemicals. These chemicals move at the double the speed of jumbo jets and hit anything around or nearby due to this speed. If anyone fry that kind of things then certainly the smell is likely to deposit first on the hands then on any open places such as the face then on the clothes. Any way don’t worry, I got the solution and this is the problem. Unless you know the problem cannot find a solution.

Plenty of celebrity chefs cooking

I have seen most of the so called celebrity chefs or cooks do not care about the amount of fire used in cooking or frying. If you do not believe me, just watch any cooking programme, may be on a weekend when you have some free time to watch the morning TV. Quite often there are guests as invited to the show. Sometimes one person sitting next to the chef who cooks so many things then keep on talking. If the show is about cooking why not talk about something relevant to cooking than jabbering something else. The audience have to imagine what’s going on cooking then listening to the guest and to his or her history and life style.

I was a secondary school chemistry teacher where I had to teach, control and listen to about 25 students. Only some students are prepared to listen while others do not pay any attention. Imagine if I talked something else than explaining anything in chemistry, would it be relevant? Even if I explained and talked about the subject, sometimes still difficult to control the whole class. I am sure most of you know the situation when they were students. If all the students listened accordingly, the things would have been different.

The situation can be different if the class was limited to about 5 or even less then they pay more attention. Nearly for five years I volunteered to help one of the primary school children in the science. I mentioned to the headmaster that I was not there to baby sit but to teach for that reason, I wanted to select only the students who really wanted to learn. I am pleased to see their results and that small class ended up in top grades. I found out some are University graduates.

The TV celebrity chefs know exactly what do but most of the times do not give any explanations. Their cooking and frying give out plenty of smoke and fumes but they do not care. The people who watch these programmes get the wrong impressions. They think cooking is a tedious job where one has to virtually shower with cooking aroma and fumes. No wonder many people tend to eat takeaways including the University students.

The fire used for cooking can be controlled as required but most of the times in TV cooking they leave the fire at full pressure and cook. Actually that is a real wastage of energy. You must have witnessed in one of the programmes where they make omelettes. They pour the omelette mixture to a very hot cooking pan in order to make it, sometimes it even catches fire. Do they not understand that any food is a bad conductor of heat? One must allow a reasonable time to heat to get through. This is one point where one has to reduce the fire, the excess is just a wastage of energy. May be not to TV chefs but to rest of us, energy is money, we all have to pay for them. How many people even in England find it difficult to pay the energy bills, especially in this winter period? That is why I am asking the people who cook, not to waste energy, make the most it than wasting.

In order to understand the efficiency of energy, one must apply simple science in cooking. Even though I understood this energy saving very difficulty and now I in a position to explain and demonstrate in simple terms. I have already done this demonstrations to small crowds of people in Colombo and they wrote to me that they apply my method to save energy. Please let me remind again, I am not a cook but a chemistry teacher and apply science in order to save energy then to stop any cooking aroma depositing on them while cooking. I didn’t keep this method as a secret but demonstrated to some small crowds of people then demonstrated even in TVs in Sri Lanka so the public would benefit. If anyone thinks that my method is a fake or a scam then I put forward a sum of money as a challenge. If the so called energy saving experts in England are prepared to take up my challenge or even these British TV celebrity chefs are prepared to come forward and disprove my scientific energy saving idea is a fake or a scam then there is £50,000 yes fifty thousand sterling to be given away. My method depends and based on science, some laws I apply are established even two centuries ago. If those scientific laws are accepted even today from Harvard University in Massachusetts in America to Oxford University in England, my method cannot be wrong. I practically demonstrated only in Sri Lanka to the public in ITN TV then in Sirasa TV for 45 minutes.

Let me raise a small question why not these TV shows in England are not given me a chance to demonstrate the technique to general public in England. If the so called energy saving experts in England and even the so called TV celebrity chefs disproved that my method does not save energy then please don’t forget the challenged money as mentioned above. Use energy efficiently in cooking than burning money because wastage of energy means burning money that is how I think. Your comments are welcomed perera6@hotmail.co.uk