“Kitchen Sink” Concept

How many of you know what is meant by “Kitchen Sink” in the cooking parlance? It means, “Everything, but the kitchen sink…”.

I got introduced to this concept when I first tasted the “Kitchen Sink Cookies” from Whole Foods Market. My colleague from New Orleans buys these cookies for our team whenever he visits our Houston office.

In a kitchen sink cookie, you can expect to see flour, oatmeal, chocolate, varieties of nuts, coconut powder, raisins, and anything else except the “kitchen sink” 😁. And it tastes real good!

I employ this “kitchen sink” technique frequently whenever I feel like experimenting in my kitchen.  Sometime back, I raided the fridge and made a “kitchen sink” Pav Bhaji by adding some non-conventional pav bhaji veggies like radish, chayote squash, eggplant, kohlrabi and even asparagus along with some traditional veggies.  The end result, an awesome and unique tasting “kitchen sink” pav bhaji that everyone loved!

When I grew up, my dad’s morning schedule included him walking around our home garden and collecting any veggies that were ready for harvest on that particular day.  That means a typical day’s harvest could look like this – 2 brinjal, 6 ladies finger, one mini ridge gourd, 7 cluster beans, about 10 val papdi, 1 drumstick, etc.  If these vegetables were not harvested that particular day, they would go waste.  And we did not have a fridge at that time to harvest and store them without getting spoilt.  Also, we could not make separate dishes for each and every vegetable as there were only quite a few for each variety.  Solution?  “Kitchen sink” sambar, dal, curries, stir fries etc almost on a daily basis, but no complaints, we thoroughly enjoyed them as the vegetables were organic and they were at their peak flavors.

OK, some homework for all of you this week: try a “kitchen sink” dish by throwing in leftover vegetables and some random spices into your favorite dishes and note the difference they make!

Or if you are short on ideas (or really an organized individual with no leftover vegetables, I doubt it though…), why don’t you make my mom’s awesome Super Masala Egg Scramble wherein she throws in about 20 ingredients when making the simple egg scramble (yes, everything from her kitchen goes into this awesome egg scramble, except the kitchen sink, of course). Vegetarians, vegans – you can substitute crumbled paneer or tofu for egg and still attempt that “kitchen sink” egg scramble dish.