A popular expert who declares at the outset, he is no specialist. Just did what he did because there was an utter need then. And now, he has done what he has done because there is still a need.
Much-feted cricket expert Boria Majumdar has recently ventured out of his “regular stuff” and donned the cook’s hat with a book, Cooking on the Run (Collins). He though asserts in the Foreword, “It is not the work of a specialist.” A need and love for his own food while pursuing studies at Oxford, rather the kind that rolled out to the table from his mother’s kitchen back home in Kolkata, pushed him to learn cooking. So much so that he felt he gained “a sense of freedom” which he didn’t know could give him so much joy.
The reason behind dishing out the book is linked to this ‘freedom’. “I have written this book because the average Indian men are like me. When they are away from home, they often suffer because they don’t know how to cook the food they love to eat,” he says in an e-mail chat from Kolkata.
He proudly declares that all the recipes spread through the book’s 170 pages are either the outcome of his own experiment with food or variations of the tried and tested dishes, say the likes of dimer devil and jhalmuri. Most of the dishes are from Bengali cuisine though the book has names like Malabari prawns, tandoori chicken, Kung pao chicken and chicken biryani among others. “The bulk of the dishes are from Bengal for the simple reason that I am a Bengali and that’s the kind of food I have been eating all my life and have in turn learnt to cook,” he states his reason.
Boria admits giving up writing the book “a good many number of times” because he was not entirely convinced of the idea of venturing into a field where chefs in tall hats tread. His friends though have always showered him with compliments like “you make a mean biryani.” He went ahead when realisation dawned that “this isn’t a cookbook per se, nor do I claim to be a culinary expert of any order.”
Boria now jocularly says, “You know, in my scheme of things, everything I make turns out nice. Having survived on rubbish for years — when I hadn’t an idea how to cook, whatever I now make tastes good to me.” He owes a lot to his mother in this culinary journey and is absolutely delighted that his mother enjoyed reading the book. “She has now tried out a couple of my recipes at home,” he says.
For someone who started by frantically calling his mother from Oxford that the eggs have not boiled even after an hour only to realise that the gas burner was off, this looks like a typical Virender Sehwag innings!
