The comedian Buddy Hackett once said, “My mother’s menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it.” I am consumed with envy. What confidence! What conviction! I wish that, instead of trying to be a people-pleaser, I could have said exactly that.
As it happened, there was a daily struggle to put a colourful, balanced meal on the table, shop within a budget, buy seasonal vegetables, and get them to eat it. After all that, to see puckered brows and hear dramatic sniffing made me want to throw in a trowel.
I remember my own childhood, the daily return home from a long, hot school-bus journey, desperately ravenous. I’d spend the last half hour of the ride visualising my favourite food and come home to find, alas, French beans- alu , peeli dal , salad and dahi. Even that I attacked with gusto. And even then, when I reached for a third phulka , I was stymied. My mother would push a bowl of dahi towards me and say okay, later, after you finish this. Or at dinner, when there was always some kind of meat, we had to take more veggies.
Every day, new menus were devised and though we had little say in them, I can see now how beautifully balanced and attractive the meals were. And now, benefiting from the careful planning, we think of those menus as good menus, and are grateful for the eating habits. And then there were the taboos, some of which I long for even now.
We were not allowed to eat potatoes if there was rice or bread on the table. Today, given a free hand, I love to dice a few potatoes into a vegetable pulao. And screech to a halt — and reverse — if I drive past a pavement stall of bread pakoras. (“Bread coated with besan and filled with potatoes! And fried? What sort of disgusting food is that?”) They remain a special treat, along with vada pav . Of the same ilk.
Alternatively, I shouldn’t have been exposed to any information or views on what makes a healthy, nutritious diet. I could have pleased the kids with so much easy cooking.
In any case, every few years, the rules would have changed: eggs would have been bad, then good; ghee would have been bad, then good; coconut oil, ditto; chicken would have been good, then unhealthily full of growth-hormones and antibiotics… So the easiest way out would have been to make things I read about, but didn’t dare cook: sweet parathas , oozing melted sugar caramelising on the tawa ; parathas filled with processed cheese; white bread slathered with cold butter and sprinkled generously with sugar. This even fulfils many haute cuisine criteria with its variety of textures: the soft fresh factory-made bread covered with cold, salty butter so thick as to form another slice; the large white crystals of sugar not mingling in the butter but crunching separately. I think it’s a wonderful dessert, especially now that I see on TV so many unexpected combinations: bacon in chocolate cupcake icing and peaches with foie gras .
I’ve never had a cheese-filled paratha , but it’s not hard to imagine it, the crisp and golden fried wheat-flour casing, with cheese leaking out here and there, getting browned and chewy where it touches the griddle. As the kids would have said, what’s not to like about it.
And though nutritional wisdom changes, this doesn’t: white flour, white rice, white sugar are all still the bad boys. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
But one or two incidents make me think that maybe being a tough food Nazi was worth it. When the children are away from home for an extended period, indulging in nasi goreng , pizza, tortellini, naan or butter chicken, they return home dreaming of greens. On the last inward leg, one of them will say, “Can we have a large green salad tonight?” Better still, the one that lives away will come home asking for palak, tinda, tori, lauki and bhindi , pushing away oily qorma to reach for pale-green greens.
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