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Love bites
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A well turned out gojju or gateau sends them into ecstasy even as indifferent cooking is viewed as apostasy. SUGANDHI RAVINDRANTHAN gets a whiff of the ingredients that go into the making of foodies.
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"TELL ME, doesn't it make sense?" Of course it didn't, but who can argue with a foodie? K. Shankar, born vegetarian but now a happily converted omnivore, was elaborating on how to make the idli more nutritious. "I told my mother to half-cook it, then add chopped vegetables, then pour more batter over it and steam it again." I don't know if his mother obliged him, but she probably understood him. Shankar has been making up for lost time. He once told me bitterly: "When I was growing up, I was allowed to get away with only rasam and curds."
According to him, the pursuit of pleasure is best accomplished unencumbered by inhibition. His profession has taken him across Africa, the Middle East (where food is central to bonding and relationship-building), and South East Asia. To this day, while the faces of his clients and acquaintances are a blur, the sensations and images of the great food he has had remain as sharp as ever. "Business has been a pleasure in the past five years," he sighs contentedly.
He agrees "there are potholes on the road to pleasure". Often there are dishes that have more exotic than culinary value. Like the fried sparrows in Hanoi that were greasy and had more painfully sharp bones than worth the effort. But, the young man says, "for a committed hedonist like me, gastronomic voyages tend to be very rewarding".
However, his favourite cuisine remains subcontinental. From the butter chicken and kababs of Delhi, or the prawn guchchi and garlic butter-fried crabs of Mumbai. Not to forget this Bangalorean's nostalgic forays to savour the masala dosas at Central Tiffin Rooms in Malleswaram. "There's something truly indulgent about Indian food. Even our sweets are far too sweet for foreigner," he says.
However, the true foodie that he is, he says there is one cuisine that has escaped wider recognition and commercialisation: Bengali cuisine. "For someone totally unfamiliar to the distinctive smells and tastes, my reaction to Bengali cuisine was totally instinctive - it was love at first bite."
He has a soft corner for "the sheer gastronomic variety of Bangladesh, where Bengali cuisine scales new heights - a fact even West Bengalis grudgingly acknowledge. To this day, when I close my eyes and remember the noisy, chaotic Dhaka, the first imagery that comes to mind is the mind-blowing shorshe ileesh (hilsa fish in mustard sauce) and the massive chunks of fried rohu served at Kasturi."
Shankar turns misty-eyed remembering another dish, taki bharta - fish mashed with onion, mustard and green chilli and rolled into small balls, which are broken and eaten with rice and dal.
Kanchan Kaur, media consultant, agrees. She actually falls sick when deprived of her roti, subji, and dal. Though she was brought up as a Bangalorean, she can stand classic South Indian food only so much.
However, she fell in love with Arab cuisine, especially Lebanese, during a stint in a Dubai newspaper. "Oil is anathema to me. In Arab cuisine, everything is either broiled or baked. They use only the mildest of flavours and so the natural taste of the food is retained. However, their sweets are truly awful," says this svelte woman, who would die for a daily fix of tiramisu and was once accused by a friend of "eating like a Rottweiler".
"One of the sad things about modern life... is the lack of time for good food... we microwave our food and eat on the rush... But for me, a good table is a course of joy and pleasure... sitting down for good conversation and home food, fixing the ills of the world over a good bowl of lentil soup... " writes Cuban feminist Silvia A. Brandon Pérez. "Whenever I would have marital problems or whenever I had had a bad day... I would come home and knead my bread dough that much harder and longer... Cheaper than a headshrinker... "
Vijaya S. perfectly understands this sentiment. This working woman often vents her anger and frustration on chapathi dough. "Makes the softest rotis," she says. When she is happy and at peace, she makes her legendary saffron-spiked vermicelli kheer. "It takes me four hours to make a potful. I don't use the ghastly spaghetti-like vermicelli that chokes your throat. I seek out the fine variety that would disintegrate if you're not careful."
Like plant lovers who talk to their beanstalks and bittergourds, she whispers to her vathal kuzhambu and aviyal. "I tell you, it works. You don't know the things I do to make the idli batter rise to perfection in winter."
Perfection is what foodies seek. "Nothing irritates me more than fraudulent dishes palmed off as the real thing by restaurants that charge a bomb," fumes Rohini Ravi, a gourmet in Kerala cuisine. "Whenever I see halwas thickened with maida or ulli thiyal in drag, I go ballistic. I once roasted the chef in a five-star restaurant for garnishing vegetable stew with fried onions. Of course, at the time I was tanked up on margaritas," says this spirited woman who doesn't mince her words.
Let's drink to that
THE MORNING is black and baleful. I lurch out of bed and shuffle towards the kitchen. The household is quiet, not because it is dark (it is actually 8 a.m.) but because my homicidal tendencies are at their murderous best. It is more by instinct than by vision that I locate my beloved three-decade-old coffee filter. I reach for my coffee powder dabba, half-full of coarsely powdered peaberry, untainted by that interloper, chicory. I half-fill the filter with the fragrant powder, and pour the boiling water.Even as I reach for the milk sachet, the doorbell rings. Instinctively, I glance at my set of gleaming stainless steel knives. Then, remembering the manners my mother taught me, I stumble all the way to the door. It is the newspaper agent with the bill. Through bleary eyes, I see that I owe him Rs. 270. I rummage in my bag and hand over a five-hundred-rupee note and two hundred rupee notes. The agent, who must have had his cuppa three hours back, pockets them unprotestingly.
Spouse, used to the ways of a female brain undrizzled by caffeine, smoothly moves in to set right the fiscal matters.
I stumble back to the kitchen, open the sachet and put the milk to boil. Three-fourth teaspoon sugar, one-fifth tumbler of the heady coffee decoction, topped up with boiling, foaming milk. A quick swish or two from the tumbler to the dabra and vice-versa.
I look lustfully at the golden, aromatic brew and take my first sip. My brain pops open as do my eyes. I gaze affectionately at my family, and indulgently at the mess in the house. The papers report all sorts of horrible things humans do to each other. I look out. The sky is grey, smoggy, and the air reeks of spent fossil fuel. I decide I can live with all the nonsense that is going on.
Gentle reader, should I ever pop into your abode, please serve me tea, for I make the best coffee this side of the Cauvery.
S.R.
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