As those of you who follow me on twitter couldn't possibly have missed, food and bev (well, wine and spirit at least; I claim no knowledge of fruit smoothies and vegetable juices) are almost the core themes of my 140 character declamations. What you are less likely to have noticed is that nowhere in these outpourings will you ever encounter the word 'foodie'.
Well nigh anyone can lay claim to being a foodie these days. A few visits to restaurants serving an assortment of cuisines (including multi-cuisine spreads at hotel coffee shops), the odd dive into a fresh produce market somewhere, the ability to name at least one form of pasta other than spaghetti and macaroni, a nodding acquaintance with Scotland's finest and there you have it. A new foodie has been minted.
Here's how my own enduring love affair with food began. As a child not yet in my teens, I would regularly accompany my father to the weekly meat and veg shopping trip to the neighbourhood mandi. In Delhi, for instance, in 1971, we would head for Mohan Singh Place, a dowdy looking shopping centre on Baba Kharag Singh Marg just off Connaught Place. The amazing colours and aromas of all the fresh produce on display and the pleasant higgle haggling that always accompanied the transaction made for a delightful and memorable, excursion. The veg would go into the fridge but almost as soon as we were back home, it was time to chop up the fresh fruit to assemble a Sunday morning Fruit Salad. The sprightly citrus of the orange, sparkling sweetness of Dashehri mangoes, mellow aroma of kharbuj- muskmelon, intensity of pineapple- all topped off with large dollops of fresh cream- ah, what bliss! I wouldn't have know it then but in such moments was laid the foundation of a life time love of food. And cooking.
Cut to college, about 7 or 8 years later. In those austere days, when it was still fashionable in India to be stoically indifferent to venal, fleshly pleasures and morally righteous to be above them, I was busy running around obscure galis and mohallas of Bhendi Bazar in Bombay, Shukrawar Peth in Pune and later, Teen Darwaza in Ahmedabad looking for the delectable morsel. I was discovering the joys of the epicure at the Kabab Roti stall near Do Taki at Duncan Road. I was immersing myself in the greasy, nearly deep fried omelette at Lucky Restaurant, Deccan Gymkhana, Pune. Fully loaded Gujarati Thalis, Sweet 'n sour Berry Pulao, Pithla Bhakri at Aswad, Kohinoor Mills, Farsan at Ellis Bridge, all these and much more were grist for my insatiable mill.
There was no stopping it.
Became a working man at 22 and the job took me to places I had never been before. Makkhan malai on Kanpur's Birhana Road, hare matar ki kachauri and hot jalebis deep in the heart of Calcutta's Bara Bazar, robust meats (and mutton rasam, believe it or not) at Sree Velu Military Hotel, the subtleties of authentic Mughal cuisine at Dastarkhwan-e-Karim at the evocatively named Gali Kababiyan near Delhi's Jama Masjid, ghee drizzled, silky soft idli at Bangalore's Mavalli Tiffin Rooms were all taken note of and duly accounted for.
While a lot of this happened to the accompaniment of such distinguished spirits as Old Monk and Director's Special, not to mention endless gallons of London Pilsner, Kalyani Black Lable and Kingfisher, the palate was also beginning to demand subtler libations. This search for refinement was given substantial impetus when in 1993, I finally quit smoking. On a visit to Singapore the following year, my then boss, Ashutosh Garg first introduced me to the art of Malt Whisky. The intense smoky, iodine-y, marine flavour of Laphroaig, my very first measure of Malt, was like nothing I had ever tasted. Love at first sip.
One thing led to another and before long, I was diligently accumulating and wrapping my taste buds around the caramelly Glenlivet, the milder marineness of Bowmore, the smoky sweetness of Highland Park, the tuberosey, jasminic Ardbeg...oh I could go on.
Even as this delightful story unfolded, I kept finding inspiration for even more exploration on television. Perhaps the earliest was food as stand up comedy - Chef Martin Yan's "Yan Can Cook" with his catchphrase "If Yan can cook, soooo can you". Soon after, I was blown away by the eccentric, eclectic genius of Keith Floyd (now, sadly, only of fond memory). Somewhere along the line, the Goddess Nigella smote me and I was never the same again. The point being, the world was full of all these awesome divinities and I was a questing acolyte, a supplicant at their magnificent temples of taste and flavour.
Time marched on. New tastes and flavours were discovered and embraced and it became clear that one lifetime would scarcely suffice to gain even a fleeting understanding of the gastronomic ocean upon whose shores I foraged.
How then can I ever claim to be a foodie?
Well nigh anyone can lay claim to being a foodie these days. A few visits to restaurants serving an assortment of cuisines (including multi-cuisine spreads at hotel coffee shops), the odd dive into a fresh produce market somewhere, the ability to name at least one form of pasta other than spaghetti and macaroni, a nodding acquaintance with Scotland's finest and there you have it. A new foodie has been minted.
Here's how my own enduring love affair with food began. As a child not yet in my teens, I would regularly accompany my father to the weekly meat and veg shopping trip to the neighbourhood mandi. In Delhi, for instance, in 1971, we would head for Mohan Singh Place, a dowdy looking shopping centre on Baba Kharag Singh Marg just off Connaught Place. The amazing colours and aromas of all the fresh produce on display and the pleasant higgle haggling that always accompanied the transaction made for a delightful and memorable, excursion. The veg would go into the fridge but almost as soon as we were back home, it was time to chop up the fresh fruit to assemble a Sunday morning Fruit Salad. The sprightly citrus of the orange, sparkling sweetness of Dashehri mangoes, mellow aroma of kharbuj- muskmelon, intensity of pineapple- all topped off with large dollops of fresh cream- ah, what bliss! I wouldn't have know it then but in such moments was laid the foundation of a life time love of food. And cooking.
Cut to college, about 7 or 8 years later. In those austere days, when it was still fashionable in India to be stoically indifferent to venal, fleshly pleasures and morally righteous to be above them, I was busy running around obscure galis and mohallas of Bhendi Bazar in Bombay, Shukrawar Peth in Pune and later, Teen Darwaza in Ahmedabad looking for the delectable morsel. I was discovering the joys of the epicure at the Kabab Roti stall near Do Taki at Duncan Road. I was immersing myself in the greasy, nearly deep fried omelette at Lucky Restaurant, Deccan Gymkhana, Pune. Fully loaded Gujarati Thalis, Sweet 'n sour Berry Pulao, Pithla Bhakri at Aswad, Kohinoor Mills, Farsan at Ellis Bridge, all these and much more were grist for my insatiable mill.
There was no stopping it.
Became a working man at 22 and the job took me to places I had never been before. Makkhan malai on Kanpur's Birhana Road, hare matar ki kachauri and hot jalebis deep in the heart of Calcutta's Bara Bazar, robust meats (and mutton rasam, believe it or not) at Sree Velu Military Hotel, the subtleties of authentic Mughal cuisine at Dastarkhwan-e-Karim at the evocatively named Gali Kababiyan near Delhi's Jama Masjid, ghee drizzled, silky soft idli at Bangalore's Mavalli Tiffin Rooms were all taken note of and duly accounted for.
While a lot of this happened to the accompaniment of such distinguished spirits as Old Monk and Director's Special, not to mention endless gallons of London Pilsner, Kalyani Black Lable and Kingfisher, the palate was also beginning to demand subtler libations. This search for refinement was given substantial impetus when in 1993, I finally quit smoking. On a visit to Singapore the following year, my then boss, Ashutosh Garg first introduced me to the art of Malt Whisky. The intense smoky, iodine-y, marine flavour of Laphroaig, my very first measure of Malt, was like nothing I had ever tasted. Love at first sip.
One thing led to another and before long, I was diligently accumulating and wrapping my taste buds around the caramelly Glenlivet, the milder marineness of Bowmore, the smoky sweetness of Highland Park, the tuberosey, jasminic Ardbeg...oh I could go on.
Even as this delightful story unfolded, I kept finding inspiration for even more exploration on television. Perhaps the earliest was food as stand up comedy - Chef Martin Yan's "Yan Can Cook" with his catchphrase "If Yan can cook, soooo can you". Soon after, I was blown away by the eccentric, eclectic genius of Keith Floyd (now, sadly, only of fond memory). Somewhere along the line, the Goddess Nigella smote me and I was never the same again. The point being, the world was full of all these awesome divinities and I was a questing acolyte, a supplicant at their magnificent temples of taste and flavour.
Time marched on. New tastes and flavours were discovered and embraced and it became clear that one lifetime would scarcely suffice to gain even a fleeting understanding of the gastronomic ocean upon whose shores I foraged.
How then can I ever claim to be a foodie?
