|
|
|
Jan 10, 2000 |
INDIA TODAY | DAILY NEWS | ASTROLOGY | HOME |
 |
 |
|
 Look who's cooking Did you know that Madhu Sapre can whip up a mean masala khichdi? Or that Ajay Jadeja's a sucker for prawn curry-keang curry koong? Bet you didn't. But Rashmi Uday Singh does. The queen bee of food critics, author of the highly successful Mid-Day Good Food Guide to Mumbai and earlier, anchor of the equally successful tele-guide Health Today, has spent a good part of 1999 chasing celebrities for her just-out book The Oberoi-Penguin Celebrity Cookbook (Penguin; Rs 500). The ingredients (you guessed it) include recipes from top shots in various fields, the kind you would not dream of associating with the humble hearth. Why the celebrity angle? Well, for one, it's different. And, explains Singh, these are people "who have reached the top of their professions because they are passionate about perfection". Even, apparently, when it comes to churning out their chow. So there's garlic mushroom from industrialist Vijaypat Singhania, Mangalorean shellfish curry from actor Sunil Shetty and Saraswat prawn curry from writer-socialite Shobha De. No kidding either. The celebs actually cooked for Singh. And while drawing out culinary secrets from such unexpected quarters was adventure enough, there are other tidbits that she gleefully recounts. Like the pleasant contrast in moving from the grandeur of the Maharaja of Jodhpur's table to Mrinalini Sarabhai's son Kartikeya Sarabhai's open-air kitchen "where a pudgy caterpillar landed on my notebook". Delicious memories. As Singh keeps busy with her newly opened shop, Rashmi Uday Singh's Good Food Gallery at Crossroads in Mumbai, and gives finishing touches to her next book, the Mid-Day Good Food Guide to Pune, she gurgles: "There was one thing all these celebrities have in common. They all find cooking extremely relaxing. Shobha De says there's a bit of Zen in cooking." Next book? Zen and the Art of Culinary Excellence? -Anna M.M.Vetticad and Farah Baria
|
|
BUSINESS TODAY | INDIA TODAY PLUS | COMPUTERS TODAY Write to us | Subscriptions | Advertise with
us |
