A Matter of Taste

You know these cooking shows where the host will say 'Mmmmmmm' even before he/she has got the spoon anywhere close to their mouths, and how they will go on endlessly on how the kitchen at their end of the camera smells, and how wonderful this cook they have chosen on their show is? Well Vir Sanghvi will have none of that!!

On his show he goes deeply into food. Food is not just to be treated in a superficial manner. It is the very life source. What you put in is what you put out. Now please go beyond the literality of that statement, but it's true. We eat god knows how much without a thought into what we put into our mouths. But it is afterall this food which breaks down to the energy which becomes the output of all our actions. And this guy treats food with that reverence. Food on his programme is not just about the sensuality of the affair, as it is reduced to in most programmes. But he combines that gastronomical sensuality, with the history and cultural value of food.

A tandoori chicken doesn't only become an object of voyeuristic pleasures, but he will tell you how it came to be, and how it has travelled forth hence. Infact the other day he introduced on his show the man who invented 'Gobi Manchurian'. I told my mother this, and she disbelieves that there could be such a person. She, like many of us, has always imagined gobi manchurian to have been here since the first amoeba split into two or it just came into being by some mysterious force. I like it when people go deep into things.

And I love a man who can speak his mind. Not for him the mindless 'ummmm'ing and 'awww'ing. He will tell you when your dish is nice. He likes subtle flavours, so do I. And he will with his subtlety tell you when you stink. When he covered Indian Chinese food on his show, he also tasted of the roadside chinese food in Delhi. I've had it with hosts who romanticise this street food business; come on, I think to myself, for you it may be a romantic fantasy to eat with the roadside walahs, but for many it is an everyday matter, so what is with this elitist fuss one kicks up about the joy hidden in the recesses of a roadside puchchka. Anyways, I apologize for divulging in personal frustrations. As I was saying Vir Sanghvi ate from this cart of Chinese Chaat, he then said 'skdhfeu' and walked up to the chef, shook his hand and said 'Long may they curse you in China'!.

I just realised a strange phenomenon, I think for the first time, I could be a fan!Or maybe not true to the word, because I don't even know at what time the show airs. I have just magically discovered it between my endless channel surfing. I have seen only halves of two episodes so far. One on the Indo-Chinese food and the other on the Tandoori chicken.

But I love the show, because the food makes me weak in the knees, and I hang on hungrily to every word the man says, and I guffaw when things like this happen: Indian chef, famous in U.K for establishing the Chicken Tikka Masala, cooks it on the show, our host tastes a spoonful and says "You maybe a very good cook, but that it absolutely revolting"!