Dishing it out

How our relationship with food has changed over the last decade or so

Remember a time when food was just food? When it was something that you ate without thinking too much about it. When the highlight of your weekend was your mom's rajma-chawal (or fish fry or chicken biryani or whatever your comfort food was, growing up). When going out for a meal was something you did only on special occasions, like a birthday or an anniversary. When the only item of food that ever got photographed was your birthday cake -- and that, only because you were in the process of cutting it.

Well, if you are above the age of 30, you probably do. That was probably the last generation to come of age in an environment where food was just food. There was no obsessing about the calorific count of various dishes. There was no concern about the harm that sugar/carbohydrates/fat were doing to your health. Food wasn't something that you obsessed about; it wasn't something to fetishize on TV shows. Cooking was seen as mere drudgery; there was nothing glamorous about whipping up a three-course meal for your friends. And if you eschewed entire food groups on the grounds that they weren't good for you, your mom was more likely to give you an enema than cook a special meal for you.

But, as you may have noticed, things have changed since those innocent days when we mainlined maida (and snorted up industrial quantities of sugar) through the day without giving it another thought. Now, we are all mindful of what we eat. Wholewheat bread rather than white. Free-range eggs, not those produced by battery chickens. Olive oil rather than butter and cream. Lots of vegetables. White meat not red. Steaming rather than frying. And so on and on and on.

We all have a 'food theory' or a fad diet that we subscribe to. Some of us believe in 'clean eating', which translates into lots of fruit and vegetables with minimal cooking involved. Some follow the Paleo diet, eating food that only the Paleolithic man ate. Some still swear by the tried-and-debunked Atkins diet (lots of red meat, cream, cheese, butter, with a side order of cardiac arrest). Some don't let a morsel pass their lips after 7.30 pm in the belief that this will make them thin.

And then, there are those fancy themselves as 'foodies', with an abiding interest in different cuisines and the desire to gorge on them all. They are the ones trying to recreate that dish they saw on Masterchef in their kitchens. They are the ones most likely to whip up a 'mean Thai red curry' or bake a 'flakier than flaky croissant'. They are the ones who plan their holidays around the restaurants they want to eat in. Call them gourmands or gourmets, it matters little. It is food that drives them all.

Food allergies have had their day. Now we justify our exclusionist diets by evoking those two words that strike terror in every hostess' heart: food intolerance. So you have your regular lactose-intolerant folk, who won't have anything made from milk (except dahi, it has something to do with lactic acid apparently; but don't ask me more because the explanation was so boring that I fell asleep halfway through.) And then there are the newly-minted gluten intolerant folk (no, they haven't had tests, silly; they just understand their own bodies so well.) But the truly annoying ones are those who claim to be 'vegan' because it sounds so much more exotic, when they are, in fact, just plain 'vegetarian'.

How we eat has become a status symbol. If you eat parathas and dahi for breakfast you are a bit desi. The truly sophisticated would have rye bread and free range egg white omelette. Rotis or dal chawal for dinner? How very infra dig! You should really be having some grilled fish or chicken with a green salad on the side.

As for how we cook -- well, we cook mostly to show off. The potluck dinner is a thing of the past. Now, the way to impress your friends -- or even your boss -- is to create a restaurant-quality meal in your own kitchen (the more 'exotic' the cuisine, the more the bonus marks). If it's Italian, then an easy-peasy pasta or risotto won't do; you need to put at least an ossobuco on the table. If it's Thai, then a simple curry doesn't cut it; an omelette stuffed with crab would be a better indicator of your skill. If it's 'Continental', then you need to pull out all the stops: savory soufflé, lamb done pink and a chocolate fondant to end. And if it's Indian...well, really, why even bother?

And remember how the food looks is as important as how it tastes. Because, you know, Instagram. And Facebook. And Twitter. That's where all those dishes are destined to live on forever, scooping up likes and compliments, long after the meal is long over.

Because food is no longer simply food, to be wolfed down as soon as it makes an appearance on the table and forgotten soon after. Now, every meal is something to be mulled over, every dish a photo-opportunity, and every ingredient a statement.

So, bon appetit to all you 'foodies'. As for me, since you ask, I'm sticking to my rajma-chawal!

Oh, how I hate Masterchef!

 Let me count the ways…

I’ve always been a fan of food shows on television. There is something infinitely comforting about sitting down for half an hour or so and watching someone cook a lovely meal on the telly. You can lose yourself in the colour of the ingredients, the gleam of the kitchen utensils, and the expertise of the TV cook. Everything comes together seamlessly as she – yes, I know you’re visualizing Nigella Lawson now, as one does – peels and chops, roasts and fries, and then serves up a delicious spread to friends and family. You can almost taste the roast lamb and potatoes, hear the satisfying crunch as a crab claw gives up its succulent meat, and smell the vanilla scent rising from the bread-and-butter pudding. It’s a food feast for all your senses, even if it’s one step removed from reality.

And then, there’s the Anthony Bourdain school of food telly. Here, you get taken to one exotic location after another, shown the kinds of dishes that you’ve never ever seen, heard of, or even dared to imagine. You go from the street food of Bangkok to the tapas bars of Barcelona, from the backwaters of Kerala to the sushi bars of Tokyo, from the brassieres of rural France to the gritty streets of New York’s Chinatown. And you get a vicarious taste of the world, thanks to your intrepid host, as you watch open-mouthed from your couch.

In shows like these, it is the dishes that are centre-stage, the meals which are the stars of the show, and the entire point of the exercise is to appreciate food in all its infinite variety. The hosts are just there to tease out the flavours, the colours and the aromas, and of course, to eat on our behalf. What’s not to love?

And then, there are shows like Masterchef, which take food in all its life-affirming glory and transform it into an instrument of mental torture; which take the art of cooking and suck all the joy out of it so that rather than being an act of nurture it turns into an exercise in humiliation. What Masterchef does, one cook-off at a time, is snatch away all the pleasure that you derive from feeding others, leaving gut-wrenching anxiety in its wake. It is less a food show or even a cooking contest and more a gladiatorial smackdown in which only one winner will be left standing in a field of cooking casualties. Seriously, what’s not to hate?

Food should be infused with the love you cook it with, not contaminated by tension and stress. It should be served up with smiles of pleasure, not with a side order of the tears you shed because you feared elimination from a competition. And it certainly shouldn’t lead to ritual humiliation if you don’t hit exactly the right spot.

As if this was not enough, there’s the generous lashings of emotional manipulation thrown into the mix. Nearly every participant has a hard luck story: there’s the single mother cooking on a budget for her daughter; the recent immigrant who can only rely on his culinary skills to get ahead; and thus it goes.

I am sure that all of them are very worthy people who deserve to make it big. But, to tell the truth, I am not terribly interested in their backstories. And all that hyperventilating about how nervous they are in a professional kitchen and how scared they are of elimination: frankly, it leaves me cold. When I tune in to see a food show, I’d like it to be about the food, thank you very much.

Ah, the food! There is something soul-destroying about the poncy little plates that are served up to the judges, weighed down as they are by gimmickry and artifice. Give me a good, honest dish any day, with clean flavours, fresh ingredients simply cooked, and served up with the minimum of fuss. Instead, we get ten kinds of fiddly garnishes, complicated sauces, all of it peppered by pretension.

And that’s before we even get on to the ‘experts’ on the panel. There is something risible about such chefs as Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White lecturing the participants about calmness and communication in the kitchen. These are men who have built their reputations on their abusive behavior in their own kitchens. During their careers, they have turned the air blue in every kitchen they ever worked in, with their extensive vocabulary of four-letter words. They have turned bullying into a fine art. Their kitchens are hothouses of tension, stress and full-on fear. And then, they turn up on our TV screens, holding forth on the virtues of ‘calm’. Give me a break.

But leaving everything else aside, you know what is the saddest thing of Masterchef? It’s the fact that it makes cooking appear stressful and scary rather than fun and relaxing. Watching the participants fret and fume, or go into full-on meltdown mode, doesn’t really inspire us to get cooking. And that, at the end of the day, is the real pity.