Soiree not sorry

How to host a dinner party without going crazy

I have to say that my world tilted on its axis when I read that the original Domestic Goddess, Nigella Lawson, was giving up on hosting dinner parties. You know the kind I mean, don’t you? They featured on most of her TV shows, all twinkly fairy lights, a brilliantly laid table and platters and platters of interesting dishes, drawn from every corner of the world. 

Well, Nigella is giving up on all that now. She has had enough of being the hostess with the mostest. Now when she entertains, she makes one big dish with a few accompaniments, sets everything on a side table and asks everyone to help themselves buffet style. And yes, did I mention that nobody is required to dress up either? Her guests are welcome to trundle in wearing their pyjamas. 

I have to pause at this point and make it clear to my friends and family that if they ever turn up for dinner at mine in their nightwear, they will be sent right back home to change into something decent. If I can make the effort to cook dinner, they can make the effort to put some actual clothes on. 

But sartorial debates aside, is Nigella right about this? Are dinner parties over? Is entertaining at home now a matter of opening a packet of chips and ordering in a Biryani while everyone lounges around in their nighties? 

Well, I hope not. There is nothing quite as gratifying going to a friend’s house and discovering that he or she has spent the day making all the dishes you love; settling down in a room scented with candles while ambient music sets the tone; whetting your appetite with some well-chosen nibbles; and then sitting down to a long, multi-course dinner that you haven’t cooked. I don’t know about you, but I would get dressed up for that!

That said, Nigella has a point. There is no point hosting a dinner party if the experience is just going to stress you out. The idea of having friends and family over is to enjoy time with your loved ones, not fret about whether the soufflés will rise or the jelly will set. (Keeping it simple but scrumptious is the way to go.)

So if you still want to entertain in style but don’t want to break out in hives about it, what should you do? Well, here are my top tips:

• Invest time in prep. Choose a menu in which at least 50 percent of the dishes can be cooked a day (or even two) before and stored - and may even be the better for it. That puts less pressure on you on the day of the party. 
• Don’t put anything on the menu that needs to be done a la minute (as in, on the spot). That is an invitation for things to go wrong. 
• Don’t make two menus for vegetarians and meat eaters. That’s too much work. If you have vegetarians on your table make an essentially vegetarian meal and add two meat or fish dishes. Trust me, no one will complain. 
• Don’t bother with making dessert. It’s too much of a palaver and by the end of the meal, everyone is too full to do it justice anyway. Just order in a cake or macaroons. Or even some ice-cream - it will help you chill!

Can't cook? Or won't cook?

You can take pride in one, not the other

“I can’t cook.” I’ve lost count of the number of times I have heard this phrase over the last few years. It is uttered by both men and women, old and young, married and single people. Lacking the ability to cook is, apparently, an equal opportunity offence.

Yes, you read that right. I did use the word ‘offence’. And that’s because, as far as I am concerned, not being able to cook is to lack a vital life skill - you know the kind that keeps you alive. And for the life of me I cannot fathom why people take such pride in announcing that they don’t possess it.

Before you all write in irately, I am well aware that in our modern age those who don’t know how to fry an egg will not go to bed hungry. That our world is heaving with restaurants that will keep them well fed (and perhaps better fed) if they don’t know how to cook. That if these non-cooks don’t choose to venture out they can order in everything from Hakka noodles to sushi rolls to channa bhaturas. And that most middle-class folk in India can afford to hire a part-time cook who comes by once a day and stocks their fridge with food that they can re-heat for lunch and dinner.

So, I accept that in this day and age, it is often not necessary to cook at all.

I can also get on board with the fact that many people simply don’t want to cook. That they have demanding jobs that leave them drained at the end of the day and they don’t want to come home and spend a couple of hours in a hot kitchen sweating in front of the gas range. Some of them may just not enjoy cooking even though they have all the time in the world to rustle up delicious meals. And then there are those who are simply not good at this cooking malarkey and don’t wish to show themselves up every time they step up to the stove.

There are as many reasons to not cook as there are cuisines in this world. But there really is no reason why anyone should take pride in the fact that they can’t cook at all.

I can understand where this pride comes from though. At the most basic level, it is an announcement of privilege. Other people may need to feed themselves but not me. I have a wife/cook/expense account to keep me in three course meals complete with dessert. For women this pronouncement comes imbued with the whiff of feminism as well. After centuries of being stuck in the kitchen while the men went off and conquered the world it feels empowering to announce that you have no use for the kitchen.

But that, if you ask me, is not the same as announcing that you have no use in the kitchen. That is an entirely different matter. And one that I don’t believe anybody - man or woman - should take pride in.

I am by no means suggesting that everyone needs to sign up for Cordon Bleu lessons or even invest in a full set of Nigella Lawson cookbooks. No, you don’t need to go the full Domestic Goddess by any means.

What you should be able to do is to feed yourself more than Maggi noodles or chocolate biscuits if you are left to your own devices.

This is the point when most people will point out that there is something joyless about cooking for yourself. Why go to all that bother when the only person at the table is you?

Well, you should go to all that bother precisely because the only person at the table is you.

You deserve better than a hastily slapped together sandwich with mayonnaise and cold meat. Or a packet of crisps and a Diet Coke. Or even a wedge of cheese and some crackers. You deserve a meal that some time and effort has gone into. Because you are worth that time and effort.

Trust me on this because I speak from experience. When I was growing up I didn’t so much as venture into the kitchen because that was my mother’s domain and she didn’t welcome any interlopers. So my first experience of cooking for myself came when I moved to Delhi into a tiny little barsati with an even tinier kitchen. That’s where my cooking adventures began - with a humble dish of scrambled eggs that I ate on the terrace while breathing in the fumes of traffic. And nothing I had eaten up to that point matched that taste of freedom, independence and yes, self-care.

Since then I have graduated to rustling up Italian risottos, Thai curries and Chinese stir-fries. And yes, there are still days when I don’t want to cook. But I will never ever say again that I can’t cook. And I do take pride in that.

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.

Stirring stuff

Hey ladies, it may be time to reclaim the kitchen!

I spent part of this weekend on the fringes of a cooking competition, watching as eager young amateur chefs tried their hands in a professional kitchen. There was an even gender divide, and quite frankly, there wasn't much to choose between the men and the women as far as skill sets went. The winner got a substantial cash prize and a cooking show on Youtube. (And no, sorry, I can't tell you whether a woman won...)

The day after the competition ended, I found myself at lunch with some friends in the hotel business. "So," I asked, fresh from my experience at the cook-off, "do your kids like to cook?"

"Oh no," replied the lady, "I told my daughter from the beginning that the kitchen is a trap. Once you get in there, there is no getting out."

I must confess to being startled, never having seen it quite like that. Is the kitchen really some sort of swamp that sucks you in, or even sucks the life out of you? Is the gas range a place where the dreams of young girls go to die a fiery death? Does roasting, grilling, frying, baking, make a kitchen slave out of you?

Well, I have been turning over this conversation in my mind ever since and while I totally get where my friend was coming from, I think we are doing a disservice to our daughters by telling them to get out of the kitchen or else...

Yes, there was a point in time when kitchen work was sheer drudgery, when women could end up spending entire lifetimes sweating behind the stove, putting food on the table for their families. There was an era in which men wouldn’t be seen dead cooking; the mark of masculinity was to be waited on hand and foot. And yes, it wasn't that long ago that women would routinely be told that their place was in the kitchen; and I can only imagine how bloody annoying that must have been.

That's probably why the first wave of feminists regarded housework as something to be rid of, why they saw the kitchen as a cage within which entire generations of women had been imprisoned, and why friends like mine advised their daughters to steer clear of this stifling jail.

If you ask me, though, those days are long gone. We now live in a world in which the kitchen has become an intensely glamorous space. It is a place where high-powered careers are forged in the fire, where celebrity chefs pout and preen, where food bloggers find their inspiration and their place in the sun. These days, it is entirely possible to get both fame and fortune from behind the kitchen range. Just think how Gordon Ramsay and Nigella Lawson have spun their cooking abilities to gain world-wide celebrity. Or even how Manish Mehrotra and Gaggan Anand have become household names in India.

Men have cottoned on to this transformation and no longer treat the kitchen as a no-go area, and cooking as something beneath contempt. They experiment with recipes, they write food blogs, they review restaurants, they publish cookbooks, they pitch for TV shows. They realise that the kitchen now represents a career opportunity like any other.

Don't you think it's time women caught on as well? Well, some do, and have made the most of the opportunities cooking represents in the modern world. But there are still too many women who view the kitchen with suspicion, as a cunning trap set to lure them in and tie them down. And that is truly a pity.

But even if we leave all this stuff about careers and fame and fortune aside for a moment, and just think of the sheer pleasure involved in making a meal for those you care about, the kitchen begins to look like a far less scary place. That's when cooking ceases to be a chore and becomes an act of love.

And just for that, it might be worth it to put on that apron, break out that recipe book your grandmum left you, and reclaim the kitchen.

eom

Domestic Goddess in a domestic…

Yes, we all feel for Nigella Lawson; but it’s time to back off and let her live her own life

Domestic Goddess. That was always how we were meant to see Nigella Lawson. Hell, she even put that helpfully in the title of her second book, How To Be A Domestic Goddess, for those of us who were too thick to get it.

And Domestic Goddess she certainly was. The voluptuous Earth Mother, cleavage quivering like the creamiest blancmange, as she bent over the stove to create one stunning treat after another. She smiled beatifically at the camera, dipped her fingers into chocolate sauce and licked them clean, rustled up amazing three-course meals for her friends in a fairy-lights bedecked living room, while her two young children, Cosima and Bruno, ran around looking absolutely adorable in the background.

Who could possibly resist? Not me. I loved her (and still do) from the moment she first hoved into view in her first TV series, Nigella Bites, cooking in her home kitchen in her London flat and making it all look so easy. By the time the second season was being filmed, though, the idyllic home life portrayed on camera was an elaborate fiction. While Nigella fried and roasted and baked and the kids romped about, her first husband, John Diamond was in the bedroom, battling the throat cancer that first took his tongue and then his life. But you could have never guessed the trauma that Nigella was going through behind the brilliance of that on-camera smile.

In that sense, Nigella was less TV cook and more accomplished fiction writer. Like the best novelists of our times, she created a perfect, rose-tinted world in which it was forever summer and drew us in with its promise of sunshine and double chocolate cake until we wanted nothing more than to be a part of it. As we watched Nigella go shopping for organic meat and vegetables, throw together a superb dinner (easy-peasy, she assured us), pour herself into a cocktail dress and greet her guests with a glass of champagne in hand, we knew that this was the life – and we wanted a part of it, if only as gawping viewers.

But the fiction served a greater purpose than mere TV ratings. The persona of the Domestic Goddess proved to be the perfect cover to hide behind as Nigella endured a third bereavement (she had already lost her mother and her sister to cancer). The second season of Nigella Bites premiered a week or so after her husband’s funeral, and watching those shows now, I can’t help but wonder if Nigella was conjuring up those images of domestic bliss on television in the hope that life may soon imitate art.

If she was, then it worked brilliantly. She found love again with art collector and former adman Charles Saatchi, and the two of them moved in together and then married to play blended families with her two kids and his only daughter, Phoebe. They have been married ten years and in this phase of her life, Nigella has gone from strength to strength (her net worth is now said to be in the range of 20 million pounds). Since her first cookbook How To Eat (the title was suggested by John Diamond) became a best-seller, she has produced nine more books, presented several TV series (Nigella Feasts, Nigella Express, Nigella Kitchen, Nigellissima) and is now going on to conquer America with a new food show, The Taste, in which she is a judge.

But if Nigella was just Superwoman – which she manifestly is – then we would just admire her; and maybe just resent her a teeny tiny bit. The reason we love her is because she is also Everywoman. She has seen loss, suffered through tragedy, wrestled with every challenge life has thrown her and emerged triumphant in the end, gorgeous smile intact.

That is the woman that all of us knew and loved. And when that picture-perfect persona was shattered before our very eyes with the publication of those pictures of Charles Saatchi’s hands around the throat of our heroine, we felt a very personal sense of betrayal. Shock was followed by outrage, and then with reams of unsolicited advice for Nigella. Get the hell out of your marriage. Dump that bully of a husband. He doesn’t deserve you. Stand up for yourself. Be a role model for other women. Don’t take this nonsense.

Yes, I know that all of us feel for Nigella Lawson right now. But let’s not forget that nobody knows how to live her life better than Nigella herself. Even if the Domestic Goddess has been turned into a Poster Girl for Domestic Violence with those photos, that is not the image that will come to define her.

If the past has taught us anything it is that Nigella Lawson is The Great Survivor. Today she may be wandering wanly around the streets of London, pale-faced and hollow-eyed, as low-life packs of paparazzi hound her every move, and the tabloids put her on Divorce Watch (her wedding ring is off! It is still off!!). But before we know it, she will be back, having re-invented herself for another stint in the sun. We just need to give her time and space to make sense of this phase of her life – and move into the next.

What on earth?

Here's the next update in the series labelled: the abiding mysteries of life...


Yes, I know, I have mentioned these before: those abiding mysteries of life that keep me awake at night. But you know what, I wasn't quite done. So, here's the next edition of what threatens to become a recurring series (don't say you weren't warned!)


* Why is it that the moment an 'expert commentator' begins praising a batsmen at the crease as he nears a milestone (50, a century, 10,000 runs in Test cricket), the batsman in question gets out? I'm pretty sure you've noticed this as well. In fact, so well-documented is this phenomenon that it even has a name: 'commentator's curse'. But nobody seems able to explain why this happens. The players on the crease certainly can't hear what's going on in the commentary box. And yet, no sooner have the encomiums started flowing than the batsman starts his trudge back to the pavilion.

* Why do shower stalls in hotels only have shampoo bottles placed inside while the bath gel is kept next to the bathtub? Do hoteliers really believe that people first bathe in the tub and then tip-toe across on soapy feet to the shower stall to wash their hair? Did I hear a resounding no? Okay, then, how about you place a shampoo bottle and a bath gel at each location. At the prices you charge you can certainly afford it.


* How on earth does Sridevi look the way she does? The actress, who turns 50 this year, looks younger (not to mention considerably thinner) than she did during her heyday as the reigning superstar of Hindi cinema. Gone are the chubby cheeks and the thunder thighs. Instead we have a slim, svelte woman with miraculously-smooth skin with nary a frown-line in sight. The actress insists that it's all down to careful eating and regular exercise. I'm sure she is right but I have to say that her appearance in English Vinglish reminded me of that old joke. How can you tell the young actresses apart from the old ones in Hollywood? The young ones have wrinkles.


* And while we are talking about 50-ish women who look better with every decade, what is up with Nigella Lawson? If she does indeed eat all the food she twit-pics every day, where do all the calories go? Surely, they can't all be burnt away by her daily treadmill-pounding (wearing only a bra – no, I am not making this up; we are indebted to Lawson herself for this little nugget of information)? So why don’t all those doughnuts and fry-ups settle around her waist?


* Why is it that the moment you find a perfume that is just you, or even a lipstick that is perfect for your skin tone, the manufacturers decide to discontinue the line? Is this part of some giant conspiracy by cosmetics companies to keep us fickle and uncommitted so that they can benefit from our 'experimentation'?

* Why does the traffic lane you choose always move the slowest? Ditto, queues at banks, immigration counters at airports, and the like. And you can be sure that if you decide to ditch the line moving at a snail-like pace for the one that is galloping on ahead, the two will switch personas as soon as you switch sides.


* And while we are on traffic, why is it that you always get a red light at every intersection when you are running late? On the days when you have all the time in the world, the lights stay resolutely green, in a classic display of contrariness. If this is something that happens to you as well, here's a little trick that works like a charm for me. On days that I want to speed through, I leave home without my kajal on, telling myself that I will apply it at the first red light. And guess what? The lights stay green throughout my route.


* Why do people follow you on Twitter only to berate you for what you tweet? Do they not realise that they can just click on 'unfollow' and never have to hear from you again? And that this is a far less stressful (both for them and you) option than letting loose with a volley of insults and verbal abuse for having failed/annoyed/angered them? It really is a bit like calling up someone you don't know on the phone only to complain that you don't like the sound of their voice.

* Why does the Snickers bar keep shouting 'Eat me' whenever you open the fridge? And is there any way to shut it up?


* Why are the mirrors in the changing rooms of all clothing stores so unflattering? Not to mention the nasty neon lighting that makes everyone look even more pasty-faced than usual. Do store owners and managers not realise that they would move more merchandise if buyers could look at themselves in flattering light in a mirror that didn't make their ass look big in everything? (Or is that down to the Snickers bar?)


* Why is it that the day you can sleep in late is when you wake up at the crack of dawn (and then can't fall asleep again no matter how hard you try)? And on the days when it is imperative that you get up early, you can barely drag yourself out of bed? Is this your body clock’s idea of a joke? And when will it understand that we are not amused?

Women, lies, and weight-loss

As Nigella Lawson shows off her new, slim-line look, it’s time to ask: are full-figured women ever really happy with their bodies?

We all love Nigella Lawson, don’t we? The food show hostess with the mostess. The home cook with the killer curves. The culinary queen with the majestic embonpoint. The domestic goddess with the décolletage to die for.

Actually, make that to ‘diet’ for. Because that’s exactly what Nigella has been doing over the last year. And now, you can feast your eyes on a new, slim-line Nigella hosting her new food show, Nigellissima (that’s ‘Very Nigella’ to all us non-Italian speaking oiks) and showing off her size 12 frame on magazine covers and in newspaper supplements. Gone is the voluptuary who lived on bacon, red meat, bread, double cream, chocolate, and lashings of butter (not in the same recipe, of course). In her place, we have the ‘sensible’ eater who drinks wine only on Fridays and has discovered the joys of exercise in her 50s.

And that sound you hear? It is the collective moan of disbelief from millions of women all across the world who can’t quite believe that the Patron Saint of Plump Pulchritude has let them down so devastatingly. And when they finally get their voices back you can be sure that they will be asking Nigella a few sharp questions. (So, Nigella, all these years when you were assuring us that you were happy in your buxomness, were you just lying to yourself? Or was that nothing-tastes-as-good-as-gluttony spiel just one giant con perpetrated on the rest of us?)

As someone who also loved the old, voluptuous, sometimes downright greedy Nigella, I can understand the sense of betrayal. This was a woman who made us feel good about having curves and wobbly bits; who told us to take pride in our bulges rather than wage war on them. And now that she has gone all low-fat and small-waisted, we can’t help feeling that she has let the side down.  

Not that Nigella ever set herself up as Poster Girl for big women but the sub-text of all the 3,000-calorie recipes was quite clear. As were those images of Nigella raiding the fridge late at night for some comfort food. Indulgence was good for you. You needed to feed your appetite. Life was too short to have low-fat ice-cream. Nothing tasted better than saturated fat.

Well, some things haven’t changed. Nigella’s recipes still pack in a few thousand calories. But the woman herself doesn’t seem to be eating any of her food. Instead, she’s all gussied up in her new size 12 wardrobe, making the rest of us feel hopelessly fat.

But why blame Nigella alone? I have lost count of the number of full-figured celebrities who go red in the face telling us how happy they are to be big – right until the moment they pose for a photo-spread to show off their recent weight loss.

Sophie Dahl was famously discovered as a fat teenager by the fashion stylist Isabella Blow, and created a sensation when she walked the ramp in all her bodacious glory. But just when you felt that the world of high fashion would at last begin to embrace what it likes to call the ‘plus-size’ woman, Dahl resurfaced on the Opium billboard having lost two-thirds of her body weight and looking as waif-like as the next model.

And then, there’s Dawn French. The humorist who spent her entire life telling us that she was happy to be humungous, has now lost 40-something kilos and is looking like a shadow of her former, frankly-fat self. She puts it down to having discovered exercise (there we go again) and cutting out on chips and chocolate. And, she adds, a tad defensively, that she still loves her ‘old body’. (Oh yes, she loves it so much that she’s got rid of half of it!) 

All of this begs the question. Were any of these women actually ‘happy’ being the size they were? Or were they just lying about it to make themselves feel better even as they tried every trick in the book to slim down? Well, your guess is as good as mine.

That said, women, lies and weight-loss are inextricably linked. For every woman who claims that she is happy at her current size even as she diets and exercises in secret to slim down, there is another who puts her slimness down to good genes and swears that she eats everything and never works out, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

But now that Nigella and her famous curves have left the show kitchen, who will be flying the flag for buxom beauties everywhere? Well, there’s always Christina Hendricks, who plays the curvaceous Joan Harris in Mad Men. But given how offended she was when an Australian interviewer asked her about being an inspiration as a ‘full-figured’ woman (she refused to answer the question and said it was ‘rude’ to describe her in such terms), I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time before she goes all slim-line on us as well.

Ah well, never mind! At least back here in India, we will still have Vidya Balan to reassure us that a little muffin top never hurt anyone (and nor did a muffin or three). But if she ever signs up to a diet regime or threatens to bring out a fitness video, we’ll know that the fat is truly in the fire.

Kitchen confidential

Sadly, the only people who can afford dream kitchens are those who wouldn’t dream of ever stepping into one

Don’t you just love the shiny, sprawling, spotless kitchens that feature in all those glossy interior design magazines? They come in shades of yellow and green, pale pastels, crisp white, or even monochromatic grey. But no matter what the colour, all of them look like perfect settings for our own inner Domestic Goddess.

Sometimes they are done in faux vintage style with brass and copper implements suspended from the roof. Sometimes they aspire to the minimal look, with every cooking appliance tucked away in storage cupboards. Sometimes there is a nice worktop where you can chop and peel away to your heart’s content. And sometimes there is a tiny table with bar stools where you can catch a hasty breakfast. There is a kitchen to cater to every taste; a kitchen to meet every need.

I don’t know about you but I can spend endless afternoons salivating over the visuals of these kitchens, dreaming of a time when I can finally afford one. Needless to say, that time is unlikely to come – well, at least, not in this lifetime. But hey, a girl can dream, right?

And since you ask, the kitchen of my dreams is a sunlit vision in primrose yellow offset with the palest of pale ivory. There is a large central island with cheerful wicker seating for my friends to lounge around in with a glass of wine while I rustle up a three-course meal (warning: only those who help with the chopping of the salad get dessert). The cooking range is set against a picture window looking on to a patch of garden outside, where fresh herbs grow, ready for the picking. The oven and microwave are industrial-sized but hidden away behind a glass counter. And the shelves are heaving with every ingredient known to Nigella – and then some.

Yes, okay, I admit it. A huge part of my longing for this kind of kitchen comes from watching far too many food shows set in picture-perfect kitchens. It is another matter that these ‘kitchens’ are set in studios rather than in the anchor’s home (yes, even Nigella’s!). But such is the fantasy of domesticity they conjure up that even those of us who can’t really cook want a kitchen that looks just like that – perhaps in the mistaken belief that once the hob is in place the cooking skills will surely follow.

And then, there are all those television serials that nurture the dream. In my case, it all started with Friends, where everyone congregates in Monica’s open-plan kitchen in good times and bad. The kitchen in Brothers and Sisters where Nora Walker feeds her extended family, provided further fodder. And more recently, the open-plan kitchens in Castle, where the mystery novel writer noshes and joshes with his mother and daughter, have fed the fantasy.

The first open-plan kitchen I ever saw in real life was when I went to interview Shah Rukh and Gauri Khan for a cover story (for Sunday magazine, where I then worked). This was before Shah Rukh became Shah Rukh, if you know what I mean, and I was granted the kind of access that hacks can only dream of these days.

As I sat with the Khans in the open-plan living-cum-kitchen area of their first Mumbai home – a humble flat in Bandra – listening to the story of how they first met and fell in love, a couple of things became rapidly clear to me. One: this was the kind of kitchen I wanted when I grew up. And two: I would have to give up on dal and subzi because open-plan kitchens were not conducive to Indian cooking unless you were happy to co-exist with the smell of roasting spices.

As it happens, life didn’t turn out quite like that. And now, as I wander disconsolately through the humungous design showrooms in the malls of Delhi and Mumbai, I realise that my entire real-life flat would fit into one of these dream kitchens and still leave space for more. And given the price of urban property, I am guessing that it’s much the same for most of us.

Which begs the question: who among us can actually afford these dream kitchens that are forever being advertised in the media? And I don’t just mean in terms of money – though the price tag, upwards of Rs 5 lakhs and going up to 25, would give anyone pause – but also in terms of space.

Unless you are a multi-millionaire with money to burn, my guess is that you live in an average-size flat. And flats like these aren’t big enough for one of those spacious kitchens stuffed with every gadget and gizmo that money can buy. In fact, ordinary folk like you and me consider ourselves lucky if we can squeeze in a microwave and oven-griller-toaster into our modest kitchen spaces.

Sadly, the only people who can afford the kind of dream kitchens I fantasise about are people who wouldn’t ever dream of stepping into one. These are the people who leave both the cooking and serving to the staff, and wouldn’t recognise a vegetable slicer even if it took their index finger off. And yet, to them are granted the nicest kitchens of all.

Ah, the little ironies of life – you’ve just got to love them.

Food for thought

Why does the sight of an attractive woman enjoying her food
make us think of sex?

I've read her books, tried her recipes, and devoured the results with lip-smacking delight. I've followed her career from the time she was a food writer at Vogue to now that she has become a global food brand in her own lunchtime.

But through it all, I've never understood all that palaver about her sundry television shows. Why did everyone get their knickers in their twist about what they termed `food porn'? What exactly did Nigella Lawson get up to with a carrot as the camera lovingly panned in for a close-up? What unspeakable acts did she commit with a rack of lamb? To
what evil end did she use dark chocolate?

My mind boggled as I thought of every deviant act that a grown woman behind a kitchen counter could perform on food objects for the delectation of television audiences worldwide.

I finally had the chance to get some answers when channel-surfing idly I came upon a programme titled Nigella Feasts (Discovery Travel and Living). My first thought as I watched the splendidly upholstered Nigella throw in cups of full-fat cream and ladlefuls of butter as she whipped up a humungous quantity of eggs was that the show's title was grossly misleading. It was less Nigella Feasts and more Nigella Serves
up a Heart Attack.

Suddenly, the secret behind that bounteous cleavage was all too evident. It glistened and gleamed, quivered and bounced with such life and verve because of the copious amount of animal fat, red meat and sugar it had been brought up on. Clearly, Nigella took her duties as self-anointed Domestic Goddess seriously enough to gobble up all the
high calorie treats she cooked on her show.

For the life of me, however, I couldn't understand all that fuss about `food porn'. Or `gastro porn' as some of the more literary critics dubbed it. Sure, Nigella has a rather tactile approach to cooking, touching – even caressing – her ingredients, kneading and pounding with feeling and slurping everything up with lip-smacking approval.

And unlike most curvy women who hide behind shapeless dresses, she does this while proudly showing off her assets in a tight sweater.

But `food porn'? Seriously! Anyone who thought that there was anything even remotely pornographic about a full-figured woman enjoying her pudding needed their head examined. And as for that well-worn cliché about how food is like sex, those who believe that cannot have had much experience of either.

I have to say, though, that the show got me thinking. What was it about Nigella that made people immediately think `porn' even if it was in the context of food? Sure, she is sexy in a Mother Earth sort of way, with soft, flowing tresses and a mouth that was made for licking batter off a bowl. And it can't hurt the ratings that her cleavage
shows off to best advantage when she bends over the stove to taste her spoils. But to go from there to pornography is rather a stretch.

Part of the problem may well be that we are simply not used to seeing women of Nigella's shape as sexual beings. The media is flooded with images of stick-thin women with plastic breasts and collagen-enhanced smiles. So the sight of a normal sized woman who (to the best of our knowledge) has not been cosmetically enhanced, looking sexy and
sensual throws us completely.

We see women like this around us every day but they become imbued with a certain fetishistic appeal when they appear in their full-bodied glory on television. There is almost a shock/horror element to seeing them showing off their bits on screen without the slightest trace of embarrassment.

What makes Nigella's performance even more unnerving, I think, is that she doesn't apologise for way she looks – she celebrates it. And instead of dishing out slimming recipes or offering low-fat options, she delights in all manner of fattening foods. As she once wrote, paraphrasing Oscar Wilde, "I have nothing to declare but my greed".

And in her persona as foodie femme fatale, her appetites are to be indulged – not dulled by a regimen of sensible eating. Perhaps the reason why people find something sexual in her blatant enjoyment of food is because it implies that she will not shy away from feeding her other senses.

Padma Lakshmi, the former Mrs Salman Rushdie, who also hosts a food show, doesn't evoke quite the same feelings. Even though the former supermodel has a fabled appetite (for food, I hasten to add), you can't help feeling that she had to have thrown up everything she ever ate to look this emaciated. And while her first cookbook, Easy Exotic, listed a model's low-calorie recipes from around the world, Nigella's
How to Eat embraced every food group, no matter how `unhealthy'.

Maybe, that's what accounts for all this nonsense about `food porn'. In our shape-obsessed world, food has become forbidden fruit, a guilty treat best sampled in secret. The act of tucking into a big meal – or looking as if we enjoy it – in public has acquired a tacit taboo at a time when self-deprivation is all the rage. And maybe that's why Nigella's performance smacks of illicit pleasures rather than an honest appreciation of good food.

Which begs the question, food porn anyone?