Love, Loss, and What We Ate Read online

  Only on special occasions did my family make these types of treats at home, because the process made the entire house smell like frying oil and because they took a houseful of laborers to make. For instance, when we made the crunchy snacks called murukku, the women of my family would gather at Chinnu’s house and converge on an old bedsheet in the hall. With oil on our hands, we’d handle the rice and lentil flour dough, simultaneously twisting the dough with our fingers as we formed spirals on the sheet. (For both the helix created by the twisting and the resulting shape, we called this all-day operation “spinning murukku.”) Then we laid each spiral on the sheet to dry before Bhanu fried them all. Before we started the spinning, of course, we always molded a knob of dough into a rudimentary figure, dabbed near the head with red vermillion powder, meant to represent Lord Ganesh, the gluttonous god who adored snacking. I’m no expert on the standards and practices of Hinduism, but my guess is that this figure served as a talisman, ensuring that the murukku would turn out well.

  At home, Neela and I conducted many experiments to clone the pleasure of ampapads—a sort of fruit leather made from mango that can only be found in the north. Though ampapads can be sour (khatta) or sweet (meeta), both Neela and I liked the sour ones most. Whenever my beloved uncle Ravi visited from New Delhi, he’d bring what seemed like suitcases full of ampapads. We’d suck wads of the stuff all day, like ballplayers with chew, at least until my grandmother or Aunt Bhanu caught us and insisted we stop lest we get stomachaches. Our attempts at producing homemade ampapads were destined to fail, of course, because making ampapads at home would be like replicating Fruit Roll-Ups in your kitchen without a dehydrator. Still, we’d smash and press and finally, tired of wasting good fruit, give up, instead simply dousing the fruit with salt, chili powder, and lime juice. Often we’d bring bowls of our concoctions to eat on the veranda, our bare legs splayed on the marble, cold from the shade of the big tree.

  We also loved churan, intensely flavored powders or tiny balls, especially jeera goli (spheres made from ingredients like black salt and cumin) and our favorite, anar dana (made from dried pomegranate seeds and spices). There were many kinds of churan, which are mostly used to settle the stomach after a heavy meal. They are bracingly sour and salty with a touch of sweetness, and so intense they make the sides of your mouth twinge with expectation at first sight, let alone first bite. They are meant to be eaten in small doses, but Neela and I often made whole meals of churan, popping golis into our mouths like Raisinets.

  Once in a while we burned a wok trying to make our churan, and Jima, Bhanu, or another matriarch would banish us from the kitchen. “You should’ve told us,” they’d say. “We would’ve helped you.” You’re not getting it, Neela and I thought. This is our party and you’re not invited. To this day, the elder women of my household in Chennai still regard Neela or me with suspicion whenever we enter the kitchen to make anything other than tea. No matter that I host a cooking show or that Neela has raised two healthy daughters who clearly haven’t starved or been disfigured by a kitchen accident.

  Of course, we never went long after a reprimand before returning to the kitchen, especially in the quiet of midafternoon, when the napping gatekeepers left it unguarded. Like janitors in a lab, we waited out the scientists until we were alone with the chemicals and could tinker. We made many versions of chili cheese toast, a classic Indian snack that today is on every hotel menu in India. The formula for this subcontinental club sandwich is bread, butter, cheese, and minced green chilies. At the time, we used Britannia brand bread, a knockoff Wonder Bread (the packaging even sported colorful squares instead of circles), which was like a scratchy motel pillow compared with the soft, fluffy down of the real thing. We used Amul brand “cheese”—or, more accurately, processed cheese-like product, because it had all the quality of Laughing Cow wedges left out too long without the wrapper. But no matter. Decked out with minced chilies or Maggi brand Hot & Sweet—essentially ketchup and Tabasco swirled into one—the sandwich never disappointed. We cooked it with a sort of pie iron, a contraption with two long wood-covered handles, like those of scissors, which opened and closed the metal encasement. We’d hold a stick of butter like a marker and scribble the fat on the inside of the metal, then close it around the sandwich and hold it over the stovetop flame, turning it until the bread was a crunchy shell for the molten, processed goodness inside.

  On the side, we ate cucumber slices topped with a tart spice mixture called chaat masala. We ate the cucumbers with toothpicks—we thought the toothpicks made us very sophisticated. We also made chocolate milkshakes to go with the sandwiches, which were basically Cadbury Drinking Chocolate powder swirled into milk. We would hide our small tumblers behind all the food in the fridge so no one would even know they were there, until everyone went to sleep at night, and then we would have our midnight feast. It was hard to get any private time in that house without several generations watching your every move. So our little midnight parties were just for us older kids, no adults, no Rajni or Rohit.

  Most of all, Neela and I loved the category of snacks called chaat. Chaat comes in such vast variety that only the few qualities every example shares—namely, a thrilling mixture of temperatures, textures (crunchy, crispy, and soft in all of their own myriad degrees), and flavors (hot, sweet, tart, and tangy)—can provide a meaningful definition. Chaat, to me, succeeds via culinary chemical principle: the combustion generated by opposites brought together in a bowl. Though things have changed, when I was a kid, no restaurant with four walls and self-respect would sell chaat. The pleasures and thrills offered by chaat were the domain of street vendors, operating out of stalls or pushcarts. The best were composed in front of you, in Delhi. Our beloved chaatwallah, near India Gate, made an exceptional version of my favorite, papri chaat: crunchy fried semolina discs dressed with warm chickpeas and potatoes, spice powders like red chili and black cumin, and the holy trinity of chaat sauces—tart, cooling yogurt; bright cilantro-and-mint green chili chutney; and tangy tamarind-date chutney. Those three sauces could create chaat from little else—potato, crunchy chickpea-flour noodles, an exploded samosa—resulting in an elegant hodgepodge, an incredibly complex-tasting dish.

  Whenever I visited Delhi to see my uncle Ravi, I made him stop for chaat on the way home from the airport, perhaps for pani puri (or golgappa, as it’s also called). This meant watching the chaatwallah pull a miniature sphere of puri (bread that’s fried so it puffs and becomes crunchy) from a pile, poke a hole in its top with his finger, and add a dollop of potatoes, black chickpeas, and tamarind-date chutney inside. Then he’d dunk the whole thing in pani, which looks like swamp water but is actually a strange and beguiling mix of pureed mint, chili, tamarind, spices, and water. You’d knock it back in one exhilarating bite. Nowadays, you’re often presented with the components and required to assemble each bite yourself, which is a bit like your favorite chef presenting you with his mise en place of prepped ingredients. Pani puri is never as good as when a master makes it.

  What Neela and I craved in particular about chaat was the unique flavor that defined and united the array of snacks. We knew this as chaatpati. Think of it as the Indian umami. When a snack combined saltiness, tartness, sweetness, and spiciness in that magical, mouth-smacking proportion, then that snack had chaatpati. At the time, we had no words to describe that sought-after sensation, so when asked to explain, we’d say, “You know, tlck tlck,” as we clicked our tongues against the roofs of our mouths, the sound of satisfaction. For us, chaatpati was the condition to which all food should aspire. For me, that has pretty much remained the case for my whole life. As a high school student and lapsed vegetarian, I became enamored of the Double Bacon Western Cheeseburger at Carl’s Jr., because the combination of salty bacon, creamy melted cheese, and sweet, piquant barbecue sauce amounted to chaatpati. Given the crunchy onion ring that topped the patty, I was basically eating a chaat burger. When I’d eat my beloved nachos from Green Burrito, I was drawn to the chaat-like qua
lities—there were chips (some crunchy, some soggy) as well as tart, spicy salsas and cooling dollops of sour cream. Had there been a sweet component, the nachos might have officially reached chaatpati status.

  Even as a young girl I could tell that the South Indian chutneys we ate on the streets of Chennai were more balanced and round than the jagged-edged northern ones we had eaten in Delhi. We missed their sharpness, and often when we were hungry or bored, we set out to re-create it. Our best sauce to come of all those years of trial and error was our chaatpati tamarind-date chutney. This dark and gooey sludge became my first mother sauce of sorts, because it instantly woke up any bland or boring ingredient and made it finger-sucking good.

  When Neela and I cooked, we were as obsessed with reproducing that tang and tingle as we were with replicating Sharmila Tagore’s eyeliner in the old Hindi movies we studied. Tagore was a great beauty. A Bengali actress who shot to prominence in art-house Satyajit Ray films, she then crossed over successfully into Bollywood and became a major leading-lady bombshell. In our favorite movie, Amar Prem, she plays a courtesan (which we did not even grasp the meaning of), and her appearance is slightly vulgar, with gaudy jewels, garish saris, and dime-sized bindis. This was our ideal. We admired this look the way my daughter lights up at the sight of any article of clothing in Katy Perry pink. Food and fashion were our twin passions, bound together in our feminine, Indian identities, even when we were young girls. Back then, eating was also a means of beautification, since the more aloo tikki and murukku you consumed, the more likely you’d reach a voluptuousness akin to an American size ten or twelve, required for looking good in a sari.

  chaatpati chutney

  Makes 1½ cups

  ¼ cup natural tamarind concentrate (I prefer bottled Laxmi brand)

  2 teaspoons ground cumin

  2 teaspoons ground coriander

  1 to 2 teaspoons cayenne powder, to taste

  20 dates (about 4½ ounces), pitted and finely chopped

  2 teaspoons kosher salt

  In a 2-quart saucepan, bring 4 cups water to a boil. Add the tamarind concentrate, cumin, coriander, cayenne, dates, and salt and gently boil over medium heat for 25 to 30 minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon and mashing the dates to create a pulpy mixture. The finished chutney should look like a very loose jam or thick barbeque sauce.

  Indeed, food and femininity were intertwined for me from very early on. Cooking was the domain not of girls, but of women. You weren’t actually allowed to cook until you mastered the basics of preparing the vegetables and dry-roasting and grinding the spices. You only assisted by preparing these mise en places for the older women until you graduated and were finally allowed to stand at the stove for more than boiling tea. Just as the French kitchens had their hierarchy of sous-chefs and commis, my grandmother’s kitchen also had its own codes. The secrets of the kitchen were revealed to you in stages, on a need-to-know basis, just like the secrets of womanhood. You started wearing bras; you started handling the pressure cooker for lentils. You went from wearing skirts and half saris to wearing full saris, and at about the same time you got to make the rice-batter crepes called dosas for everyone’s tiffin. You did not get told the secret ratio of spices for the house-made sambar curry powder until you came of marriageable age. And to truly have a womanly figure, you had to eat, to be voluptuously full of food.

  This, of course, was in stark contrast to what was considered womanly or desirable in the West, especially when I started modeling. To look good in Western clothes you had to be extremely thin. Prior to this, I never thought about my weight except to think it wasn’t ever enough. Then, with modeling, I started depending on my looks to feed myself (though my profession didn’t allow me to actually eat very much). When I started hosting food shows, my career went from fashion to food, from not eating to really eating a lot, to put it mildly. Only this time the opposing demands of having to eat all this food and still look good by Western standards of beauty were off the charts. This tug-of-war was something I would struggle with for most of a decade.

  chapter 5

  Through the smoke and mirrors of television, my job looks like it’s full of glamour and excitement. You’d be forgiven for thinking that all I do is show up in my designer dress, have a meal and a chat, and head home. And it’s true, filming the show can be a thrill. Top Chef is a little like live sports—anything can happen. Plus there are knives and fire. But TV filming is comically slow. Lulls outnumber activity ten to one.

  The long days of shooting—some end at midnight, some go even longer—are mostly downtime. But not good downtime. Strange downtime. Most of it is spent off the set in my dressing room, a small space overtaken by wardrobe racks. I have a single task during this time: not to mess up my hair, makeup, and clothes. I can’t undo all of my glam squad’s hard work just because I want to lie down. Or have a snack. Or, God forbid, blow my nose. At all times, I have about four people scrutinizing my every move. In that way, it’s a little like spending time with my family.

  Practically every movement I make requires a conversation. “She wants to sit down, should she keep the dress on?” Michelle, my makeup artist, might say. “It has a zip,” says Albert, my stylist. “She should take it off.” They talk about me like I’m not there, like two parents discussing their kid. My comfy jeans are not typically an option. Albert and Michelle won’t allow it. The seams supposedly mark my legs. If Michelle had her way, rollers wouldn’t leave my hair until a minute before I’m due on my mark. If Albert had his, I’d never sit down and, even better, would always wear my bathrobe, lest a wrinkle tarnish my dress.

  Sometimes, all I want to do is shut my eyes, but a producer will come around to record lines that might need to be spliced into the show later. I’ll get word that I’m finally due back on the set, so the producers will send a guy to mic me. But even once we do hustle to the set, we end up hanging around for a while. That’s the way it goes during shooting: hurry up and wait. And often, during that waiting, I eat.

  I eat at Judges’ Table, even though we never eat at Judges’ Table on the show. Not the contestants’ food, mind you. Over the years, I have had many snacks on the set that are not competition food. In the old days it started with some innocent sliced apples with peanut butter; then in New Orleans, our returning judge Emeril Lagasse turned me on to a Thai takeout that brought noodles in coconut milk to the set. And even before that, I taught my on-set assistant (and Top Chef’s unsung hero), Jason, how to make an open-faced version of my childhood classic, the chili cheese toast. This started several years back, long before the hipster restaurant trend to put almost anything on a toasted slice of bread and charge upward of $12 for it. Back when I was growing up, chili cheese toast was a down-homey snack we made for teatime or when feeling peckish.

  When you’re tired and hungry, you just want something as decadent and rich as what the chefs give you, but without all the fancy stuff. You want something comforting. During shooting, my stomach seems to expand and expect to be fed copious amounts of food even when it doesn’t need it.

  The glacial pace of TV is to blame. On a Quickfire day, I try to eat a healthy breakfast, but after hair, makeup, and wardrobe, after getting to the set and going over the script, after the inevitable delays, six hours have passed and I’m ravenous. So when the contestants’ food shows up, most of it made in true restaurant style, with more butter than a kilo of croissants, I eat more than I know I should. I probably eat every two hours when I’m on the set. Tom will sometimes ask, sipping a gin and tonic, “How can you possibly be hungry?” I tell him I can eat as much as he can drink.

  chili cheese toast

  Serves 1

  2 to 3 serrano or other hot green chilies, minced

  A squirt of fresh lemon juice

  Salt to taste

  Butter, softened

  1 slice sourdough bread

  1 slice Muenster or Monterey Jack cheese

  Mix the chilies, lemon juice, and salt with a mortar an
d pestle, mashing together to create a relish.

  Generously butter one side of the bread. Spread a heaping teaspoon of the chili relish on the other side of the slice. Top it with the cheese.

  Toast the bread butter side down in a covered pan over medium heat. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, then uncover and cook 1 minute more.

  Remove the toast from the pan. Slice diagonally and garnish each triangle with a dollop of relish.

  I typically go for snacks that won’t risk ruining my dress or makeup—you’re welcome, Albert and Michelle. Some of the snacks are strange, creations inspired by whatever I spot in the fridge. Some of them become regulars in my rotation, like my latest pet concoction: cottage cheese doused in Cholula Hot Sauce. Sometimes I’ll dunk chips or celery in it, like a dietetic version of ranch dip. I’m always trying to re-create some vaguely healthy version of junk food. You’ve got to have junk food. You’ve got to feel satisfied while still somehow keeping your waistline in check. This is the constant struggle that pervades my life. How do I look good and still be good at my job? How do I experience enough food so I know what I’m talking about on TV in the midst of these culinary heavyweights, and still look good while talking about it?

  The men on the show have it easy, in part because men on TV have uniforms: There’s the jacket, in black, blue, or gray. There’s the shirt, the pants. I can never tell whether Tom is gaining or losing weight beneath his boxy suits. He always looks the same. Tom also has the benefit of being Tom, a decorated veteran of the restaurant kitchen. Like so many chefs, he is practiced at the taste-of-this, taste-of-that eating regimen. I’m the one who has to look like a glorified weathergirl, with formfitting dresses and all, which, don’t get me wrong, I love—at least until I don’t.