Love, Loss, and What We Ate Page 7

  Many potential explanations exist for my decampment. For one, my mother had been part of the team that had secretly treated the Shah of Iran at Sloan Kettering. For that, she received death threats, including a call to our apartment. “We know where you live with your daughter,” a voice had hissed. At the time, however, all I knew was that I had opened my mouth and got sent away. My mother was right to immediately put distance between me and that man, of course. In retrospect, however, he should have been the one to go. Years later, in tears, my mother would acknowledge this grave mistake.

  My grandmother Raji—or Rajima, as I called her, because she was still too young to be called paati—had led a life harder still than my mother’s. Though I never knew any other grandmother, Rajima was not my mother’s mother. My mother’s mother died when she was thirteen and my grandfather married Raji three years later. One of sixteen children, in the deep-southern district of Tanjore, she was just another hungry mouth for her parents to feed. She was fourth in line but her mother became pregnant with another child soon after her birth in an effort to produce a male heir. A male child had been born but died before the age of two. Raji was not a boy, nor was she fair-skinned like her younger sister Vasantha, who would later receive dance training, an investment by her father made in the offspring most likely to provide some return. Her parents sent her away as a young girl to live with an aunt who had no children. Rajima was probably sent away to give her mother some breathing room, as caring for several kids while also being pregnant put a strain on her health. When she came back at five years old, she did not call her mother Amma. She did not know her; she could not bring herself to call her Mom.

  Instead, she eventually acted as mother to her twelve younger siblings. A natural-born teacher, Raji honed her skills by shepherding her brothers and sisters through their studies. At age eighteen, she signed up for a Montessori teacher training course and later found a job as a teacher and even started a school in her province where there had never been one prior. The job became her ticket to independence. It staved off an arranged marriage, at least long enough for her to develop her career. It took her from Tanjore to Madras to New Delhi, the nation’s capital in the north. By thirty years old she had, unlike many Indian women of her day, seen a bit of the world before duty called.

  Raji had come home from teaching in New Delhi for summer vacation when a meeting was arranged by my grandfather’s sister. She had heard that my grandmother’s family was looking to marry off an older daughter. Raji’s younger sister (the dancer) Vasantha’s husband, a business magnate named V. D. Swamy, arranged it from the girl’s side. My grandmother was doing well, but in those days an unwed woman pushing thirty was not looked well upon. My grandmother was earning money and helping her older sister Kamala, with whom she lived in Delhi. But a single woman always presented the potential danger of being an added dependent to her family. Back then, a woman was not seen as a full adult, but rather a ward either of her own family or of her in-laws. She would have been a constant liability until her future was settled with marriage. My widower grandfather went to see Raji in Tanjore with my young mother in tow one evening in early summer. They talked extensively that evening and the potential groom’s party left the next day.

  Then for some days, there was radio silence. My grandmother could not stand the suspense so she took matters into her own hands. She must have liked him in that first meeting, because she boldly wrote a letter to my grandfather. He was taking too long to decide. “If we don’t get married I have to go back soon to Delhi to my job, or I will lose it,” my grandma wrote. “So make up your mind either way.” My grandfather, who was at that time touring the south for work, came back to Tanjore and visited my grandmother again without his daughter. He spoke to her father, went to the jeweler’s that night for the thali, or ceremonial wedding necklace, and asked a local shopkeeper to open a store after hours so he could buy her a wedding sari. The very next morning they got hitched.

  Love and passion begat marriage in my world. Yet in my grandparents’ world, marriage began with practicality. My grandfather told me proudly of that day he first met my grandmother. He interviewed her, posing little riddles to test her common sense. “Supposing you have to take the children to school and you’re late and it’s supposed to rain,” he said. “Would you take a taxi or a bus?” My grandmother said, “Well, first I’d take an umbrella.” Ice cream in Central Park, this was not.

  With quiet resolve and great political skill she navigated her new household, which was already populated by three children, two boys and the brooding teenager that was my mom at sixteen. Raji managed to feed them all as well as her own daughter, Neela, who came on the scene in 1963. She maintained her bright demeanor even when the number of mouths grew to ten, including grandchildren and daughters-in-law, by 1977, and when on weekday mornings four girls were still naked and late for the school bus and two men did not yet have their lunches packed.

  After my grandfather retired from government service, he moved the family from New Delhi to Madras. I had always assumed my grandmother was happy to be down south again; years later I learned she actually preferred the north, with its milder climate and more modern ways. But as with so much of life, she had little choice. No one ever asked her what she wanted. She existed where life had taken her, and she chose to get on with it. From the start, my grandmother did not expect love, though she came to be loved deeply and respected by her husband. She returned his affection in her own ways, though she still slept best alone on the marble floor of the bedroom without a mattress or blanket. In fact, because of the heat, she relished getting all her work done and napping in the afternoon on the floor in her bedroom, alone. Neela and I occupied the space below their bed at night, so afternoons were the only time she had to herself. Our family home did not ever have air-conditioning and the marble floor was the coolest place to sleep, especially in the pre-monsoon heat. When my husband and I got engaged, I brought him home to meet my folks in India. His upbringing in an upper-class Muslim family in Bombay had been much more privileged than what we were used to down south. I was afraid the heat would be too much for him. He was a sweater to boot. I had air-conditioning put in the other bedroom, with my grandfather complaining the whole way about the electric bills. Since then, during visits we’ve all congregated in the one room with air-conditioning, leaving my grandmother to enjoy, finally, the solace of her cool marble floor anytime she wants peace.

  Raji did not expect happiness, though she could pluck from deep within the appreciation of simply being fed, clothed, sheltered, and regarded. I once asked her if she was happy. “That depends on what I am able to get done today,” she said, laughing. She told me that the completion of her daily tasks was the only thing she felt she had control over. They were a form of meditation, of salve. Kept busy, she had no time to ruminate and no time for opinions, certainly not feminist ones. I pressed her: “I mean, are you happy with your life, Rajima?” “I don’t know,” she said uncomfortably, as if she’d never really considered such a question. “When there is little you can do, you do what you can.” Happiness for my grandmother seemed to be a verb rather than a noun. She had so little control over her own life. Yet she took control, out of thin air for herself, when she could.

  I thought of her counsel as I sat on the floor of my room in the Sorry Hotel. Just do one thing, I told myself, complete one task. I crawled through the cardboard labyrinth, collecting as many kumquats as I could in a floppy green hat I grabbed from a half-emptied box, gathering the brim around the fruit like a beggar’s pouch. In the hotel room’s kitchenette, I peered into the fridge, which I had stocked when I arrived but hadn’t so much as opened for days. Rummaging through the produce drawer, I pulled out some green chilies, a knob of ginger, and a few bags of leaves and seeds from an Indian market. I knew one thing I could do. I had a deadline from Gourmet magazine hanging over me, which, in my stupor, I had willfully ignored. At the time I cursed myself for signing up to do a holiday-gifting sto
ry that entailed recipes for chutneys and pickles. But God bless the kitchen saint Ruth Reichl, the magazine’s editor, for unwittingly helping to get me off my ass, and my mother for sending those kumquats.

  If I could at least make a big batch of some sauce, some condiment, then it would do two kinds of work for me. I could meet my professional obligation, and I could use that sauce to bring some sunshine back into my life. I could lift myself, at least gastronomically, from the gray. I could turn that hatful of dusty citrus into something golden. And indeed, the kumquat chutney I ended up making is what woke me up in a sense. I’m certain that in large part, it had to do with the fact that my grandmother used to make a similar tangerine peel chutney I loved when growing up. I could use the fruits my mother gifted me, in my grandmother’s recipe, as a potent antidote to my sense of being adrift, lost at sea, unmoored. I always thought that what Rajima did with those cast-off peels was a metaphor for how she dealt with her arranged marriage. She transformed those peels, with palm sugar for sweetness and tamarind for tang, into something precious.

  When I was growing up, fresh fruit was expensive for us. My grandmother was allowed to buy fruit only when my grandfather was feeling flush. During mango season, she would occasionally hand out pits after she’d carved the fruits and I’d suck those pits for half an hour, trying to get every last bit of flesh.

  When we visited other people’s homes we often took a small basket of bananas, apples, or pomegranates as gifts the way Westerners might bring a bottle of wine. My grandfather would occasionally spring for fruit when a religious ceremony, or puja, took place in our home. But in general, he thought fruit a frivolous luxury. In fact, even on religious holidays, when we needed a prasadam, or offering, he preferred a liquidy, sweet rice or noodle pudding called payasam. Fruit was expensive, but the milk and sugar for payasam could be purchased with our ration cards.

  I often thought that Rajima’s vociferous haggling with the poor spindly-legged fruit and vegetable vendor each morning was for my grandfather’s benefit. Whatever the reason, she was good at it. By the time she finally bought a handful of small, sweet tangerines, she had weaseled her way into a free handful of green chilies and a knob of ginger. She always left with a few tangled branches of curry leaves, for which she never paid or haggled. That sweet fool gave them without fuss with every purchase, just for the pleasure of her daily verbal thrashing, as predictable as the noon heat and as welcome as a cold shower.

  My grandmother cooked every meal fresh, not only because she believed it produced healthier and tastier food but also because she didn’t grow up with the luxury of a fridge. In fact, she never had one until her thirties. Even after the fridge came, her routine didn’t change. She didn’t know any other way. Having so many mouths to feed meant she was almost always cooking. She made the chutney with cast-off peels along with whatever ginger, chilies, and curry leaves hadn’t been used up for the evening meal. I yearned for this chutney far more than for the sweet fruit. While everyone else quietly ate their stir-fried curries and soupy lentils ladled over rice, I fixed my attention on a bowl of white rice mixed with sour homemade plain yogurt and a heap of that exquisite chutney. Rajima, or Jima as we often called her, turned a blind eye to my selfish hoarding of the chutney, because no one else moaned over it with sufficient ecstasy. My young palate was Jima’s best audience.

  Back in that hotel room, thirty years later, I made a big batch of kumquat chutney. To generate the recipe, I used a ton of freshly chopped ginger and hot green chilies and simplified the spices, mostly because I didn’t have them all on hand. But it worked. I spooned a bit into my mouth, the fresh chilies and tart citrus jolting my palate free from stupor. Soon I found myself at the market again, buying pearly scallops, heaving fennel bulbs and sweet potatoes into my basket. I also bought goat cheese and butter, hoping to put some weight back on. I savored that first marigold-hued, glazy dollop, and thought of all the things I could do with this golden chutney.

  What I did with those kumquats became a strategy I call upon whenever I want to eat well but can’t for reasons of time, weakness, or inertia. As soon as I can conjure the energy, I make up a big batch of some flavorful sauce, a sort of “mother sauce,” shall we say, and use it throughout the week by the tablespoon or cup to give life to simple food. The French have masterfully used sauces as the base to make their dishes for centuries. They have hundreds, many created—or consolidated, anyway—by the early-nineteenth-century chef Antonin Carême. Then those were whittled down by the great Auguste Escoffier into what we now know as the five mother sauces of French cuisine. It’s funny to me that most of the cooking in the world is done by women, and yet when you look at modern Western cuisine, it’s largely based on what a few dead Frenchmen have opined to be the correct way of doing things. It’s funny how these old European men used a label like “mother sauce” when there were no women to be found anywhere near those old professional kitchens. Cooking was something women did to nourish and nurture their families, whereas for men it was largely something they did professionally to gain money and status. My version of a mother sauce actually comes from my foremothers, from the fruits of my mother’s garden, and is based on a recipe handed down from my grandmother. I have always associated cooking with womanhood. At that moment, in August 2007, when I did not feel so womanly, with my insides carved out and my marriage a failure, the only thing I could take pleasure in was that golden sauce.

  kumquat and ginger chutney

  Serves 8 to 10

  2½ pounds fresh kumquats, quartered and pitted

  2 tablespoons kosher salt

  ½ cup canola oil

  1 teaspoon fennel seeds

  1 dozen fresh medium curry leaves, torn into small pieces

  3 tablespoons minced fresh ginger

  8 small green serrano chilies, chopped or sliced in half lengthwise

  6 whole fresh kaffir lime leaves

  ½ teaspoon sambar or Madras curry powder (I prefer 777 brand)

  ½ cup water, plus more if needed

  2 tablespoons light brown sugar

  In a large bowl, mix the kumquats with the kosher salt. Let them rest for 2 to 3 hours, or overnight in the fridge, if possible.

  Heat the oil in a deep pan for a few minutes on medium heat. Add the fennel seeds. When they sizzle and darken slightly, after about 2 to 3 minutes, add the curry leaves, ginger, and chilies, frying and stirring for just a minute or two. Then add the kaffir lime leaves and kumquats. Stir well. After 5 minutes add the curry powder and stir again.

  After 5 minutes more, stir in the water and sugar.

  Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook covered for 10 minutes, stirring intermittently to ensure the chutney does not stick to the bottom of the pan. If this happens, stir in more water, ¼ cup at a time, but the mixture should remain thick and gooey. Cook just until the chutney has a chunky jamlike consistency.

  chapter 4

  Maybe that old adage about not being able to have a good apartment, a good relationship, and a good job at the same time is true. I had been living at the Sorry Hotel for several months. I had no relationship, but I was thankful for my job on Top Chef. Indeed, because the show filmed in a different location every season, we basically moved to that town for those weeks and set up camp like gypsies. So this scenario was a blessing in disguise, because at least for those weeks my hotel expenses would be covered. I put most of my belongings in storage and went to Chicago for my third season. At the time, I wasn’t making enough to live on from the show alone, but I was making ends meet (barely) by piecing together the writing, the book advance, and, believe it or not, still the occasional modeling gig. On bad days, which were many, I felt lost and displaced, like when I first moved back to the States from Italy at the end of my twenties—except scarier, because now I had just turned thirty-seven. On good days, which were few, I felt the same as when I was a young model in Europe just after college. I didn’t know what the future held in store for me, but I felt hopeful. My secon
d cookbook was being published and I had recently secured a two-year contract with Pantene.

  Top Chef was really starting to take hold in popular culture. My job meant a whole new world was revealed to me—besides learning restaurant techniques and terminology, I had the opportunity to meet incredible chefs, like Daniel Boulud and Wylie Dufresne, and also to share meals with them. I got to talk shop all day long, to gush adjectives when describing a course of food the way tennis fans might describe a stunning serve, the way I used to coo over Dior and Yves Saint Laurent.

  I ate my excitement. I was a puppy dog, wide-eyed and eager, so thrilled to be at the table that I overdid it. Here were these talented professional cooks vying to outdo one another, wielding racks of lamb and pork belly and cream—ingredients designed to make food as lush and rich and irresistible as possible. This was food I would never dream of making at home. I was, and still am, an enthusiastic home cook. Nothing special, just someone who hopes that guests will like my lentil recipes. These chefs cooked with liquid nitrogen, duck fat, and sous-vide. I got to eat it all beside our head judge, Tom Colicchio, and Eric Ripert, and knew I had a chance to learn from these culinary giants. I’d take a bite of sweetbreads or escolar and timidly express my ambivalence. Tom would dub it exceptional and ask me why I didn’t like it. Eric would disagree with Tom, and they’d discuss the finer points of searing, poaching, and seasoning. And I was left eager to understand why they knew it was improperly cooked by what they were tasting, and why I didn’t. I would taste the dish again as they play-fought. And then again. That became a pattern with me: when in doubt, I took another bite.