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Is Mita Kapur’s The F-Word an attempt to ride the ‘food-as-the-new-sex’ wave, where lauki is turned into a love potion and secrets are smothered in salsa? For, here is a book where recipes nestle cozily in the folds of personal anecdotes — some humorous, some heartachingly honest, some cheeky, and some a little cheesy.
“My book is connected with food, family and friends. I wanted a title that would be quirky and naughty, not gimmicky,” says Mita. Then comes her tadka: “The f-word is a regular word today, no? I live with five youngsters and I hear it all the time, so there’s no shock value there!”
Chasing the contentment of feeding a family with healthy and tasty food is a challenge even for someone like Mita, who can stir up everything from Water Chestnut Salad to Orange Chicken in a jiffy. And that’s how The F-Word got written.
“It is fun to cook. Even super busy professionals can turn out a good meal with time management, imagination and planning. You just have to be smart in your food choices,” says the very busy mom of three, who heads Siyahi, a literary agency based in Jaipur, lives in an extended family with mind-boggling food obsessions, entertains regularly and still finds the time to take off to Lucknow to savour the delicate layers of the galaavat ke kebab when the mood strikes.
“Do away with complicated ingredients, minimise steps and you’ve got a much simpler life. Eat regular khana every day, but put the zing into your menu at least one day in a week. Something as simple as crushing and pounding ginger instead of chopping it, or tearing coriander leaves — stalk and all, can make a simple dal-chawal-subzi meal incredibly tasty,” she declares.
She cheerfully admits that there have been moments when she did not want to “cook another pot of khichdi for an ailing child” or “plan another dinner menu for 100 guests” in her Jaipur home, but those moments passed quickly, leaving not a dent in her appetite for good food and rivetting food stories. It’s this passion that gets her to pries kitchen secrets out of the royals in Rajasthan as well as the dhaba owners in Delhi.
The perfect paella or pulao give her a high, but it’s really a well-made dal that makes her drool. You know she’s not exaggerating when she says her earliest food memory goes back to the time she was just four years old and in Philippines, where she finished a whole fish smothered in traditional spices at a family dinner. “That taste still lingers... I haven’t been able to replicate it,” she says with a dreamy sigh.
Ask her about the modern Indian kitchen and she says there’s a huge shift in the way people approach food. “It’s not a revolution yet, but there is a huge eagerness to experiment thanks to food shows on TV, higher disposable incomes and travel for work and pleasure. The idea today is that it is cool to cook,” she says.
Mita’s strength is that she does not list fancy recipes or expensive ingredients in her book. No Lobster Thermidor or Prawns in Avocado Dip. Instead, she has plenty of quick and healthy food options for those counting calories. If there’s one thing she abhors it is too much fat/ oil in food. “That really repulses me. We should really stop going beserk with ghee, oil and red chillies,” she says. Perhaps this pet peeve will translate into yet another zany food tome for Indians with an appetite for adventurous eating.
Water Chestnut Salad
Ingredients: 500 gm fresh water chestnuts, 2 tbsp chopped spring onions, Juice of 2 lemons, Red chilli flakes, 2 tsp lemon grass chopped, Fish sauce (optional), Salt to taste, 1 tsp brown sugar, 4-5 whole dried red chillies for garnish.
Method: Peel, wash and thinly slice the chestnuts. Mix all the ingredients well and serve on a plate. Garnish with red chillies.
The Chinese use water chestnuts in their stir-fries, to make stuffing, and for salads with fish sauce. Rich in calcium, potassium, iron and zinc, high in water content, they make for perfect diet food. Dried and ground into flour, they’re also used as a thickening agent for sauces. On Janmasthami, this flour is kneaded together with boiled potatoes; the resultant puris are sinfully tasty, though they sit heavy on the stomach.
Chicken Mince Salad
Ingredients: 500 gm chicken mince, 1 stalk lemon grass chopped fine, 3 kaffir lime leaves chopped, 4 red chillies, 4 tbsp lemon juice, 2 tbsp fish sauce, 2 spring onions sliced, 2 tbsp fresh coriander chopped, Fresh mint for garnish, Mixed salad leaves, cucumber, tomato slices for serving.
Method: Cook chicken mince with a little water. In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients with the mince. Arrange mixed salad leaves, cucumber, tomato slices on a platter, spoon chicken mixture and garnish with sprigs of mint.
(Recipes excerpted with permission from Mita Kapur’s The F-Word, published by Harper Collins.)