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The Asian Age, Jun 8, 2000 |
| Gourmet girl gets a scoop,
enters celebrity kitchens, By- Parvathy Nair |
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It took Rashmi Uday Singh a significant
nine-month period to complete her labour of love, punctuated
by lots of pregnant pauses. Naming the baby The Celebrity
Cook Book was not her first choice, but it finally stuck
because the name conveyed exactly what it was all about.
Though Rashmi had a much larger list than the 27 names
she could not coordinate mutually convenient dates because
the people she wished to meet were the likes of Asha Bhosle,
the Maharaja of Jodhpur, Sunil Shetty, Anjolie Ela Menon,
Shobha De, Ajay Jadeja, etc.
The book has interesting introductions to all the celebrities,
little-known tid-bits about various people that add that
extra bit of spice to it. "Celeb," she rolls
the word around in her mouth, savouring it for effect,
with experience born out of thousands of times. "No,
I don't like it," she pronounces her judgment.
"But what else do you call these people? The idea
wasn't really to find out what the rich and famous cook.
God bless all professional chefs, but the best recipes,
I believe, reside I home kitchens. So using these people
who are all super achievers in their fields, was just
a technique to get hold of some of those recipes,"
she concludes, with a healthy chuckle.
Oh yes, good food and good health are two issues which
are very close to this ex-bureaucrat's heart. There is
not an inch of evidence of over-indulgence of the first,
though she spends almost all day surrounded by oceans
of temptations.
Being a food critic doesn't mean I have to be geriatric,
obese hog. Its like expecting wine tasters to be alcoholics.
Mine is as disciplined as science: to sample and not go
overboard and to continue doing this over a period of
time." The other secret of Rashmi's svelte figure
is exercise. "My entire family plays golf and the
passion afflicted me recently. I also do aerobics, yoga
and go swimming." Rashmi used to write on food even
when she was working with the Indian Revenue Service.
After 13 years, she resigned her job as a deputy commissioner
of Income tax to get trained at the BBC in London after
which she "produced, scripted, directed, anchored
and chapraasied" Health Today, a highly rated show.
But she is best known for her earlier book the mid-Dai
Good Food Guide to Mumbai. "It was on the national
bestseller list for a year, not because people found it
useful," she shrugs. Rashmi also runs a food shop
which stocks food from all over the country, which she
says is not so much gourmet as "good food".
"I don't believe that I'm the ultimate authority
on the subject of food. I have to respect what you like,
because what every other should have."
Rashmi is a person of strong likes and dislikes. "
I love trees and hate TV. I'm passionate about airports
and hotels: they give me a buzz. I enjoy myself hugely
when I go to restaurants. What other job would give me,
a lone woman, the licence to chat with strangers?"
An option comes evilly to mind, but one is too well mannered
to say it out loud. |
