Learning with food

FOODIE

Vasant Valley's principal Arun Kapur shows that cooking comes as easily to him as teaching.

Vasant Valley may be one of Delhi's premier schools, but after having demolished a fabulous meal cooked by principal Arun Kapur last week for the benefit of this column, it will forever be associated in my mind with good food and good times. That's also the image Kapur conjures up when he talks of staff meetings (over pot-luck lunches), birthday parties (with "four-five people volunteering to cook for all the staff") and tea breaks with school maalis ("I get their perspective"), where cooking tips are swapped: slice a raw mango, rub masala on it and dry; crumble one in the dal for an immediate explosion of flavours.

"What would you like to eat?" asks Kapur as we gingerly peep into his kitchen. There's a shelf full of cookbooks and we flip through a Roald Dahl (yes, a cookbook), then a series called the Modern Library Food, highly-recommended, then Ismail Merchant's Indian Cuisine. Rogan Josh is decided upon; the vegetarians settle for stuffed tindas, onions and tomatoes. Olive oil is sizzling along nicely in a very hot wok (leading Kapur's 80-year-old mom to fret about what might be burning), the garlic's evenly browning, delicious aromas permeate the space and there's red wine and conversation. "I am particular about the sequence of ingredients in a dish," Kapur remarks. For instance, it would have been possible to start this dish with whole spices instead.

Back in the late '70s, Doon School kids would have been happy with this master: Kapur had tiny quarters in the middle of a dorm with a kitchenette attached where he'd turn out anda-toast for hungry boys. As he moved to bigger accommodation, first at Doon, then London and Delhi, the dishes got more complex: fish, smoked using a Dalda tin, trout, exotic salads, even chicken liver, part of a larger meal, spread out for "former girlfriends" on a foil-covered table, everything except kishmish in rice that his grandfather had force-fed him.

Like most of us, Kapur cooks from memory "" dishes his mother would do, aloo chokha his father would assemble. But he also remembers exact flavours. Revisiting St Stephen's, he ordered the famous mince and toast. Only it didn't quite taste the way it used to. Not because the intervening years had changed the recipe but because he had ordered buttered toast instead of the plain bread of his student days.

Richer flavours couldn't compete with nostalgia.

FAVOURITE RECIPES
ROGAN JOSH

1 kg mutton, washed
2 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp onions, chopped
1 tsp each of garlic and ginger, chopped
1 1/2 tsp whole garam masala
3 tbsp tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp each of haldi, lal mirch & coriander powder
Salt to taste
3 cups of water
A dash of red wine

Saute the garlic in very hot oil till golden brown. Now add the onions, ginger, garam masala, followed by tomatoes, haldi, mirch and coriander. Brown the masala till it is well done. Now, add the mutton pieces and bhuno on a low flame for 10 minutes. Add a dash of wine, salt to taste and water and let the gravy simmer for an hour or till the mutton is well cooked. Serve hot.

STUFFED TINDA

2 big spring onions
2 medium tomatoes
2 medium tindas
1 tsp each of saunf, garam masala, dhania, haldi, lal mirch and amchoor powders
Salt to taste

Wash and clean the veggies and make four cuts on the top for the stuffing. Blend the masala and stuff the veggies with it. Heat oil in a wok and lightly saute the veggies. Cover and steam till the tindas are cooked but not overdone. Serve hot.