Furniture designer and sculptor Alex Davis learnt his culinary skills in Italy.
Furniture designer and sculptor Alex Davis’s den on the second floor of his home in New Delhi is filled with rejects from his store Indi. “We are changing every piece of furniture in the store right now,” says Davis and gesturing towards what fills the den, he says, “And this is all from past collections.” In the last few years, Davis has found success also for doing large sculptural pieces in steel which have found buyers both locally as well as internationally at fairs like Masion & Objet that is held in Paris.
“I do sculpture because I like to do it,” says Davis. Wearing two hats, one as a designer, the other as sculptor has lead to Davis falling somewhere in the middle of these two worlds. Globally people like Davis are being classified under the term design art. Here in India, says Davis, “it will take some time for people to accept that terminology.” So, in Paris, where design art is now commonplace, Davis’s work often gets compared with artist Subodh Gupta’s, who also happens to be a favourite of Davis’s.
As the conversation veers away from art and design, Davis starts talking about food. “I studied in a boarding school so one ate everything that was put on the plate,” says Davis. Till that point Davis shares that he did not even know how to boil water to make a cup of tea. The turning point in his culinary journey came when he moved to Milan for a year- and-a-half. “My landlady there was a very good cook”, says Davis.
His early initiation in Italian cooking has left an indelible mark on him. “Because I learnt how to cook in Italy, even now I mostly make Italian food.” Though now Davis, older and more health conscious, does so without all the carbs that crowd Italian cuisine. For the sake of this column, Davis makes fish in pesto sauce and an aubergine salad. He says, “This would be what I typically eat for lunch now. I have cut out carbs completely from my diet.”
Apart from Italian, Davis is also fond of barbecue, which is a winter favourite in his household. Another yearly feature for which Davis and his wife cook themselves is the Christmas lunch, which, he says, “goes on till dinner.” He says, “As you grow older, food becomes the primary focus at a party.”
FAVOURITE RECIPES
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FISH IN PESTO SAUCE
1 sea bass
Juice of one lemon
For the pesto sauce:
1 tbsp walnuts
1 full garlic
1 cupfull of basil leaves
1 tbsp Parmesan, freshly grated
Salt and pepper to taste
Take all the ingredients for the pesto and put it into a blender and mix it. Since this is to be used as a marinade, add juice of one lemon to it. Marinade the sea bass and keep it in the fridge overnight. The sea bass comes pre-slit. In those slits stick in slices of lemon and put in a pre-heated oven. The oven should have been pre-heated at 180 degrees centigrade. Cook at the same temperature. Take it out after about half an hour or till it browns evenly.
AUBERGINE AND TOMATO SALAD
2 long aubergines
2 tomatoes
1 tbsp olives
1 tbsp walnuts
1 tsp gherkins
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Grill both the aubergine and the tomatoes. Just before serving add whatever topping you want like walnuts, gherkins, basil leaves, olives and so on. Add olive oil, salt and pepper and serve.
