Swapan Seth, managing partner of Henry S Clark, is a street food addict
Swapan Seth, managing partner of Henry S Clark, an art house, is ready and midway through cooking when we meet. He is making actor Raj Kapoor’s own recipe for dal makhani.
“Actually, it is his daughter Reema Kapoor’s recipe for her father. Raj Kapoor really liked this dal,” says Seth. He adds, “When you look at the ingredients, you realise why the family was unbalanced on the weighing scales.”
Seth, in recent times, has taken to posting recipes by celebrities or well-known chefs on Facebook, to the extent that he is now being offered a cookbook deal by a major publishing house.
Seth’s interest in cooking happened while living with his parents in Kolkata with brother Suhel. “Sometimes there would be no help at home, and both Suhel and I were made to help out in the kitchen by our mother,” recalls Seth. There was also the fact that Seth’s parents, mother and father, were both excellent cooks as well. From the mundane like kneading the dough (“that was great fun,” says Seth, “you just splashed water in the dry atta and then pounded.”) to now being a more evolved cook, Seth has traversed this journey mainly due to his passion for food.
“I often eat off the streets. There is a dhaba near the Panchsheel taxi stand where I have my lunch, and sometimes when clients pass by in their Mercedes they are amazed to see me sitting there,” recounts Seth. The lack of hygiene when it comes to street food doesn’t faze Seth. He says, “Just take your Hepatitis B shot and eat what you want.”
Seth, when he travels, makes it a point to find time to eat his favourite meals in that city. “For instance, when I go to Mumbai, I have to go to Tardeo station to eat the vada pav there. It’s the best,” he says.
Seth is also known to carry his favourite recipes with him when he is away from Delhi, and has often asked chefs to make him those particular recipes. “Chefs,” says Seth, “are a wonderful bunch of people, and they love it when you ask them to make you something special.”
Seth’s mornings are about breakfast. He says, with a happy smile lighting up his face, “For the first meal of the day, I have to eat something different every day. There have been times that I have woken up my wife in the middle of the night and asked her what there was for breakfast.”
After several years of just flirting with cooking, Seth now cooks dinner every day. “I like a spacious kitchen and everything should be organised. There is nothing better than feeding friends and family,” says Seth, as he wraps up the cooking and invites us to sample it.
