Parvati had little in common with Rahda other than her preference for traditional home-cooked vegetarian food. She and Vijay would happily "take whiskey" at the Delhi Press Club, but rarely would they eat there, because they considered restaurant food inferior in quality and cleanliness. Parvati went to extremes to keep globalization out of her kitchen. Like Radha, she shunned store-bought and packaged ingredients. She made her own yogurt out of fresh milk, and chapati out of wheat she bought in bulk; vegetables she prepared were all fresh and locally grown. Her kitchen was a low-tech and traditional as Radha's: She cooked exclusively out of three tin pots and no electric mixers or processors.
Parvati was also particular about doing the cooking herself——she only occasionally outsourced sous-chef duties to her part-time maid. She never used a cookbook; she'd memorized dishes by watching her mother as a child. And yet each of the North Indian dishes she made——lentil dals, bean dishes, vegetable curries——required half a dozen spices to achieve a subtle complexity of flavors. Even though she used the same spices night after night, somehow each dish tasted different from each other. She'd begin by roasting them in a pan, then grind them with a mortar and pestle; she'd fry them in specific order to achieve right blend of flavors. Parvati measured in pinches, handfuls, and lidfuls and seasoned the dishes instinctively, by taste and smell.
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Sideways on A Scooter, Life and Love in India, P93~94
Miranda Kennedy
ISBN 978-1-4000-6786-2
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