RIP Tarla Dalal, India’s first Masterchef

When you think of Tarla Dalal, who passed away early this morning of a heart attack, you think of her books. That’s not surprising, because she has written over 100 cook books which have together sold over 3 million copies.Dig a little deeper and you would view Indian food in terms of Before Tarla Dalal and After Tarla Dalal.[caption id="attachment_1214305" align="alignleft" width="380"] the country lapped up Tarla Dalal books, millions of them, and kitchens across the country were exposed to new aromas, new flavours. Image courtesy: Twitter[/caption]Before Tarla Dalal, cuisine in Indian homes was easy and predictable. My mother, a Tamilian, cooked Tamil Brahmin food. That’s it. There was nothing else she cooked. My aunt, whose husband had a transferable job, was a little more versatile; she could make chappatis, ‘north Indian’ dal, ‘north Indian’ samosas, and so on.So it was across India, when housewives were competent cooks in their own cuisines.That’s because recipes were handed over, practically in a kitchen, from one generation to the next. There was little or no expansion of cuisine; how could there?Till Tarla Dalal came along.She packed a book with vegetarian recipes, curated by her, which included dishes from north, south, east and west. The books were well produced, laid out simply in a manner that was easy to understand. The credibility came instantly when readers checked recipes of dishes that they were familiar with and found them to be honest and true. So if a Bengali checked out the recipe for luchi and aloor dom and found it reliable, she would immediately believe that the Tarla Dalal recipe for dosai or sarson da saag would be reliable, too.So the country lapped up Tarla Dalal books, millions of them, and kitchens across the country were exposed to new aromas, new flavours. Palates changed as ‘north Indians’ tried beans with coconut in it and Maharashtrians added mustard to their food.It slowly became a matter of pride for a ‘south Indian’ hostess to serve ‘north Indian’ dishes to her guests and so on. The praise on such occasions, when it came from someone from the region the dish originally came from, was worth all the experimentation.And so it carried on, till the lines blurred, and, 40 years after Tarla Dalal’s first book, young children would not know that idli is a ‘south Indian’ food and samosa a ‘north Indian’ one.There are many elements which make a country whole and make a country one. Tarla Dalal’s contribution to the osmosis of food in the country is unparalleled. She arrived on the landscape 40 years ago, much before television came to many parts of the country, much before Masterchef was a thought in a producers head.RIP, Tarla Dalal, India’s first Masterchef.