Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir (11 page)

Once in a while we burned a wok trying to make our
churan,
and Jima, Bhanu, or another matriarch would banish us from the kitchen.
“You should’ve told us,” they’d say. “We would’ve helped you.”
You’re not getting it,
Neela and I thought.
This is our party and you’re not invited.
To this day, the elder women of my household in Chennai still regard Neela or me with suspicion whenever we enter the kitchen to make anything other than tea. No matter that I host a cooking show or that Neela has raised two healthy daughters who clearly haven’t starved or been disfigured by a kitchen accident.

Of course, we never went long after a reprimand before returning to the kitchen, especially in the quiet of midafternoon, when the napping gatekeepers left it unguarded. Like janitors in a lab, we waited out the scientists until we were alone with the chemicals and could tinker. We made many versions of chili cheese toast, a classic Indian snack that today is on every hotel menu in India. The formula for this subcontinental club sandwich is bread, butter, cheese, and minced green chilies. At the time, we used Britannia brand bread, a knockoff Wonder Bread (the packaging even sported colorful squares instead of circles), which was like a scratchy motel pillow compared with the soft, fluffy down of the real thing. We used Amul brand “cheese”—or, more accurately, processed cheese-like product, because it had all the quality of Laughing Cow wedges left out too long without the wrapper. But no matter. Decked out with minced chilies or Maggi brand Hot & Sweet—essentially ketchup and Tabasco swirled into one—the sandwich never disappointed. We cooked it with a sort of pie iron, a contraption with two long wood-covered handles, like those of scissors, which opened and closed the metal encasement. We’d hold a stick of butter like a marker and scribble the fat on the inside of the metal, then close it around the sandwich and hold it over the stovetop flame, turning it until the bread was a crunchy shell for the molten, processed goodness inside.

On the side, we ate cucumber slices topped with a tart spice mixture called
chaat masala.
We ate the cucumbers with toothpicks—we thought
the toothpicks made us very sophisticated. We also made chocolate milkshakes to go with the sandwiches, which were basically Cadbury Drinking Chocolate powder swirled into milk. We would hide our small tumblers behind all the food in the fridge so no one would even know they were there, until everyone went to sleep at night, and then we would have our midnight feast. It was hard to get any private time in that house without several generations watching your every move. So our little midnight parties were just for us older kids, no adults, no Rajni or Rohit.

Most of all, Neela and I loved the category of snacks called
chaat.
Chaat
comes in such vast variety that only the few qualities every example shares—namely, a thrilling mixture of temperatures, textures (crunchy, crispy, and soft in all of their own myriad degrees), and flavors (hot, sweet, tart, and tangy)—can provide a meaningful definition.
Chaat,
to me, succeeds via culinary chemical principle: the combustion generated by opposites brought together in a bowl. Though things have changed, when I was a kid, no restaurant with four walls and self-respect would sell
chaat.
The pleasures and thrills offered by
chaat
were the domain of street vendors, operating out of stalls or pushcarts. The best were composed in front of you, in Delhi. Our beloved
chaatwallah,
near India Gate, made an exceptional version of my favorite,
papri chaat:
crunchy fried semolina discs dressed with warm chickpeas and potatoes, spice powders like red chili and black cumin, and the holy trinity of
chaat
sauces—tart, cooling yogurt; bright cilantro-and-mint green chili chutney; and tangy tamarind-date chutney. Those three sauces could create
chaat
from little else—potato, crunchy chickpea-flour noodles, an exploded samosa—resulting in an elegant hodgepodge, an incredibly complex-tasting dish.

Whenever I visited Delhi to see my uncle Ravi, I made him stop for
chaat
on the way home from the airport, perhaps for
pani puri
(or
golgappa,
as it’s also called). This meant watching the
chaatwallah
pull a miniature sphere of
puri
(bread that’s fried so it puffs and becomes crunchy) from
a pile, poke a hole in its top with his finger, and add a dollop of potatoes, black chickpeas, and tamarind-date chutney inside. Then he’d dunk the whole thing in
pani,
which looks like swamp water but is actually a strange and beguiling mix of pureed mint, chili, tamarind, spices, and water. You’d knock it back in one exhilarating bite. Nowadays, you’re often presented with the components and required to assemble each bite yourself, which is a bit like your favorite chef presenting you with his
mise en place
of prepped ingredients
. Pani puri
is never as good as when a master makes it.

What Neela and I craved in particular about
chaat
was the unique flavor that defined and united the array of snacks. We knew this as
chaatpati
. Think of it as the Indian umami. When a snack combined saltiness, tartness, sweetness, and spiciness in that magical, mouth-smacking proportion, then that snack had
chaatpati.
At the time, we had no words to describe that sought-after sensation, so when asked to explain, we’d say, “You know,
tlck
tlck,
” as we clicked our tongues against the roofs of our mouths, the sound of satisfaction. For us,
chaatpati
was the condition to which all food should aspire. For me, that has pretty much remained the case for my whole life. As a high school student and lapsed vegetarian, I became enamored of the Double Bacon Western Cheeseburger at Carl’s Jr., because the combination of salty bacon, creamy melted cheese, and sweet, piquant barbecue sauce amounted to
chaatpati.
Given the crunchy onion ring that topped the patty, I was basically eating a
chaat
burger. When I’d eat my beloved nachos from Green Burrito, I was drawn to the
chaat
-like qualities—there were chips (some crunchy, some soggy) as well as tart, spicy salsas and cooling dollops of sour cream. Had there been a sweet component, the nachos might have officially reached
chaatpati
status.

Even as a young girl I could tell that the South Indian chutneys we ate on the streets of Chennai were more balanced and round than the jagged-edged northern ones we had eaten in Delhi. We missed their sharpness,
and often when we were hungry or bored, we set out to re-create it. Our best sauce to come of all those years of trial and error was our
chaatpati
tamarind-date chutney. This dark and gooey sludge became my first mother sauce of sorts, because it instantly woke up any bland or boring ingredient and made it finger-sucking good.

When Neela and I cooked, we were as obsessed with reproducing that tang and tingle as we were with replicating Sharmila Tagore’s eyeliner in the old Hindi movies we studied. Tagore was a great beauty. A Bengali actress who shot to prominence in art-house Satyajit Ray films, she then crossed over successfully into Bollywood and became a major leading-lady bombshell. In our favorite movie,
Amar Prem,
she plays a courtesan (which we did not even grasp the meaning of)
,
and her appearance is slightly vulgar, with gaudy jewels, garish saris, and dime-sized
bindis.
This was our ideal. We admired this look the way my daughter lights up at the sight of any article of clothing in Katy Perry pink. Food and fashion were our twin passions, bound together in our feminine, Indian identities, even when we were young girls. Back then, eating was also a means of beautification, since the more
aloo tikki
and
murukku
you consumed, the more likely you’d reach a voluptuousness akin to an American size ten or twelve, required for looking good in a sari.

Indeed, food and femininity were intertwined for me from very early on. Cooking was the domain not of girls, but of women. You weren’t actually allowed to cook until you mastered the basics of preparing the vegetables and dry-roasting and grinding the spices. You only assisted by preparing these
mise en places
for the older women until you graduated and were finally allowed to stand at the stove for more than boiling tea. Just as the French kitchens had their hierarchy of
sous-chefs
and
commis,
my grandmother’s kitchen also had its own codes. The secrets of the kitchen were revealed to you in stages, on a need-to-know basis, just like the secrets of womanhood. You started wearing bras; you started handling the pressure cooker for lentils. You went from wearing skirts and half saris to wearing full saris, and at about the same time you got to make the rice-batter crepes called
dosas
for everyone’s tiffin. You did not get told the secret ratio of spices for the house-made
sambar
curry powder until you came of marriageable age. And to truly have a womanly figure, you had to eat, to be voluptuously full of food.

This, of course, was in stark contrast to what was considered wom
anly or desirable in the West, especially when I started modeling. To look good in Western clothes you had to be extremely thin. Prior to this, I never thought about my weight except to think it wasn’t ever enough. Then, with modeling, I started depending on my looks to feed myself (though my profession didn’t allow me to actually eat very much). When I started hosting food shows, my career went from fashion to food, from not eating to really eating
a lot,
to put it mildly. Only this time the opposing demands of having to eat all this food and still look good by Western standards of beauty were off the charts. This tug-of-war was something I would struggle with for most of a decade.

T
hrough the smoke and mirrors of
television, my job looks like it’s full of glamour and excitement. You’d be forgiven for thinking that all I do is show up in my designer dress, have a meal and a chat, and head home. And it’s true, filming the show can be a thrill.
Top Chef
is a little like live sports—anything can happen. Plus there are knives and fire. But TV filming is comically slow. Lulls outnumber activity ten to one.

The long days of shooting—some end at midnight, some go even longer—are mostly downtime. But not good downtime. Strange downtime. Most of it is spent off the set in my dressing room, a small space overtaken by wardrobe racks. I have a single task during this time: not to mess up my hair, makeup, and clothes. I can’t undo all of my glam squad’s hard work just because I want to lie down. Or have a snack. Or, God forbid, blow my nose. At all times, I have about four people scrutinizing my every move. In that way, it’s a little like spending time with my family.

Practically every movement I make requires a conversation. “She wants to sit down, should she keep the dress on?” Michelle, my makeup artist, might say. “It has a zip,” says Albert, my stylist. “She should take
it off.” They talk about me like I’m not there, like two parents discussing their kid. My comfy jeans are not typically an option. Albert and Michelle won’t allow it. The seams supposedly mark my legs. If Michelle had her way, rollers wouldn’t leave my hair until a minute before I’m due on my mark. If Albert had his, I’d never sit down and, even better, would always wear my bathrobe, lest a wrinkle tarnish my dress.

Sometimes, all I want to do is shut my eyes, but a producer will come around to record lines that might need to be spliced into the show later. I’ll get word that I’m finally due back on the set, so the producers will send a guy to mic me. But even once we do hustle to the set, we end up hanging around for a while. That’s the way it goes during shooting: hurry up and wait. And often, during that waiting, I eat.

I eat at Judges’ Table, even though we
never
eat at Judges’ Table on the show. Not the contestants’ food, mind you. Over the years, I have had many snacks on the set that are not competition food. In the old days it started with some innocent sliced apples with peanut butter; then in New Orleans, our returning judge Emeril Lagasse turned me on to a Thai takeout that brought noodles in coconut milk to the set. And even before that, I taught my on-set assistant (and
Top Chef
’s unsung hero), Jason, how to make an open-faced version of my childhood classic, the chili cheese toast. This started several years back, long before the hipster restaurant trend to put almost anything on a toasted slice of bread and charge upward of $12 for it. Back when I was growing up, chili cheese toast was a down-homey snack we made for teatime or when feeling peckish.

When you’re tired and hungry, you just want something as decadent and rich as what the chefs give you, but without all the fancy stuff. You want something comforting. During shooting, my stomach seems to expand and expect to be fed copious amounts of food even when it doesn’t need it.

The glacial pace of TV is to blame. On a Quickfire day, I try to eat a healthy breakfast, but after hair, makeup, and wardrobe, after getting to the set and going over the script, after the inevitable delays, six hours have passed and I’m ravenous. So when the contestants’ food shows up, most of it made in true restaurant style, with more butter than a kilo of croissants, I eat more than I know I should. I probably eat every two hours when I’m
on the set. Tom will sometimes ask, sipping a gin and tonic, “How can you possibly be hungry?” I tell him I can eat as much as he can drink.

I typically go for snacks that won’t risk ruining my dress or makeup—you’re welcome, Albert and Michelle. Some of the snacks are strange, creations inspired by whatever I spot in the fridge. Some of them become regulars in my rotation, like my latest pet concoction: cottage cheese doused in Cholula Hot Sauce. Sometimes I’ll dunk chips or celery in it, like a dietetic version of ranch dip. I’m always trying to re-create some vaguely healthy version of junk food. You’ve got to have junk food. You’ve got to feel satisfied while still somehow keeping your waistline in check. This is the constant struggle that pervades my life. How do I look good and still be good at my job? How do I experience enough food so I know what I’m talking about on TV in the midst of these culinary heavyweights, and still look good while talking about it?

The men on the show have it easy, in part because men on TV have uniforms: There’s the jacket, in black, blue, or gray. There’s the shirt, the pants. I can never tell whether Tom is gaining or losing weight beneath his boxy suits. He always looks the same. Tom also has the benefit of being Tom, a decorated veteran of the restaurant kitchen. Like so many chefs, he is practiced at the taste-of-this, taste-of-that eating regimen. I’m the one who has to look like a glorified weathergirl, with formfitting dresses and all, which, don’t get me wrong, I love—at least until I don’t.

Unlike the other judges, who aren’t there for the beginning two acts of the show, I have to gorge during the appetizer portion of the
Top Chef
–episode meal: the Quickfire. We’re not a live show, but we sometimes function as one. We can’t reshoot and reshoot; juicy rib eye steaks turn into cold meat and congealing fat. So the reality of the Quickfire is virtually identical to the way it appears on TV. Contestants are given a challenge on the spot—make an amuse-bouche using only products found in a vending machine; reinvent the po’ boy sandwich—and forced to execute a dish
without forethought or
mise en place.
The chefs must act on a combination of culinary instinct and creative impulse. Adrenaline shakes awake their true selves, and the food they produce reveals who they really are as cooks. I always come hungry. They deserve the full audience of my appetite. I stand with the episode’s special guest, typically an established and celebrated chef, in front of a contestant and her dish, we eat, then we walk out of the frame. The cameras do a two-step around us and we walk back into frame in front of another contestant. The process is rapid fire:
Bite, bite, bite,
pause, adopt inscrutable facial expression, spew a vague comment that gives nothing away, and repeat. After a while my stomach begins to feel like a restaurant Dumpster. It was this kind of experience that made me devise a drink I call Cranberry Drano. I came up with it to help cleanse my digestive pipes after all the gluttonous eating on the show. During production I am likely to consume three full glasses of this potion a day, scrunching up my face the
whole time, due to its less-than-pleasurable taste. (In spite of the taste, it gets me through to the other side of filming.)

During the Chicago season, the immoderation started with the very first Quickfire. The guest judge was Rocco DiSpirito. And this being Chicago, the contestants, all sixteen of them, were tasked with making deep-dish pizzas that showed off their culinary personalities. In other words, the already brawny deep-dishes were decked out with prosciutto and lamb sausage and duck, with oozy Taleggio and cream-filled burrata. In the interest of fairness, Rocco and I had to sample each one straight from the oven, then again later to see how it held up to delivery. Do the math: thirty-two tastes, several bites in each. And you can’t take a small bite of deep-dish pizza—you cut off a bite with short length and width, but the height is fixed at, well, deep. I was in physical pain, devastated by my fullness.

By the filming of the second episode of the Chicago season, Darshan, my wardrobe diva at the time, noticed that my dress was tight. By the time the Chicago season wrapped, I had gained seventeen pounds. I felt horrible that I couldn’t manage my job
and
my appearance. My divorce had just become final; I was living in hotels and had little control over what I ate even when I wasn’t filming. That July, when I first moved into the Surrey, I had had the opposite problem. People wondered if I was possibly anorexic, because I couldn’t eat from depression and was so thin. Mere months later, in November, after my divorce became final and I had filmed another season of
Top Chef,
I ballooned up two dress sizes. Every woman has a record of her body—a closet full of jeans and bras of various sizes, albums full of photographs revealing periods of weight gain and loss. I’ve also come to realize that as a fortysomething woman on TV, I’m a rapidly depreciating asset, like a car just driven off the lot. Then there’s the added indignity of seeing my flaws dissected, zoomed in on, and gleefully mocked.

I’ve come to accept my weight gain as part of my
Top Chef
pact with the
devil. But early on, I was in denial. To make sure we came in under budget, I used to suggest that we borrow clothes from designers. This is a common strategy for models and actresses, which gives onlookers the impression that they have bottomless closets. My stylist had to break it to me: to fit into clothes available for borrowing, I had to be a sample size—in other words, waiflike. I wasn’t. By now, everyone on the set is used to my fluctuations. My beauty crew always finds a way to patch me up. From the start, Darshan would gather dresses in several sizes. She knew I’d jump up two or three sizes during filming. That, along with the magic of the camera—careful angling and long shots—helps hide the inevitable stomach paunch and back-of-the-arm pudge that always appear a few weeks in.

When I wasn’t filming, I could control my weight fairly well through good eating habits and exercise, thanks to both a forgiving metabolism and a flexible schedule. What I could never control, however, was my skin. I hated the fact that my dark skin marked and mottled easily—from my mosquito bite–scarred legs, to the two pale circles on my left arm from the olden days of inoculations in India, to the scar on my right arm. I didn’t love that my coloring set off the stretch marks behind my knees, which appeared during a teenage growth spurt, or those on my backside acquired from my many weight fluctuations. Various cuts and burns from cooking still remained, too, faded but nonetheless a reminder of every time I made some mistake. Every injury or physical skirmish left its mark on the landscape of my body.

Yet what I truly disliked, in certain gloomy moments and not always consciously, was my skin color
itself,
of which all that other piffle was merely a reminder. The insidious reasons for a brown girl’s self-loathing won’t be surprising to any woman of color. I cannot rightly compare my own struggles to those of another minority, as each ethnicity comes with its own baggage and the South Asian experience is just one variation on the experience of dark-skinned people everywhere. As parents and
grandparents often do in Asian countries, my extended family urged me to avoid the sun, not out of fear that heatstroke would sicken me or that UV rays would lead to cancer, but more, I think, out of fear that my skin would darken to the shade of an Untouchable, a person from the lowest caste in Indian society, someone who toils in the fields. The judgments implicit in these exhortations—and what they mean about your worth—might not dawn on you while you’re playing cricket in the sand. What’s at stake might not dawn on you while, as a girl, you clutch fast to yourself your blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll named Helen. But all along, the message that lighter skin is equivalent to a more attractive, worthier self is getting beamed deep into your subconscious. Western ideals of beauty do not stop at ocean shores. They pervade the world and mingle with those of your own country to create mutant, unachievable standards. The prizing of lighter skin did not reach our shores with colonialism, either, for there is much reference to the virtues of fair skin in ancient Indian texts. The logic of the-lighter-the-better comforts you until suddenly you are the darker one. Our attitudes toward skin color are manifold and nuanced and even contradictory. Kids who did not think twice about calling me “blackie”
in high school were still quite capable of smearing suntan oil on themselves and lying out for incessant hours to get a tan.

When I came to the U.S., of course, I saw people in many shades. It was strange and wonderful to see Chinese and Caucasian and Dominican people all riding the same subway. I was fascinated by all the different types of people, not only by their skin colors and hair textures but also by the many different ways in which they dressed and expressed themselves. It was exciting to be a kid in New York City. Over time, I started to realize, however, that certain groups of people were viewed differently than others. It was confusing. The discrimination and racism faced by African Americans was obvious to me, even as a young child. I wasn’t black, but my own brown skin seemed to come with stories I hadn’t written myself. During
the next decade and a half, I’d gradually learn that to many Americans, my skin color signaled third-world slums as seen in Indiana Jones movies, malaria, hot curry and “stinky” food, and strange bright clothing—a caricature of India and Indians. I began to change into a person who contained two people within herself: a girl proud of and connected to her culture and native country, and one who wished she just looked like her old doll, Helen. By high school, when fitting in seems almost as important as breathing, that second girl began to take control. When I changed my name—from Padma to Angelique—for approximately four wince-worthy years, I was trying to hide from my identity. That would come later, once we had moved to California, but my divided self began to split in New York, after the second reunion with my mother.