Painting a perfect meal

FOODIE

Like her art, Seema Kohli tries to maintain the purity of every colour in the vegetables she cooks.

"I'm looking more like a chef than an artist," exclaims Seema Kohli, presiding over a beautifully laid-out lunch, "but I am very happy,"she adds. That's because way back in college, Kohli, who confesses to having a sweet tooth and baking many cakes, had seriously considered opening a bakery!

"At least I am living out that dream now, even if it is for one day," she exclaims, meaning, of course, the opportunity to cook for this column and be known for what she does in the kitchen rather than in her studio.

Kohli, an artist to watch out for, has just completed a successful show in Delhi and so it is a good time indeed to ask her to take an afternoon off from her tough 12-13 hours-a-day painting schedule and cook us a meal.

She is excited and decides to do a "white chicken", in a yoghurt-cashew-almond gravy accompanied with "mint rice", a refreshing take on the mundane zeera rice. Both the recipes are Kohli's innovations, created for her children when they were younger and poor eaters.

"Those were the happiest times of my life. The children were growing up and I would cook something different for them everyday," she says.

The chicken recipe, for instance, uses nuts ground to a paste, something that was necessitated by the fact that her son hated cashews and almonds. "This was the only way I could make him eat nuts. In fact, I even used to put powdered ones in dals!"So that's one tip for other moms too.

As a child, Kohli remembers she was always fond of food. Her grandfather would pamper her because he felt that she would be undernourished as the second daughter. He'd give her vegetable and fruit juices, including bitter gourd, that she loves. His stories while he fed her form part of her art, she says.

Ironically, instead of being undernourished Kohli turned out to be someone who admits to having "been on a diet since I was 18". These days, being more rooted in her work, she is kinder to herself, though her punishing schedule also means that she takes to the kitchen less often. When she does, however, food and art intersect.

"When I make gobhi, for instance", explains Kohli, "I don't like to use haldi because I don't like the yellow to overpower the natural white of the vegetable." It is the same in her art where she likes to maintain the purity of every colour.

Even in the washes, she lets one colour dry completely before painting on another and if you look closely enough, there are little strokes of silver, standing for Shukra, the planet of creativity and the arts, that the artist appeases with the first of her strokes and a prayer before starting any work. But that's another story.

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FAVOURI8TE RECIPES

White chicken

800 gm chicken
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp pepper
2 cups yoghurt
150 gm cashews, powdered
A fistful of almonds, soaked, skinned and ground to a paste, mixed with 1 tbsp yoghurt
Salt to taste
1 cinnamon stick
Garlic paste for marination

Marinate the chicken for at least 1 1/2 hours. Heat butter in a karahi, add the cinnamon, pepper and salt. Fry the chicken in this till all the water dries up. Add the curd, cover and cook for 5-10 minutes. When the chicken is tender, add the cashews and almonds. When the gravy thickens, take off the flame. Serve.

Mint rice

1 cup rice
Whole garam masala
1/2 cup mint leaves
Water to cook the rice
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt to taste

Heat oil in an open vessel. Add the spices and the zeera. Add the rice when this starts to splutter and toast it for a minute. Add water and mint leaves. Cover and cook till fully done.