A Palate Coup

<div class="section0"><div class="Normal"><span style="" font-size:="">Since food habits, like a religious faith, stubbornly resist change, any indication that a people are willing to experience the flavours, textures and aromas of cuisines other than their own merits a close look. In the market near to where I live I notice more and more customers buying vinegars and olive oils, mustards and salad dressings, pastas and tinned anchovies, dried tomatoes and gherkins, cold cuts and cheeses.They also reach out for condiments needed to rustle up a Chinese, Thai, Italian, Moroccan, French or a Lebanese dish. </span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">Such gastronomic eclecticism is unprecedented in this country. Down the centuries our sages have sought to link self denial and spiritual fulfilment.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">But now we no longer regard the pursuit of pleasure, including, especially, culinary pleasure, to be a barrier to the acquisition of virtue. The trend, also evident from the proliferation of restaurants serving a variety of foreign foods, is tantamount to a palate coup. For, when the palate turns cosmopolitan, the mind can hardly remain parochial for long. Anything that exposes the senses and the imagination to external stimuli will sooner or later uplift the spirit as well. It would provide an antidote to fanaticism of every shade.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">At a personal level the ready access in my local market to the things I need to cook a non-Indian meal has had one salutary consequence. Just about two or three years ago, these would be part of my luggage after a trip abroad. Now I return more or less empty-handed from my foreign peregrinations. Moreover, I am compelled to be more discerning in what I choose to eat and drink.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">Take wine. Our domestic production is doubtless getting better and better with each vintage. But it will be a while before it can match the quality of wines from France and Italy, South Africa and California, Chile and Australia. I bring along something I haven''t savoured before, a wine, say, from a little known chateau that a knowledgeable friend happens to recommend with a dash of insistence.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">And so it is with cheese. Since industrialised cheeses are found in my neighbourhood shops at home, I explore the open-air markets and specialised boutiques abroad for those that are not mass-produced. </span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">Paris offers glorious opportunities for such explorations. I opt for cheeses made from raw rather than pasteurised milk. The latter last longer but the former are distinctive in many respects since they are cured on specific farms in specific regions and are thus infused with local flavours such as thyme or rosemary and even fresh, tender grass. </span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">A few weeks ago, during a short visit to Paris, the sales girl in a specialised shop proposed a cheese from the Lyon region. It came in a round, fragile wooden container. The inside was covered with something akin to pita bread. You needed to pierce it with a knife and then scoop out the runny cheese with a spoon. It had a lingering aroma of burnt chestnuts. To relish this cheese along with a slice of Poilane bread, the very best in the whole wide world, and a glass or two of a decent wine is to attain a state of near bliss.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">It is these things - a wedge of goat or ewe milk cheese, a glass or two of an unpretentious Bordeaux, a baguette from a traditional bakery, slices of a smoked chitterling sausage, a salad of endives - that makes travel abroad still attractive. Add to that an interesting film, play, book or a piece of music and the company of witty friends. This is just about everything you need to create a private world far removed from the glitz and hype assailing you from all sides.</span><br /><br /></div> </div>