Everyone and their mother has heard about Tarla Dalal. Or, at the very least, they should. Dalal, widely regarded as India’s first celebrity chef, transformed the Indian food industry with her Tarla Dalal cooking workshops, cookbooks, and joie de vivre.
Tarla Dalal, who was she?
While Dalal made an effort to keep up with the times and produce some “fancy” recipes, she appeared to follow one principle – keep things simple. This endeared her to millions of Indians who wished to rediscover the joy of cooking. At one point, the chef and TV host was one of the world’s top five best-selling cookery authors. Dalal wrote 170 books over her successful career, many of which were translated into Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Dutch, and Russian. According to media sources, approximately 10 million copies of the culinary icon’s books have been sold.
Dalal’s passion for the culinary arts was not limited to the kitchen or the pages of her books; she also ran the largest Indian food website (at the time), which contains a whopping 17,000 vegetarian recipes organised into eight sub-categories: By Course, By Cuisine, By Ingredients, Quick Recipes, For Special Occasions, Kids Corner, By Equipment, and By Cooking Method. That’s so precise and helpful that it’s no surprise she’s still one of India’s favourite chefs even after her death.
From humble origins:
Tarla Dalal was born into a poor family. In 1936, the chef and author was born into a Vaishnav household in Pune. Following her marriage to Naveen Dalal, she relocated to Mumbai (then known as Bombay) in 1960. Her marriage to Naveen was said to be a joyful one, with Tarla’s granddaughter referring to him as the wind behind her wings. Tarla began culinary classes six years after moving to Mumbai. She had no idea that they would be so well received that mothers all over the world would be heard saying, “If you want to get your daughter married, send her to Mrs. Dalal’s classes.”
To a celebrity chef:
Her modest culinary style appears to have contributed to her popularity. Dalal was candid about the fact that she read a lot of cookbooks and got ideas from them. She researched a variety of cuisines and Indianized them suit the country’s distinct palate. In the teaser for Tarla, starring Huma Qureshi, the actress is shown telling a neighbour that she had removed the’murg’ from the’musallam’ and replaced it with potatoes instead of meat, creating ‘batata musallam’.
“What’s interesting is that, unlike many other cookbooks at the time, Tarla Dalal made international cuisine accessible to the average housewife,” food and wine writer Antoine Lewis told The Times of India in 2013.
“She was, and always will be, India’s first food celebrity,” said Chef Sanjeev Kapoor in the same piece. “Her books enabled many millions of people to learn about international cuisine in a very affordable and accessible manner.”
“Cook it Up with Tarla Dalal” and other shows:
Because of her grasp of the Indian taste, her first cookbook, ‘The Pleasures of Vegetarian Cooking,’ was a great success, solidifying her position in the culinary scene. Her food show ‘Cook it Up with Tarla Dalal’, which aired for three years in South East Asia, India, the Gulf, the UK, and the US, helped her gain even more renown.
The Padma Shri, the Republic of India’s fourth-highest civilian award, was bestowed upon her by the Government of India in 2007. Dalal died of a heart attack at her home on November 6, 2013. Tarla, a biopic on the culinary legend starring Huma Qureshi in the title role, is now accessible on Zee5.
