Mita Kapur makes food saucy and sexy as she rustles up some culinary delights in The F-Word, published by HarperCollins. A romp down the boulevards filled with food, friends and family, the book brings to the fore Kapur’s flair for delectable recipes as she experiments with a variety of cuisines to suit all types of tastebuds.

Kapur says she connects with food at a basic level. For her, it’s great fun to mess around in the kitchen. She says the book is a narrative on food and not just a cookbook. “It’s about you, the person next door, a working woman, a father, a grandparent, a college student living their every day life,” she says.

Excerpts from an interview:

Q. Reading The F-Word, it seems as if it has been in the making for a long time. How consciously have you been picking up the textures and flavours of different cuisines?
A. Yes and no. The idea for this book was born the day my first daughter was born so in that sense yes, it’s been in the making for a long time now. I haven’t consciously been picking on textures. I react instinctively to different flavours, aromas — I connect with food at a basic level.

Q. What was the trigger for the book? How important was it to distinguish it from mere cookbooks?
A. My husband threatened to write a soft porn and sell it from railway stations. No, seriously, I wanted to write this book for both my girls. I wanted readers to understand that cooking is not passé in this day and age and that its great fun to mess around in the kitchen.
This book is a narrative on food and not just a cookbook — there are stories, incidents centred around home, family and the various travelling bouts — it’s about you, the person next door, a working woman, a father, a grandparent, a college student who would probably be living their every day life — no one can do without food, can they?

Q. To what an extent did your “food-obsessed” family help shape the book’s conception?
A. They’ve been willing guinea pigs for all the experimenting with food that I kept subjecting them to. The book just grew as the experiences kept mounting up.

Q. Did you want it to be a blend of food and family?
A. Yes, certainly. But the larger picture is the various journeys that have also helped shape the book — each country/city/village opened out a whole new world of different flavours for me and I have tried to include them as many.

Q. Something about the structure of the book. Was this the shape when you set out to write? Did you have to leave out something else that you wrote?
A. The structure was kept random — I didn’t really follow a storyline save that I did separate the chapters according to soups, salads, main course etc. I did leave out a few of my travel experiences which was more a process of editorial surgery than anything else.

Q. The recipes you include in the book leave a lot of scope for experimentation. How often do you get to experiment in the kitchen?
A. That was the basic idea — I wanted the reader to feel “Hey, this is easy” or may be say “Hmm, may be I can add a dash of rose water to this salad dressing — worth trying”. I do experiment all the time. For me, almost every evening after work begins with standing before the fridge and figuring out what kind of salad can go on the table in the next 10 minutes or what kind of marinade do I use for chicken for next day’s dinner.

Q. Have you been a foodie yourself? What memories do you have of food when you were growing up?
A. I used to sit on the window sill in the kitchen and watch my elder sister cook when I was a kid. I’ve grown up on food observation classes.
I am a foodie in the sense of wanting to eat food that keeps its basic flavours — where you can taste every ingredient, fill the mouth with its textures and not have it cloaked in fat or too many spices.

Q. How difficult it is to rustle up something to suit the different tastebuds (of different generations) at home? It must be tough to achieve consensus on a specific cuisine?
A. Yes, it’s tough. Consensus on cuisine is not difficult as much as getting everyone to eat veggies is. But we manage by making sure that there is at least one dish which everyone will like. You can’t go wrong with roast chicken or sukhi urad daal which tastes piquant like chaat.

Q. What are your own perennial favourite cuisines?
A. Thai and Japanese. But, at the end of the day, I am a very moong ki daal and chawal person.

Q. Some of your favourite writers on food?
A. Ruth Reichl, Peter Mayle, Rob Walsh — I think they all are amazing.
Q. Do you think the space for culinary writing in India has evolved over the years?
A. It’s been varied and slow — there is so much that can be done to fill this space. Indian food itself has a vast, unending reservoir waiting to be explored — we’ve only just begun.

Q. What are you currently working on?
A. Toying with a couple of ideas. Research is on.