HARSH KRISHNA PRASAD: LOVE AT FIRST BITE by Mihir Srivastava

​Harsh Krishna Prasad, 72, has had a roller coaster of a life with steep crests and troughs. He did well and badly at times but kept going at all times. In that sense, he’s a great survivor and a bit of a fighter too. During these upheavals, that life offered him plenty, his passion for food helped him stand firm. He is an accomplished artist in the abstract art of cooking, his palette contains ingredients, herbs and spices. As Bob Blumer poetically wrote, “ingredients trump appliances, passion supersedes expertise, creativity triumphs over technique, spontaneity inspires invention, and wine makes even the worst culinary disaster taste delicious.” Harsh is a good example with the notable exception of the last sentence. In his case wine makes the culinary experience an unmitigated bonanza.

Being a foodie is an existential reality of Harsh’s life. He personifies culinary extravaganza; his own body is a testimony to this great bonhomie. To him food is about celebrating life. And people would argue otherwise, whether such a bonhomie is sustainable? A valid point. But the flip side is also true. The joy of eating heartily is less harmful many times than the stress caused by remaining underfed to stay slim—need not mean fit. Lean is not healthy, always, as much as bulk is not essentially bad. 

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Being a foodie is an existential reality of Harsh’s life. He personifies culinary extravaganza; his own body is a testimony to this great bonhomie. To him food is about celebrating life

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Harsh is a case in point. Culinary delight is a must for a life well lived. He has been rotund all his life and doesn’t seem to have hampered his quality of life much. The youngest of the four siblings, Harsh was a pampered child. He was sent to Sainik School with the hope that he’d shed some weight. He failed Sainik School.

Who doesn’t like eating tasty food? But in Harsh’s case, it’s been a lifelong passion and food became the medium to explore life, traditions and customs, cultures and history. Cooking, to him, is a play with sensory organs—not just taste but sight, aroma, texture. His kitchen is akin to a food laboratory stashed with large utensils bigger than the bucket. They are put to good use time and again. I have been a regular beneficiary of his largesse.

His eyes lit up when he talks about food, that happens at the slightest provocation, and he gets into the nitty gritty of the fine art of cooking in the minutest details. So, when he’s around, a good policy is to eat quietly and let the food do the talking.

I have known him for as long as I've been on this planet, and once made the cardinal error of asking him the recipe for liver curry. He gave me a lecture—there are three ways to do it, so on and so forth, when his better half, Arti, came to my rescue. ‘Add two spoonfuls of oil in a pan, cook chopped onion and garlic until it's reddish brown, put liver chucks, cover it with a lid, and let it sit for a while in low flame—that it.’ It’s not easy to be his wife. For at times, he overwhelms her with instructions of how and when to add ingredients. She’s learned the art of doing it her way despite his overwhelming influence and this ability makes her a wonderful cook in her own right.

Love in heart with the spirit to feed is the key ingredient, always, in his cooking, in any great cooking. Rest is a matter of details and he’s a master of details: adding the right ingredient at the right time after being chopped in the right fashion, cooked in the right vessel at the right temperature, which invariably changes at various stages of cooking.  To Harsh the process of cooking is sacred. It’s an art to accentuate food into a divine ​experience.

Cooking practices become a tradition shaped by climatic conditions of a region or a cultural heritage of a community. Food is anthropology; production and consumption practices give an insight into our shared history. Appetite is a social impulse that shapes social influences. Traditional food practices are the essential link between generations, and a discerning factor between communities, tribes, and nationalities. Harsh seems to understand it all intuitively. And so, food is not just an experience for him, but also an undiluted link between the past and the present.

He is an expert in various cuisines Rampuri, Awadhi, Jaunpuri and Anglo-Indian to name a few, each very distinct from the other. For instance, Rampuri cuisine is an amalgamation of Mughlai flavours of Awadhi, Hyderabadi and Kashmiri with the choicest dishes, both vegetarian (methi-aloo ki sabji, baruwa Shimla mirch and host of other preparations) and non-vegetarian. “Dum” cooking is his specialisation where ingredients (read meat) sit in an earthen pot on slow flame for long hours. This is done to accentuate flavours and aroma, and tantalize the senses. He claims the aroma of his cuisine spreads for a mile.

The good thing is that his experimentation with food as a way of self-expression is far from over. Passion gives perspective to life and a direction. Food has been a way to connect with the world for him and propagate culinary bliss. He has organised many food festivals across the country, in five-star hotels, and fancy restaurants for the last couple of decades with great success. There are many in the pipeline.

There’s a bit of a lineage to this passion. Harsh belongs to a renowned Kayastha family of Uttar Pradesh, many of them served the government in senior positions. They have proclivity to enjoy non-vegetarian cuisine, almost part of the DNA. I’d call it an outcome of natural selection over generations. A culinary legacy. His mother, Jai Devi, was a maestro. And Harsh, since, is the repository of this culinary heritage.

The way to a man's (person’s) heart is through his (their) stomach. He has won many hearts for he gave wings to his passion and got in the public domain to spread happiness by way of food. Food is his passion, and is his way of giving back to the world. His interface with the world, it has to be said, is very scrumptious. His favourite place, therefore, is the kitchen where all the action is.

Lately, he needs the help of a couple of assistants to carry out his intricate instructions issued in plenty every few seconds. Therefore, is seen, more often than not, sitting with cooks, overseeing the preparation of a feast for a wedding or a party in the extended family or that of friends.

Harsh talks about recipes like we gossip about people. And his experimentation with food has ensured him a rich experiential life. It started in his college days. For instance, he made mutton stew in rum instead of water for a bunch of friends. Taste buds had a feast, while doors of perception opened to a new world of sensory delight. He's a bit of an alchemist as well.