Kathmandu:

Over last year Rajan Maharjan, my friend, colleague and I collected and wrote about stories involved in the history of food. Here are the few choices ones retold.

“England’s first curry house was called the Hindostanee Coffee House and it opened in Portman Square, London and was owned by Dean Mahomet also known as Mr Vindaloo. It closed a few years later, one of the reasons given was it didn’t actually serve coffee.”

“Often the food is as delicious as the name and it tells fabulous stories. For example the first Tandoor-like dish happened in China and was called Beggar’s Chicken and involved a beggar who had stolen a chicken and was ready to cook it in a fire when some strangers approached. The beggar hastily buried the chicken near the fire until the strangers left an hour later. When he dug it up it was featherless and delicious — the cooled clay had plucked the chicken and the meat was soft. It’s still a technique used in China today.”

“Once there was an elderly priest — or imam as the Mohammedans call him — who married a wealthy olive oil merchant’s daughter, the finest cook in the land. On her wedding day she received a dozen stone barrels of olive oil as dowry. The day after the marriage she prepared a wholly irresistible dish of eggplant with tomatoes and the imam ate it with relish. It was so much to his taste, in fact, he asked her to prepare it every day. On the thirteenth day she served a quite different dish. When the imam asked her why, she replied that her dowry was depleted. There wasn’t a drop left. He fainted. The dish is called The Imam Fainted.”

Said Fran Lebowitz, “Food is an important part of a balanced diet” adding “My favourite animal is steak.” Restaurants are advised to remember writer GK Chesterton’s saying, “Music with dinner is an insult, both to the cook and the violinist.”

Another homily attributed to writer Adelle Davis is, “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a Prince and dinner like a pauper.”

Author Alice May Brock sums up different kinds of food and garlic with, “Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.”

In 1878, the composer Johannes Brahms fell ill on the day he was to dine with another composer Strauss. His doctor instructed him to go on diet. “But this evening I am dining with Strauss and we shall have chicken paprika,” said Brahms. “That’s out of the question,” the doctor told him. Said the composer, “In that case, please consider that I didn’t come to consult you until tomorrow.”

“Thomas Jefferson introduced to America the joys of fried potatoes describing them as potatoes cooked in the French manner. Belgian street vendors sold thin fried potatoes called Belgian fries from pushcarts which the French called French fries.”

In Greece in 600 BC, lentils or dal were known as a poor man’s food. As someone did better in life, it was said of him, “He doesn’t like lentils anymore.”

George Bernard Shaw, the writer and playwright who wrote in Arms And The Man about the chocolate cream soldier who refused to fight and filled his pistols with chocolate creams said, “There is no sincerer love than the love of food.”

Writer Virginia Woolf said, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”