Tarla Dalal: Chips in the Kitchen

MUMBAI, INDIA: What wafts to your nostrils is not the usual smoke of technology paraphernalia that adorns many a modern woman’s kitchen nowadays, but something more exotic. A special condiment called a tech-savvy mind. It not only spices up the air for this veteran cook and Padma Shri winner but gives her name a new texture altogether.

Cooking enthusiasts, be it housewives hunting for new twists to their husbands’ lunchboxes, or harried mothers wondering how to pack nutrition interestingly  in their kids’ tiffins or a bachelor scratching his head for a quick and easy recipe; they all flock to www.tarladalal.com for recipes, a virtual kitchen housing over 16,000 recipes. Sounds strange for an expert who has etched her mark in the print space with over four million copies of cook books sold. As strange as cooking a diet-samosa may be.

In one of her recent works ‘Low Calorie Healthy Cooking’, Tarla Dalal whips out oxymoron like Sprouts Kadhi or Pineapple Sheera, and with the same poise she talks about blending technology in a world where the touch of a mother’s hands is still the most craved sauce. Let’s take a bite of another oxymoron — a tech-wired kitchen.

Microwaves, Mixers, Blenders etc have made life easy and instant. But do they take away the taste of grandma’s hand-crushed pastes?

Well, they have been very useful for the way everything around us is changing. We can not do without some machines in today’s lifestyles. Taste is not compromised if you know how to go about it properly.

Talking of change, India like many other parts of the world is experiencing the ‘health-and-dieting’ meme. How have you adapted your site for this change? How impactful has your virtual reach been as you see it?

This trend is in fact one major reason that we are so successful. How long can you deny yourself maa-ki-daal? But I try to ensure that you enjoy the same taste without the cholesterol. Another reason, the site is getting tremendous response consistently is because we ensure there is no complicated stuff. Just the right recipes in the right way and form for the middle class strata, which is often ignored.

How did you ensure that technology will not be just another for-the-sake-of-it garnish?

We have embedded and embraced technology on every platform, thanks to the vision and ideas my son Sanjay has brought in. We have about 65,000 people on Facebook and some 1.67 mn users a month on the site. Facebook, Twitter, blogs etc extend our reach.

Books and web, are they contradictions or a possibly-parallel phenomenon?

Digital is a lateral wave. It is easier to handle and enables more responsiveness. Users can ask quick questions and more than that, help us with frank comments. When they give instant ratings and reviews, it gives a deeper and faster scope to improve. One part of our audience is book market; the other is a web market. They don’t eat into each other. If someone is looking for a quick idea, s/he can tap into the site and browse something instantly. For a relaxed Sunday cooking or holiday mood, books are always a durable reference you can flip through. We ensure that we are present on either end of the continuum. Besides, E-books etc will not wipe out books completely. I don’t know how that works with novels. But about cook-books I am sure.

Do you have any special experts for handling the tech-slices?

Some of it is outsourced, but mostly supervised, ideated and executed by our in-house team that Sanjay heads. Every individual in the team is well-versed and comfortable with technology.

What next? How else are your marinating technology in?

We are about to launch applications for Android and ions devices in a few weeks. They will mostly be free apps with comprehensive content spun around in different ways. So the user can have everything handy on his personalized set. Plus, for us, apps will be great as they can pull information in real-time from the website. There are thousands of recipes, so one has to ensure that every change and nuance is integrated and uploaded as soon as possible. I just made a new curry and it was designed, shot, edited and uploaded on the site in a matter of minutes.