A taste of culinary history

Fourteen years old and all that, all Miguel Arcanjo Mascarenhas had to his resume credit was de-feathering chickens. It gets increasingly harder to believe that it’s the same man that Taj Exotica, Goa, has named a restaurant after - Miguel Arcanjo.

It had been a gargantuan leap added to the fact that he also fed royalty from all across the world, popes and political dignitaries and was allegedly the first executive chef in India.

In ‘Masci, The Man Behind the Legend’, Odette Mascarenhas recreates her father-in-law, Miguel Arcanjo Mascarenhas through newspaper reports, personal accounts and letters and scribbles of recipes and notes left behind by the master chef.

“He was the first Indian chef to have achieved such a status with no education whatsoever,” she explains. Oddly enough, she never met him. He passed away a year before she joined the Mascarenhas’ as the daughter-in-law to their youngest of seven children.

Miguel Arcanjo Mascarenhas or Masci as he was affectionately known, stumbled into Mumbai in search of a life beyond the ordinary in Goa, where hard labour earned a meagre salary under Portuguese rule.

A walk at the Gateway of India sealed his fate when he was taken in as a kitchen boy by a wandering clerk from the Taj Mahal Hotel.

Years of feathered chickens and an observant mind earned him JRD Tata’s notice when his Italian chef disappeared after being accused of being a spy in the WWII.

Promoted to Chef de cuisine in 1939 at the age of 35, he started on a culinary journey that earned him the respect and honour of heads of states and dignitaries from across the world that lasted till he passed away almost 30 years ago.

Odette and her husband Menino Joe Mascarenhas are management consultants and putting the book together also meant interpreting Masci’s work ethic in today’s managerial concepts.

“There are so many principles of management that we go by today that Masci was perfecting all that while ago,” says Odette. Creatively cooking up dishes from just a description of it started becoming his forte. Till he passed away, he was remained an employee of the hotel with JRD Tata attending each of his private family functions of birthdays and anniversaries.

The book is chock-full of sepia-toned images and frayed yellowing letters of thanks and remembrances from popes, kings and the Tatas. It’s meant to be a symbol of hope and inspiration in a world where a thousand degrees will barely bring you closer to a much coveted goal.

s_rituparna@dnaindia.net