�The French, Italian and Californian wines here are all second rate! It is a shame to bring quality wines to India. Wine is a living thing! It doesn�t travel well and then look at the way we store it! Our Marquise de Pompadour is a good sparking wine. Though I can not understand why people are impressed with French wines only. Most of the time they are rotgut table wines!�

RICHARD Holkar, the 21st century Maharaja of Indore, is a renaissance man, a gourmet who has travelled around the country visiting a number of royal kitchens to co-author a book in 1975 called The Cooking of The Maharajas. Since this was done immediately after Indira Gandhi had cancelled the privvy purses of the royal families of India, Holkar, tongue firmly in cheek, refers to his book as �Cooking of The Maharajas� Gooses!�. As you may imagine, there was no publishing house in India willing to take up such a book in the mid-1970s. So Holkar got it published in Paris. �Today, it is the most frequently-asked for title in bookshops around the world,� he said, �but the book is not available.�

Fortunately, what is available is the kind of food that Holkar put into The Cooking of The Maharajas. He can cook most of it himself. And if you can get yourself invited for dinner to his 18th century palace in Maheshwar, 100 kilometres from Indore, do go. For a Richard Holkar signature dinner menu would read something like this: Hot or cold cucumber soup with dil, mint and yoghurt; chicken liver with bacon and water chestnuts; fish cooked with onion in white wine and sorrel sauce; wild rice with boiled potatoes; tossed green salad; and for dessert, either orange with vanilla ice-cream, chocolate sauce and marmalade or rasogulla squeezed dry with lime juice and freshly chopped mangoes!

But the thing with Holkar is that he doesn�t cook and then call friends over to taste his food, he called friends over and then chooses to cook for them. And he will spend as much as half a day in the preparation of such a meal. He will go to the market to shop for ingredients, he loves to do that, he can tell good produce from bad, especially fish and meat, the vegetables he grows in his own organic garden. The dinner will not be a tamasha, he ensures, but more a warm and friendly event. Six people at a time. Those that have been fortunate to be invited to dine with Holkar, are still talking about his cooking. Especially the stunning presentations. �Cooking becomes interesting if the presentation is interesting,� he said. �People like to eat food not just because it is well prepared, but because it looks nice as well.�

Holkar can turn his hand to just about any dish, though he tends to prefer Indian, French, Italian cooking and that �vaguely known cuisine known as Californian�. He started cooking when he was in Stanford College and he inspired his classmates to like food because he was so exceptionally talented at producing even something as simple as lamb shanks with rice and peas! Most of his cooking, Holkar admitted, came out of recipe books. He loved reading them. �I don�t have a huge number but I order them frequently from Kitchen Arts & Letters of New York,� he said. �The recipes sink into the subconscious. I might not cook them. But they are fertile material for what I might want to do at some time.�

It is said the test of a good cook is the perfectly boiled pot of rice; the perfectly brewed cup of tea; the perfectly steamed fillet of fish; and the perfectly made omelette. Holkar admits to not being able to boil rice. Wild rice, Persian rice with the bottom crispy and crunchy, yes, but not simple boiled rice. He gets somebody else to do it for him! Likewise, he doesn�t bake rotis as well, though he knows how to make good parathas and puris. But tea and fish, certainly. He loves tea. And fish, the best way to cook it is in the microwave. �It�s very complex, the fish cooks outside in and is overall excellent,� he said. As for the omelette, there are many ways in which he can make the perfect omelette. But he likes the classic French preparation in which he adds calf�s liver.

He talked about eating out. Since he lived in Delhi, his eating out was restricted to what choice Delhi had to offer. �The food at home is better,� he grumbled, �because I can cook what I want. Though when I go out, I like Ritu Dalmiya�s restaurant Diva. It is as good as Indigo in Bombay. And the Orient Express in The Taj Palace is seriously a very good restaurant.� Abroad, the only restaurant that draws the gourmet maharaja�s certificate of approval is Chef Michael Romanov�s Union Square Cafe in New York. He finds eating out in New York, Paris, London a conscious investment decision. All the restaurants offer fantastic food, but they are so expensive!

Holkar is a wine and whisky man. And a cigar and cognac aficionado. �I�m just learning about wines, though I already have quite a bit of experience,� he said. �In India, the choice of wines is restrictive. It is not extensive and not very good. I find the Sauvignon Blanc of Sula upto international quality, and also Grover�s La Reserva. But the French, Italian and Californian wines here are all second rate! It is a shame to bring quality wines to India. Wine is a living thing! It doesn�t travel well and then look at the way we store it!� So he is all in favour of supporting Indian wine producers. The Marquise de Pompadour is a good sparking wine. Though he can not understand why people are impressed with French wines only. �Most of the time they are rotgut table wines,� the gourmet said.

And Maharaja Richard Holkar is a single malt and cigar man as well. �Highland Park, which is a nice drink with water, and Talisker, which is more smokier and an after dinner drink, are my favourite single malt whiskies,� he said. In cigars, he smokes the Hoyo de Monterrey. �The thicker the cigar, the better,� he said. �It is a 40-minute smoke.� And he enjoys the whole range of after-dinner drinks from Calvados to Cognac... �which is so difficult to get here, of course�.