For Jaideep Mehrotra, an apron and an easel are both stocks-in-trade for creative expression. As acclaimed an artist as he is avid a cook, with genteel elegance he explains, "Cooking is a lot like painting. You're mixing colours and textures to create something that you hope will be appreciated!"

He is joined by his wife, Seema, in the spacious living room of their Worli sea-facing apartment, where, to get to his studio, you have to go through the kitchen. A fitting clue to his passion for food, which he shares with Seema. "We have always enjoyed food," he says, "and as early as almost two decades ago, when we visited China and ate dim sums we were dismayed that no one did them in Mumbai. So we bought the ingredients and returned and experimented. We did this on all our travels. Those days, there were hardly any international restaurants in Mumbai and you didn't have food stores where you could shop for exotic ingredients. I remember, when we first tried Thai food and loved it, we couldn't get it in Mumbai as there were no Thai restaurants yet. So we bought the ingredients on a trip to England and came back to recreate what we had enjoyed."

Seema recalls how on a holiday to the US, they bought a pizza stone and carried it back, heavy and unwieldy as it was, to authenticate their endeavours. Jaideep adds, "Seema's cousin is married to an Italian, so we took tips from her. Then we started improvising. We always make the base with fresh tomatoes and use smoked mozzarella for flavour, ensuring all the ingredients are fresh. The best compliment, we believe, is that our daughters now fight to have home-made pizzas!"

Jaideep picked up his cooking skills in Dubai, where he worked for several years running a printing press, straight out of college. A tad tired of the standardised fare that came out of the company canteen, he started to serenade the skittle in his spare time and honed a skill his family greatly appreciates today.

He recalls, "Ravi Ghai was in Dubai, setting up a restaurant, and we got friendly. He would give me lots of tips, which have helped me enormously."

Jaideep's brother is married to a Taiwanese, so they have incorporated authentic Taiwanese cooking into their repertoire as well! And Jaideep reveals that Seema studied in France for a while, and is good with French cuisine.

So that makes for a very interesting and, to add a much-used word, 'international' palate. And a far cry from the food Jaideep grew up on, which was more conventional cuisine from UP (from where his father came) and Sind (thanks to his mother). Seema, being Sindhi, Sai bhaji and so on are still staples on the menu, although not as often anymore. He affably confesses to some traditional thinking, where the Sindhi papad is still integrated, in many homes, into a meal where the main course could be Italian - but, fortunately, not theirs!

Having said that, there's a wholesome simplicity about their home food. Lunch is generally the staple Indian fare comprising dal, chawal, sabzi. For dinner they have what he calls "a lighter, non-Indian meal", often dished up by the two of them together, or any one individually. Seema smiles, "The kids still have their 'Maggie noodle' moments, but their palate is more refined too." As a concession, burgers are made at home, with healthier ingredients.

Both Seema and Jaideep are gym and wellness buffs, and believe that diet is an important constituent of good health. "Out diet now is virtually wheat free, with very little oil, red meats are almost never eaten, and we have switched to brown rice and liquid sugar," Jaideep concedes. They rue that organic vegetables and groceries are not easy to come by, and insist on eating only seasonal fruit. "A principle in Ayurveda says you should eat only seasonal fruit, and a good gauge of that is to see what fruit is being sold cheap on the street," Jaideep underscores.

Fond of eating out, they have happy memories of many memorable meals around the world. Seema recalls that their discovery of a Japanese restaurant in Sri Lanka was a fortuitous one. "We normally do our research before we travel, because food is a very important aspect of a trip," Jaideep lets on. Seema interjects, "Eating dim sums on the streets of Taipei will always remain etched on our taste buds!"

For Jaideep, it was a meal in Switzerland, hosted by his father-in-law that stands out as superlative: "He told the owner-chef of a small restaurant to cook whatever he wanted for us, but to make sure it was an outstanding meal that the entire family would enjoy. Given a free hand, the chef turned out such a fantastic meal that it was among the best I've had. Also, when you're abroad the choice of wines is much better. Unfortunately in India, although there is no duty on the import of wines for five star hotels, their mark-ups of up to 400 per cent make prices unreal."

Fond of a slew of eateries in Mumbai from Oh! Calcutta to Thakkar Bhojanalay at Girgaum for their Gujarati thali, to Indigo, they confess that some of their nicer meals have been at the homes of friends like Elsie and Hoshie Nanji, who share their passion for food.

However, for the Mehrotras, indulgences are occasional. No deep frying, regular meal times (dinner generally at eight) and measured portions are the norm. Jaideep is a committed professional, and his hours at the easel are equally precious. Somehow, food does find its way into his work! Most recently, his paintings have been featured on the bottles of Sula wines (Satori, Dindori etc.), and he has always had food-inspired elements in his paintings. Not ironically, his first exhibition at 13 was held at Chetana, where a man who had come to eat noticed a work and bought it for a couple of hundred rupees. And, when he was dating Seema, and discovered she liked lady fingers, he sent her baskets of bhindi, instead of bouquets of flowers… Heartened to discover a fellow foodie, she married him - and has ensured the apron strings are still tied tight!