CALCUTTA'S biggest junk food eater is Usha Uthup. There cannot be another taker for this dubious post. You would have thought, with a voice like hers to maintain, the husky-dusky singer would eat and drink only the right things. But no! Usha can live on street food.

Bhel-puri, pani-puri, ragda-pattice, chana-pyali, ice-candy... all dished out under the most unhygienic conditions by roadside vendors in Bombay and Calcutta. As junky as it looks, she's eaten it. And having eaten it, she's enjoyed it and gone for it again and again! "Funnily enough, I've never fallen ill," confesses Usha. "I must have a cast iron stomach."

Thankfully, at home in Ballygunge, Calcutta, she is a damned good cook, and does not require to eat too much off the streets. Her repertoire, however, is limited to 18 non-vegetarian dishes only, and an equal amount of vegetarian. Eighteen, because that is all Usha took the time to learn. There is a history behind this.

She is a Tamilian Iyer by caste, used to eating strictly vegetarian food, and she married a Keralite Christian who is a tea taster by profession and a gourmet by choice with a discerning palate for good food. He saw her singing in a night club in Calcutta's Park Street, asked her to do the song Mathilda, met her after the show, and they became friends. "Love just happened," explains Usha. "I didn't think of caste and religion then, why would I think of food!"

But she had to when her husband, after too many vegetarian meals, asked if they could eat something different. Usha quickly met up with his aunt and learnt 18 non-vegetarian recipes. She started cooking these at home for him, and that is what the Uthup family has been eating since then. "My husband loves that food and my children grew up eating that," says Usha proudly.

The 18 recipes include some authentic Kerala and Bengali food. Like chicken, mutton and beef stews done the Kerala way with coconut. And fish and prawn curries done with mustard, Bengali-style. There are some Parsi recipes in these 18, like papri ma gosht and mutton dhansak, though Usha has no idea how they came to be among the mainstays of her Tamilian-Keralite kitchen in Calcutta!

For UpperCrust, Usha cooked a chicken stew, a fish curry and appams out of her tiny kitchen in her Ballygunge apartment. Being 100 per cent vegetarian, she got her maid to taste the chicken and fish. "My daughter's been my taster all these years," she explains. "I have no qualms about cooking non-vegetarian food. No bias. But I've never eaten it."

The chicken stew and aapams were Kerala cuisine, and the fish, Bengali. She's been living in Calcutta since 1977, but has never taken a fancy to Bengali food. "I never got a chance to learn how to cook Bengali food properly," she says defensively, "because family and friends always asked for one of my 18 recipes. And then there's the mustard oil! That's not done in South Indian cooking at all. We use coconut oil. Or refined oil... which is still not very authentic."

She says her fascination for cooking took off when she was a child and played "house-house" with friends, a make belief game in which they pretended to cook. "I remember the first dish I cooked. Masoor dal. It was a big hit with my family. I was so excited when I saw the satisfaction on the faces. Then I learnt to make khichdi, and then khichda!

I was very interested in cooking right through school. And I was innovative. French toast with vanilla ice-cream, that kind of thing. Now I don't innovate. No need to! My natural cooking is widely appreciated. And we always entertain. People always come for my food. Even South Indian snacks, idlis, dosais, plain and simple sambar, they are all 100 per cent sure shots with me."

Usha is still a big foodie outside home. "I try and stick to South Indian food, because of my being vegetarian," she says. "What turns me on is dal and steamed rice! Hmmm, add some green chilli chutney. And potato in any form. Plus I must have curd with every meal. Hotel coffee also drives me wild. Yes, my husband is a tea taster, but at home, we've been drinking coffee.

Now I don't go out so much for junk food. I order it at home! Puchka and jhal muri, that's your bhel-puri and pani-puri. Like champagne and wine for me! But with plenty of green chilli. I find street food in India so fascinating. I've eaten off the roads in Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Dubai, New York and London. I didn't like the food at all. It was too wholesome and not really junk food. Besides, junk food abroad is dicey. It's not 100 per cent vegetarian. Imagine being served octopus or squid by mistake!"