It’s the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness in Calcutta and friends have come over from all parts of the world and I want them all to wine and dine chez moi, avec le style. But there are problems.

My kitchen is far from being ideal. It is not modular, it is rectangular. But the deeper flaw is with me, not my kitchen.

I fantasise about cooking up complex, refined, intricate, subtle, marinated, broiled, drained, strained, braised, poached delicacies, with names like Noix de Ris de Veau Toulousaine, Nonettes de Poulet Agnes Sorel and Sylphides à la Crême d’écrevisses. These dreams, incidentally, were all creations by Anatole, the French chef supreme in P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie-Jeeves saga, whom everyone wants to steal. Anatole was also the author of the Dinner of Legend and Song, which consisted of 19 courses. One of which was the Mignonette de Poulet Petit Duc, which Bertie fondly recalled as “Le Bird of Some Kind avec Chipped Potatoes” and I hope I did not make too many spelling mistakes.

But alas, even if I had the talent, I could never be Anatole. I can’t work recipes out. I lack the discipline.

Take the recipe of the aforementioned Noix de Ris de Veau Toulousaine that M. Albert Roux (I find his name suspect), one of the first celebrity chefs who ran a French restaurant in London, had tried to recreate from Anatole’s reticence.

Ingredients for 4 servings, it goes: 900 grams of veal sweetbread, 100 grams of butter, 1 small carrot, peeled and chopped, 1 small onion, peeled and chopped, 1/2 small leek, chopped, 1 clove of garlic, crushed, 1 litre of chicken stock, 200 millilitres of double cream, 200 grams of coq combs, 100 grams of coq kidneys, 200 grams of white mushrooms, cleaned and sliced, 1 small truffle, 1 tablespoon of chives, chopped, salt and pepper, to taste.

The problem is not the coq comb or coq kidney — they will shortly be available at your neighbourhood supermarket. The problem is the clutter — and the process.

Here’s how you prepare the comb, says Roux. Using a needle, lightly prick the combs. Place the combs under running water for several hours until they are clean of blood. (Several hours?) Place the combs in a saucepan, cover with cold water and bring to 45°C. Drain and rub each comb with a tea towel with salt to remove the skin. (Tea towel?) Soak the combs again in cold water until they become white in colour. Cook them with 500ml of boiling chicken stock for 35 minutes. Remove from heat and leave to cool. Drain from the liquid when needed. And that’s only for the combs. Next comes the sweetbread-making, then the actual cooking and assembling of the dish, straining of much liquid through fine sieves and reducing them by two-thirds, adding double cream and adding sliced truffles.

I think cooking biryani the Awadhi way requires as much management.

So I think the best recipes are ideas that lead to fruition from very little, from scraps, which is what I usually have. Here are my favourite two recipes: simple, easy and liberating. If not virtual.

The first is from a Russian folktale. An old soldier is returning home. Tired and hungry, he knocks on a cottage door. The mean old woman who lives there says there’s nothing at home. The soldier notices an axe with a broken handle. “Can I make a broth out of the axe?” Intrigued, she agrees. He starts to boil the axe in a pot and stirs it often and asks for some salt. The old woman doesn’t mind a bit of salt.

The man keeps stirring the liquid. “If I just had a handful of corn,” he says. The old woman doesn’t mind that too. The man keeps stirring the axe soup and tastes it occasionally and looks pleased. “Only if there was some butter,” he sighs. The woman says there was some of that, too. The butter is added, the broth is ready. The two sit down to it and it tastes heavenly. “I never thought axe broth could be so heavenly,” says the old woman. The soldier smiles and keeps eating.

They say you could use old shoes in place of the axe and it would be as tasty.

The other recipe had appeared in a column in this paper. Since I cannot trace it, I will recall it from memory.

It’s called Chicken Shadow Soup. It’s simple and preferably cooked during the day. Take a chicken. Roast it. Put the chicken aside and pat it dry, so that when you hold it up nothing oozes out. Take some vegetables. Boil them into a soup. Then comes the tricky part.

As the soup is boiling, see where the sunlight is coming from. Then hold the chicken above the soup at such an angle that the bird’s shadow falls on the soup. Chicken Shadow Soup is ready. It’s pure imagination, which can bridge the divide between vegetarians and non-vegetarians — and all other widening world conflicts. Serve hot in the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

chandrima@abpmail.com