The voice was pleasant enough, but the words tumbled out in a rush, tripping over each other: it was the soupcon of a Parisian accent that held my interest. This friend of a friend lives in Paris and was on a business trip to Delhi. Could she come over, she asked, adding with a small measure of trepidation that what she wanted most of all was some ghar ka khaana. The English of this thirty-something globetrotter was a touch Frenchified, but her Hindi was certainly impeccable.

The notice was short. So, all I could serve was what we were going to eat that evening: kadhi chaawal and some of the season’s more humble vegetables. Our new friend had a surprise for us. It was a bit of a guess-who’s-coming-for-dinner-tonight moment: two European friends arrived in her wake.

Entertaining is always a hassle for me: many of our friends are perfectionists, a few of them gourmets. Even when people invite you home for a ‘simple meal’, it never is. The hours logged cooking or signs of expensive catering or out-of-season stuff, are inevitably discernible. But since this was a fait accompli, there was nothing to do but, as the saying goes in quite a different context, lie back and think of England. Well, we were in for another surprise: the homely kadhi chaawal and arbi had all the guests asking for more, like Oliver Twist. Surely, there is a lesson in this somewhere. Is less becoming more? The homely more divine? Perhaps, it has to do with the self-confidence of the hosts. Old money or those who have arrived and stayed in place at the top of social ladders allow themselves some eccentricity and with it loads of lese majesté. They can put just about anything on the table with great élan.

Some years ago an acquaintance – tall, with flowing blonde hair and there were whispers that she was related to the late French president General de Gaulle – had invited us to dinner. Beautiful home, beautiful garden. Elegant champagne flutes continuously being re-filled. But dinner? Well, you won’t believe it: there were huge, exquisite bowls overflowing with green peas (garden fresh of course) that the guests had to shell themselves: the bowls had been placed on finely polished antique tables. You could say that it was a sort of uppity DIY dinner. Obviously, our hostess is something of an exception: the middle classes of the land of inherent savoir-faire soldier on bravely for impeccable meals. But something seems to be happening in the citadel of haute cuisine. A quiet revolution seems to have taken place in some of the kitchens in France. The cuisine of the toiling masses has made it to the high tables of the French.

Lowly veggies are now turning up on the tables of the elite and the nouveau-snobs. Take the rather ugly tubular topinambour, the lowliest of vegetables and a staple of the working classes — it can now be found on the best tables and in fine dining restaurants. Chefs in many-starred restaurants even top this root vegetable (thinly sliced) with caviar. Topinambours taste like a cross between a potato and an artichoke. The root vegetable used to be eaten by the rich and poor alike during the war years (World War 11) in France — the reason the French turned their noses down on it for decades. The formerly poor, however, are still reluctant to eat it: reminds them too much of the past. Nostalgia is sweet for those with pasts in which only other people suffered. Similarly, blette or white beet, a leafy plant that used to grow wild is now cultivated and served as trendy soups and even with delectable sauces. What the poor once ate has now become retro-chic. As have traditional, easy-on-the-pocket dishes like pot-au-feu, cabbage soups and stews. Bread baked with the roughest of flours has also made a comeback.

No wonder our French guests that night loved arbi — the root vegetable that at first bite may remind you of a potato, and of a turnip after the second. I am sure they would have found even dhantals (the stalks of cauliflowers often eaten by the poor) exotically interesting. Think of it: if you scoop out the marrow, mix it with some chopped liver or even minced meat (or mushrooms for the vegetarians) you might end up with something quite unexpectedly delicious.

Necessity has always been the mother of invention, or indeed creativity, when it comes to cuisine in our subcontinent. Denied non-vegetarian food, many Bengali widows evolved an exquisite vegetarian cuisine that could be an epicurean’s delight. For example, dishes made from the flowers of a banana plant.