A Model Who Can Walk Tall in the Kitchen

Alex Witchel

COOKING with cleavage is not an everyday occurrence in my kitchen Neither is cooking in heels. But when a model is involved, it seems, anything is possible.

Padma Lakshmi has walked the runway for Giorgio Armani, Gianni Versace and Ralph Lauren, and has appeared in Vogue, Wile, Mirabella and Glamour. She has also just published a cookbook, "Easy Exotic: A Model's Low-Fat Recipes From Around the World" (Miramax, $25.95).

When I first heard about the book, I laughed. A model who cooks what? Ice soup? Preposterous. Forget all this blather about a backlash to Kate Moss, and Calvin Klein shunning supermodels to photograph real people. I read magazines like everyone else, and no one in sight has a thigh like mine. But Ms. Lakshmi's book signals a potential revolution: models not only as real people, but also as Mama. No more skeletal adolescents fueled by Champagne bubbles, but robust beauties who shop and cook -- albeit braless, in a tank top, like Ms. Lakshmi, sporting three miles of leg.

Though she grew up cooking with her grandmother in Madras, India, Ms. Lakshmi became head chef in charge of homesickness for her glamorous pals languishing on exotic locations. She cooked them hearty pots of food, minus any ingredients that could compromise their employment. She admits to having no formal training, but I wanted to see how she did it, anyway. I was hoping some magic might rub off. Eat a model's meal, lose 10 pounds.

As we set out to shop and cook, I felt the tiniest bit smug. Someone who looks like Ms. Lakshmi -- foot 9, with a 24-inch waist, no hips and 34C chest (on the days she does wear a bra) --probably seems like a culinary genius to other models. But the relaxed-fit crowd would see right through her.

They certainly saw something. At my corner market, the stockboys, the manager and the men who passed her on the street gaped. While she was perfectly pleasant chatting with me, somehow, when men appeared, she seemed to effervesce -- like an Alka-Seltzer dropped into water. Which I could have used just watching it. All rationalizations to the contrary, it was stunning to see such a raw display of beauty as power, because that's what it was, pure and simple. Well, not simple, certainly. And certainly not fair.

So I did the most rotten thing I could think of to a model, knowing she hadn't begun her career until after she graduated from Clark University in Worcester, Mass., and that she had lived for six years in Italy and also in Paris.

"How old are you?" I asked. She crossed her arms and said nothing.

"You're not going to tell me are you?" I asked.

"Never," she answered, heading straight to the produce, snapping off a sprig of cilantro and tasting it. She slipped it into a bag and zoomed forward, sniffing and picking the way my grandmother used to. At the register, she looked dismissively at the head of garlic I had chosen, and replaced it with a container of peeled cloves. "So we don't have to smell of it," she said.

Out of nowhere, the manager appeared, nodding and smiling, and credited the head of garlic. I must be in that store twice a week and I've never seen him do anything but scowl.

We walked back to my apartment, and Ms. Lakshmi talked about the transition she is trying to make to an acting career. She recently appeared in a television miniseries in Italy and shot a film that will be released there in October. It helps that she speaks five languages: Italian, Spanish, English, Hindi and Tamil, which she says is spoken mainly by Sri Lankans.

Back in my building, I thought the door man would faint at the sight of her. When I mentioned it, she just smiled. "Would I have it any other way?" she asked. "Come on. But it's up to me to keep up my end of the bargain."

That would be diet. Ms. Lakshmi said she never starves herself -- it makes her cranky -- but when it comes to overeating, she will look at food and say, "I'm worth too much to put this into my stomach." I nodded, but she might as well have said that part in Tamil.

In the kitchen, Ms. Lakshmi went straight to business, cutting and chopping a minimal amount, because in this recipe, misleadingly called Coconut Chicken (requiring one can of light coconut milk), most ingredients for the sauce including onion, garlic, ginger and jalapefio went into the blender.

I offered her one of my aprons, which she tied around her waist -- twice. Does she exercise every day? She shook her head and chopped cilantro. "No, I have a trainer, or I won't go to the gym otherwise," she said. "Cardio is the best thing for weight loss."

She deserves credit for keeping a reasonably sane take on herself in a business where eating disorders abound amid the unforgiving scrutiny of something like a runway walk in a string bikini. Ms. Lakshmi said she had recently broken her engagement to an Italian man she called "a food fascist," who would tell her what to eat, how much and when. Since then she dated yet another food fascist, she said, whose "waist was smaller than mine." She added: "If you can't have fun with food, that's a symptom to a bigger problem. It's one of nature's biggest pleasures, as basic as breathing."

She hasn't always been deprived, however. "Because of what I look like I've been wined and dined everywhere," she said easily. "I've had my share of Eurotrash older guys and they've taken me to wonderful restaurants. I could taste what was in the food, and I stole the recipes."

The kitchen was starting to smell delicious. The way she came to write "Easy Exotic," which is separated into sections from countries where she has lived and worked, including Spain, France, Italy, India and Morocco, was by cooking for some actors in Los Angeles, where she moved six months ago to pursue her film career. They mentioned the meal to Harvey Weinstein, the co-chairman of Miramax Films, whom she later met at a movie premiere. She told him it was her dream to write a cookbook -- and voile. He sent her to Miramax Books. "This is honestly the food I make for myself and for my friends," she said, models and civilians.

The current craze for eliminating carbohydrates doesn't interest Ms. Lakshmi, though she advises eating them during the day. "If you want rice you can have a tennisball-size portion," she said. "But don't expect to lose weight eating a mountain of rice." I felt myself blush. I guess I've been inspired more by footballs.

"And at night," Ms. Lakshmi went on, "you can have some fish with steamed vegetables. That's fine." How did I know she was going to say that? It's like hearing the same bedtime story with the bad ending that never changes.

Meanwhile, the food in the pot, which according to the cookbook has only 10 grams of fat a serving, was looking sensational. Ms. Lakshmi basically followed the recipe, though she didn't measure many ingredients, preferring, she said, to "eyeball it." She broke into a piece of steaming chicken breast with her bare fingers and didn't flinch. "Nice and tender," she said, leaving the pot uncovered so the liquid would reduce.

We sat at the dining room table, where I smoked and she drank mineral water. She said that for all the talk about a model backlash, she doesn't see one. "I think it" the opposite," she said. "I was considered thin when I first started modeling, but not anymore. T,hese girls today start really young. They don't even finish high school. Without an education, I may never have appreciated the places I went to if I didn't understand where I was going."

The chicken was done, and Ms. Lakshmi ate two servings, which would equal one of mine. No rice.

My husband appeared, bewitched by both the smells in the kitchen and the woman in the low-cut dress who put them there. But alas, my stepson arrived from his basketball game too late. Ms. Lakshmi had gone. He held up the book with her picture on the cover. "She was here?" he asked incredulously. His ardor only grew once he tasted the food.

"That's who I'm going to marry," he declared, as his father looked on approvingly. "A hot girl who can cook Indian food."

I smiled weakly. Bring on the Alka-Seltzer.