Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

The king, apparently, was in his counting house, counting all his money. The queen was in her parlour, eating bread and honey. Not a bad combination at all, honestly. Besides, considering the royal chef’s wicked sense of humour, I don’t blame her for sticking to the straight and narrow. Who knows what horrors lurked beneath the murky depths of pea soup.

There’s an legend about an Indian chef who did the same thing. Apparently he would bake live birds into pies, so that they flew out the moment guests began their meal. And my guess is, when the pie was opened the birds certainly didn’t begin to sing. It sounds more like a scene from a blood-chilling Hitchcock movie than a pretty historical anecdote. But apparently it was quite charming and clever in those days. (Clear evidence, of course, that a society without ‘Sex and the City’ disintegrates in horrifying ways. Tsk. Tsk.)

Yet, it’s undeniable that royal chefs could — and still can — capture imaginations and create romance. So when I recently met Mohammed Ashfaque Qureshi, of the iconic Qureshi family that’s produced master chefs from more than 200 years, of course I brought up the birds.

Chef Ashfaque says his family “worked for the king’s kitchen: the Nawab of Awadh.” (The nawabs governed in the in the 18th and 19th century. The region is in the centre of what’s Uttar Pradesh today). But he’s still rather cagey about the avian pie.

“Well, if Tan Sen (of Akbar’s court) could create rain, or light lamps with his song, then yes, a chef could create a pie filled with live birds,” Ashfaque says, adding, “Chef means leader in French. The top most guy. In Hindustani they say Maharaj, meaning king. In Arabian countries it’s Rabakdar. A person who can create food out of nothing. The word magician actually comes from chef.”

He adds that since food is really the only art form that is consumed it’s hardly surprising that there’s a romanticism to it.

His father started out as a nine year old cooking for royalty. When I met the senior chef Qureshi a few years ago, he was delightfully blasé about the whole VIP thing. He talked of how his ancestors, famous for their fragrant kebabs, rich biriyani and heavy dals, cooked for different kings, since royalty then borrowed each other’s cooks for weddings and important banquets. The cooks worked in shamianas, with large charcoal and wood fires, making kakori kebabs, mutton raan and chicken draped in gold leaf.

Chef Qureshi went recreating many of the same dishes at the ITC hotels, where he worked for more than three decades. He’s cooked for “All the prime ministers, all the presidents, the entire Nehru clan.”

Five of Ashfaque’s four brothers are chefs. He himself started cooking at the age of 6. “I was making simple things like alu tikki, or gajar halwa.” Simple? For a six year old? Most of us are still scribbling crayons on walls at that point. There’s obviously something in the Chef-Magician theory.

“Well, taste is about 70 per cent ingredients and 20 per cent methodology,” he smiles, maintaining that anyone can create a pretty good kebab. But that final 10 percent? That’s the spice, herbs and secrets. “And yes, in that 10 per cent you can create the magic.”

Though Ashfaque insists that you don’t really need to travel back in time to experience the glories of a rabakdar. “The best example really is a housewife. To create three and four meals a day, everyday,” he says, “Well, that is magic.”

(The Qureshi brothers are in Chennai for a North West Frontier Festival at The Crown restaurant, Residency Towers Hotel. The festival is on for dinner till February 9. Call 28156363 for details).

There are many ways to see the world.

The most intimidating are the most rewarding. After all, picture-postcard sightseeing is so unsatisfying. Perfect beaches, craggy mountains and starlit nights are delicious. And generic. What travellers want now is to really get under the skin of a city. To understand its pulse, no matter how rapid, erratic or elusive.

Understanding a country’s food is possibly the most delightful way to unravel the unfamiliar. After all, for every country, city and family, its own recipes, herbs and spices are a primeval, intense, palpable way of keeping the past alive, and defining who they are.

Of course, where there’s money to be made there are a kaleidoscope of delightful options offered by everyone from cosmopolitan tour operators to housewives, all willing to throw open slick kitchens and butter-stained recipe books.

Today, you can picturesquely pick lemons on the Amalfi Coast to make a sorbet under the guidance of an appropriately-glamorous chef to the stars. You can cook couscous in traditional Moroccan houses, riads, (complete with Philippe Starck-designed bathrooms) in Marrakech. And of course, you can learn how to fry a mean Karimeen on a languid Kerala houseboat. But this isn’t the kind of gritty, intense, challenging travel that will simultaneously terrify and thrill you. The kind that voyagers ache for — travel that inevitably results in epiphanies.

“Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything” by Elizabeth Gilbert, the tediously-touted bestseller is fascinating simply because its author has managed to accomplish what so many people dream of, but don’t have the courage to actually do. She walked away from a safe, comfortable, conventional life and travelled at whim, guided by instinct and impulse. Exulting in gorgeous pizzas topped with fresh mozzarella and radiant basil in Naples. Finding peace in the obligatory India route and austere vegetarianism. Falling recklessly in love among the rice fields in Bali.

Gilbert’s not the only one. Around the world, there are people bravely chucking up well-paid jobs and well-settled lives to travel and learn the rough, tough, infinitely more fulfilling way. They’re eating in local homes. They’re waiting tables in different cities every month. They’re cooking in kitchens starkly different from everything they’re used to. And loving every minute.

Take 28-year-old Marc Vaccaro, for instance, who after six years of culinary school and cooking for a restaurant, liquidated all his assets, and bought a one-way ticket to Mumbai last September. Since then, he’s travelled through India, Nepal, China, and Malaysia.

His goal is “to cook, learn, work, and eat my way through as many countries as possible… Working in restaurants, cooking, eating at markets, and getting involved with local communities is something I have been dreaming about for a while,” he states in his couchsurfing profile. (Couchsurfing’s a travellers’ website.) And he’s not worried about having to peel mountains of potatoes in the process. “I am no stranger to hard work… I’m willing to peel potatoes, chop onions; hell, I’ll even scrub dishes if it will get me into a learning environment.”

Clearly, this optimistic, hearty, open-minded way of travel works. Marc’s currently in Phuket, Thailand, “working along side a very gracious chef, who has let me into his house, kitchen, and restaurant, an experience that has changed my life.” He plans to travel through Australia, New Zealand, and North Africa, down to South America and then work his way back home.

Marc’s just one example. The world is rife with nomad cooks and travelling gourmets, all willing to roll up their sleeves and really learn how to cook from the original sources of the world’s favourite recipes. And while they’re at it, to learn much more than the ubiquitous pastas, pizzas and curries.

It is, of course, an added advantage if you can actually cook well. Like 22-year-old Josh, who exults in the fact that his skills are as useful in Reykjavík as they are in Reno. “Everybody has to eat,” he says, “So I have the ultimate job security. And I can cook anywhere in the world.”