ADITYA BAL
Six years ago, Aditya Bal walked off the ramp and into the kitchen. From watching his grandmother whisk winter cakes to apprenticing at Italian, French and Goan cuisine restaurants, Bal is today best known for NDTV’s Chakh Le India , in which he travelled to the country’s nooks and corners to learn about and replicate age-old culinary secrets for television audiences. Excerpts from an interview:
Tell us about your evolution as a self-taught chef, and the transition from model to food show host.
I was cooking at home for three months before I made a career switch. I realised I loved the self-reliance that cooking gave me, the fact that I could churn something out with my hands and make a profession of it. I had trouble getting someone to hire me though, as I wasn’t formally trained. So I started at a friend’s restaurant in Goa, washing, cutting, chopping, doing the occasional order until I learnt the basics of how a kitchen works and to cope with the crazy hours, dedication and physical toll it takes. Then I spent a year at a restaurant run by an Italian family where I picked up the essentials of European cuisine. Soon after, I began my show with NDTV but returned every year in the off-season for short stints at different restaurants. It was a journey of discovery, of immersing myself in new cuisines and cultures that I would relay to those watching.
With a background in European cooking, how did you take to the Indian styles that Chakh Le required you to showcase?
I’ve spent a lot of time reading about food, cooking from recipe books, understanding how things take shape from mere words and photographs on a page. When Chakh Le said ‘cook Indian’, I told them I’d never done it before but thought ‘I’m a chef, so I should be able to cook anything!’ So I began with two books on Indian cuisine that taught me basics — tadkas, spice pastes etc. I’ve grown to be very technique-driven because I’m self-taught. It boils down to the basic food science — the chemical composition of ingredients, and how they morph in different heats. I’ve devised my own methods of breaking down for viewers all cooking, however complex, into simple technical components. Once you understand this fundamental food science, you have the parameters within which you’re free to cook anything.
What is your earliest food memory?
I grew up in Gulmarg, Kashmir, where everything revolved around food. My parents ran a hotel and I remember my mom handing me over, when I was very little, to the shepherds that grazed their flocks every morning in the pastures. They always carried tikki-shaped sheep’s-milk winter cheese. They would heat the cheese on warm tawas in open air till it melted and stretched, sprinkle salt and chilli over it and snack away. I remember that aroma so distinctly, even today.
KUNAL KAPUR
Chef Kunal Kapur was a shy, quiet boy who pottered around in his large joint family’s kitchen to escape playing with his many cousin sisters. From being the kid who hid from family on the day report cards were brought home to being host and judge of three seasons of Masterchef India before thousands of viewers, Kapur says food has changed his life. As founder of Diya, a speciality Indian restaurant in Delhi, and as Executive Sous Chef, Leela Kempinski, Kapur has made simple, traditional Indian cooking into a fine art. Excerpts from an interview:
As “chief stirrer” at home, did you foresee turning professional?
Not really! I come from a Punjabi family of bankers, where all the men are excellent cooks. So I never thought of men cooking as strange. My father was convinced I would become a banker too, though my math was terrible. He tutored me diligently and, by some miracle, I got into Delhi University for B.Com. That’s when I mustered the courage to tell him that I just couldn’t do it. He gave me two weeks to figure things out. I said hotel management because a friend said it was a glamorous job in five-star hotels with six-figure salaries. So, I joined the Institute of Hotel Management, Chandigarh, and, in two weeks realised that this was so tough! But this was my only ticket to freedom, so I stuck with it. By third year of college, I knew this was it!
You propagated simple cooking through your book A Chef In Every Home .
I actually wanted to be a baker and, when I joined Taj after college, I had that option. Then I realised that, however good I was, some foreigner could always claim to know better because it was his home food! I thought that if I wanted to be the best at something, it had to be in my own terrain. So Indian cooking, which was last on my specialisation list, became first.
Masterchef, however, was a sea change in my thinking. I went with a huge chef ego about doing things the formal, hospitality-industry way and I met these amazing home cooks whose food certainly didn’t look gourmet but tasted much superior. With this new-found respect for home cooks, I wrote my book. But that doesn’t mean you get away with ghar-ka-khaana as a professional chef. You need to innovate, experiment and challenge yourself but that can only happen when you know how to do the classic Indian dishes absolutely right, which is difficult to find today.
What is your earliest food memory?
We were one of the few families in our mohalla with a tandoor . Every Sunday, when our family gathered to cook, we would light it together. Through the day, women from nearby homes would come with their dough, make rotis with us, wrap it in handkerchiefs and take it home. Life over food was one big mela !
MANU CHANDRA
Born to a Tamil-Punjabi mother and a Lucknowi father, Manu Chandra spent his childhood oscillating between inherited food cultures while experimenting with European baking styles on the side. With an undergraduate degree in history from St. Stephen’s, Delhi, followed by post graduation from Culinary Institute of America (CIA), New York, Manu returned to India to take over the reins of Olive Beach, Bangalore.
He went on to found a gastro-pub, Monkey Bar, in Bangalore and Delhi; and The Fatty Bao, an Asian gastrobar, also in Bangalore.
At equal ease with widely disparate cuisines, Manu is best known today, as an evangelist for experimentation with food. Excerpts from an interview:
What draws you to cuisine hop so comfortably?
At CIA, I wanted to specialise in every cuisine. Even today, I don’t have a favourite cuisine; I’m drawn by flavours, freshness and new ideas. There’s enough and more of that in every cuisine. As a chef you never stop learning.
When you’re around food, techniques and flavours as much as I am, there comes a time when things become intuitive. The cornerstone of my philosophy of work is integrity and honesty in food. As I’ve grown older, there’s also a bit of Zen philosophy creeping in; you stop pushing your own agenda and strike a beautiful balance between your aspirations and your clients.
Your restaurants are known for constantly reinventing themselves. How open is the Indian customer to culinary adventure?
I’ve always maintained that authenticity is overrated and innovation is underrated. In India, everyone’s willing to try out new perfumes, new genres of music, or new fashions, but gets conservative with food! That’s because food is so fundamental to our existence that people have trepidations about stepping into a new headspace there.
At a restaurant though, sustenance is only 20 per cent of what I provide. So it’s great to keep an open mind to new experiences. Five years down the line, I don’t want customers to tell me they can do what I do at home! This space for experimentation also lets an incredible repertoire of food genres grow in the country, which is as exciting for customers as it is for chefs.
What is your earliest food memory?
Food fragrances just get stuck in your head, ingrained into your DNA. I wasn’t the brightest child in school; I was great at extra-curriculars, but I had my issues with Math, Physics and Accounting.
Every day, after school, I’d walk home, open the door and tell our cook exactly what was made for lunch just from the numerous smells floating around. It became a sort of game between us!
As a chef today, I still take a whiff of what I’m cooking even before I taste it. The memory of smell overpowers the memory of flavour. And 80 per cent of flavour is smell!
BRUNCH BETTER: A workshop at The Hindu Lit For Life 2015
On January 17, 2015, chefs Manu Chandra and Kunal Kapur will give professional tips on how to host better brunches in a lively, interactive workshop at Taj Clubhouse, Chennai.
Go to >thne.ws/1ubcvnX or >thne.ws/15UvS0k to register.
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