Chowbaby's Chef of the Month (India) Sanjeev KapoorMaster Chef Sanjeev Kapoor has a passion for home cooking. by Rajnish Sharma
For Master Chef Sanjeev Kapoor, hotels and restaurants the world over cannot match the love and passion that goes into home cooking. "My favourite food is anything that has been cooked at home." Well, that's exactly what he motivates his viewers to do through his popular TV show Khana Khazana - to follow his mouth-watering, simple yet innovative recipes and try them out in their kitchens. And if you consider the fact that this show has a staggering viewership of 150 million in 53 countries across the globe making Sanjeev one of the most well known faces of India, you'll be pleasantly surprised to know that the 36-year-old still remains the modest and down-to-earth guy he always was. "It never ceases to amaze me how a daily chore like cooking has turned me into a star."
But if you thought Khana Khazana (running for more than seven years now) is his only claim to fame, read on. It'll be a deliciously enlightening experience for you. The second of Sanjeev's three recipe books, Khazana of Indian Vegetarian Recipes, was on the non-fiction best-seller list in India for an entire year, competing with no less than Arundhati Roy's Booker Prize-winning The God of Small Things, which topped the fiction category! His culinary skills have won him many laurels - apart from awards like the Mercury Gold Award at IFCA Geneva for 'Best Meal and Concept' in 1993 and the award for the Best Executive Chef in India in 1995, he has, in his splendid career, had the opportunity to cook for some famous personalities like Indian Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi, P.V. Narasimha Rao and even Her Majesty the Queen of England. Sanjeev has worked as Executive Chef in many leading hotels of India and was also the Chief Chef in two restaurants of Wellington, New Zealand.
Sanjeev's latest book of recipes Khazana of Healthy Tasty Recipes gives us a taste of dishes that are specifically healthy, containing the essential ingredients that we need for keeping fit, avoiding those that are harmful. The 'Khazana' includes Thai, Italian, Chinese, Indian and even Greek recipes which have been moderately Indianised to suit the Indian palate. This ranges from the red Thai vegetable curry, Dijon style fish for seafood lovers and Greek style yoghurt chicken to mushroom 'dum biryani'. Each lipsmacking recipe is the result of years of experience and careful experimentation. Written in a casual and practical style, the book is an ideal companion for all those who toil in the kitchen. Replete with useful hints and tips, you will find in this treasure of healthy recipes, interesting new combinations of dishes and imaginative tips that add to the flavour. Sanjeev these days is busy working on an encyclopedia of Indian cuisine titled Culinaria.
Wait, there's more. Sanjeev has recently launched a chain of restaurants called Sanjeev Kapoor's Khazana in India and in Leisureland, off Dubai. From the concept to the menu, everything has been designed and planned by the master chef himself. The ambience is informal and delicacies like the snacky 'Shaam Savera' (Dusk Dawn) and the exotic 'Chandi Kaliyan' (Silver Buds) are entirely in sync with the theme of the restaurant - Deliciously Different. These restaurants serve modern Indian food and Sanjeev has unhesitatingly added alcohol to his recipes even though Muslims, whose religion forbids them to consume alcohol, constitute the majority of Dubai's population and one-tenth of India's residents. "I have a dish in these restaurants where chicken tikka is flavoured with lemongrass. And we also have a tomato-and-honey chicken dish flavoured with gin. It's called Murgh [chicken] Ginwala - a pun on the Indian surname," he says. For Sanjeev, food is not only sustenance, it is something that has life. It can feel, emit and even express itself. So great is his love for food that his wife Alyona often says that he breathes, sleeps, smells, talks and reads food. "She suggests that one day I come out with a food-based perfume!" he chuckles.
Sanjeev hopes to make Indian cuisine more popular everywhere. "Most other cuisines have flours as base, but in India, we use lots of vegetables, nuts, fruits as bases. It's also a very bold cuisine - we can use 10 to 15 ingredients which are quite in contrast with one another, and still come out with a delicacy." The cookery wizard also feels that it is important that a chef have the right attitude. He believes that a chef is the king of the kitchen and that makes him rather egoistic, which makes him cook dishes he loves rather than what his guests want. Having the right attitude also means that a chef should know, and respect, the role each ingredient plays in a dish, says he. In fact, a chef's disposition, according to him, is also one of the ingredients that gives a dish its real taste. "A dish cooked when a chef is in a bad mood is certain to disappoint." Though personally, he finds cooking therapeutic. Sanjeev is also trying to persuade his viewers not to overcook food - his pet gripe. In the past, when only a few urban Indian homes had refrigerators, it was necessary to disinfect ingredients with plenty of turmeric and kill bacteria through overcooking. Not so now. "People still use lots of oil and too many spices. That's not cooking, it's pickling," he frowns. Another pearl of wisdom from the chef: Red chillies are not very fashionable any more because they wreck the stomach lining. But green chillies are still used because they can be bought fresh and contain a lot of vitamin C." Another thing he learnt early was that it is important to make the differences regionwise too while preparing dishes: To make butter chicken with a little more spice for the Punjabi, with a dash more sugar, honey and cream for the Mumbaiite, with a gravy cooked with Sankeshwari chillies for the Kolhapuri, with coconut oil and perhaps even curry leaves for the Goan! Sanjeev certainly knows the art of appealing to all tastebuds.
Here's another surprise: Did you know that Sanjeev initially wanted to be an architect and that he stepped into the appetizing world of food quite by accident? Well, there's only one thing we can say - Architecture's loss sure has been cookery's gain!
