Food was and will always be my first love. My father was a chef and since my childhood, I have been watching him cook. I also wanted to get into the hotel industry and started my training in 2004 with Moti Mahal in New Delhi, which was the first restaurant in Delhi to serve tandoori chicken and naan. There I learnt the basics of Indian cuisine.
After four months, I moved to Mumbai where I joined a kebab factory. In 2006, I joined the Marriott, and since then I was with this hotel albeit in different cities. After three years in Mumbai, I moved to Dubai for 16 months, then to Ahmedabad for three years and now I am here in Chennai.
I have travelled to quite a lot of places in India and I love to cook Indian the most. We have 29 States here, and there are so many cuisines. There is so much to explore in Indian cuisine and I’m still trying to learn as much as possible. I can cook Maharashtrian, Delhi cuisine, which is the food from my hometown, Mughalai, which is the root of Hyderabadi cuisine.
Initially, I did not fancy South Indian food, but now I am exploring this cuisine as well. I’m understanding how this cuisine works and how the ingredients are used. I have noticed that the ingredients in the recipes remain the same everywhere, hence retaining its authenticity. In Awadhi cuisine, we use ginger-garlic paste. But for South Indian dishes, we use chopped garlic and ginger in rasam or chopped onion in sambar and that makes the dish much more flavoursome. I find this cuisine healthy, as the dishes are made with coconut oil, which has many health benefits, unlike Mughalai or Awadi cuisine that uses a lot of ghee and butter.
Indian cuisine is known for its spices and it is just amazing to know how the variety of spices is used to cook dishes in every region. For instance, Maharashtrian cuisine uses roots of vegetables, Mughalai food uses patthar ke phool (black stone flower or kalpasi) in their dishes, giving it an umami flavour. But these spices may not be used in Hyderabadi or Kerala cuisine. An important thing about Indian food is even if you miss an ingredient, you lose out on the flavour.
My best dishes are Kashmiri mutton rogan josh, kebabs and Awadhi biryani. I believe my rogan josh is extra special because the recipe was passed on to me by my aunt, who is a Kashmiri. I have also learnt some Kashmiri dishes from her — Kashmiri rose tea and Kahwah (green tea) among others.
I want to explore Kerala cuisine next. One of my most favourite South Indian dishes is karimeen polichhathu. There are very little ingredients and it is cooked in banana leaf. But the flavour and taste it gives out is just mouth-watering.