CHENNAI: Growing up in a family of farmers in Madurai, life for me was all about seeing my grandfather run a Muniyandi Vilas. I started exploring local food near my house and today, here I am... the Brand Chef of Benjarong (Chennai, Kolkata and Bangalore). After I graduated from Indian Institute of Hotel Management, Chennai, I joined as a trainee at Benjarong, through campus recruitment.
Having travelled to almost all Asian countries, experienced their cuisine and tasted their food, I feel Thai cuisine is different from other Asian cuisines. A blend of fresh herbs, different kinds of chilly pastes, ginger, and 10 different kinds of chillies defines Thai cuisine.
Fusing different cuisines is something I don’t really prefer. I believe in experimenting with the actual and original flavours of a cuisine. The red curry paste, yellow curry paste and green curry paste are major ingredients in Thai cooking. Thai contradicts the assumptions of people — usually people think red curry is spicy, but it’s the green that packs the punch! Knowing these little details about ingredients helps to balance the dish and make it more authentic.
My specialisation is a Thai side-dish called Pong Kari. It can be taken with any type of sea food or steamed rice. The Pong Kari is a thick veg curry that is spicy enough to be had with a bland main dish.
Some might wonder if Thai dishes are as healthy as the south Indian dishes. Yes, indeed they are! It’s a healthy cuisine with no over cooking and hence it reserves the nutrition in the food itself. Lemon grass and tulasi is a basic ingredient in Thai that helps digestion.
Namma south Indian food’s ingredients are dry and powdery. Well, in Thai it’s simply pastes and nothing more. In Thai cuisine, a lot of people like the flavours but not the source of the flavor. For instance, when we eat biryani, we accidently bite the lavangam and we hate the taste, but we love the aroma it gives…it’s like that with Thai food.
If you ask me to choose between love and food, I would say that I am in love with food! I enjoy doing what I love and will continue my journey.
Signature Dish
Chicken, wrapped in pandanas leaf. Speciality of this item is the flavour of pandanas leaf which is transferred on to the chicken. Though the leaf leaves no colour, the flavour from the leaf (makes the chicken more tasty)