I come from a farming background; my father was a farmer in Karur. I decided to take up cooking because of my elder brother; he was my inspiration. I started catering in 2001 in Tirupur, and then later, moved to Bangalore to work for GRT Bay. I moved once again to Kerala where I worked at The Windflower Resort & Spa Vythiri, Wayanad. From there, I went to Malaysia, worked as a chef there for four years. It has been 15 years now (smiles).
I began with a simple carrot halwa. It was a challenge. They gave me surprise ingredients and asked me to come up with a dish and I cooked carrot halwa. More than the challenge, the cooking slab was quite high for me to reach (laughs).
The cuisines I specialise in are Continental and Thai. One of the main differences between the two cuisines is that Thai is more Chinese-based; we use more greens. In continental, we use a lot of dry herbs and sometimes, alcohol too. I also regularly try my hand in pizza. People today have started to like pizza the ‘fusion’ way. A few varieties of the fusion pizzas are panner tikka and I have had customers who have asked me to make a pizza with daal instead of sauce only to give it that Indian touch (laughs). But the main difference in pizzas we get here is the base. Usually, the authentic Italian pizzas have a thin base, but we opt for thicker ones.
If you ask me about a unique recipe of mine, I can go on and on about my chicken wings. The chicken wings are usually prepared with barbeque sauce, but I make it with chocolate and South Indian spices. Marinating the chicken with some black pepper and garlic and deep frying it with maida is the basic step. Later I add some chocolate and also a few biryani spices and make the sauce. This is a simple Indo-Chinese dish that can be made with ingredients available anywhere.
Talking about ingredients for the cuisines I deal in, I am glad that they are easily available. But yes there are times when I had to place a few orders.
I was introduced to this field by my guru, Chef Antony. He trained me in such a way that whenever he cooked, he insisted I take notes of every detail. I think that’s what makes my dishes perfect. I love fusion cooking. I think it gives more for a chef to explore. Among my fusion dishes, I would say the nachos recipe is my favourite. It is more like a nacho-bhel puri combo, where I top the nacho chips with some mint chutney and other ingredients for bhelpuri. Be it fish, chicken or any kind of food, food pairing is very important. You have to be careful about the ingredients you use. For instance, alcohol doesn’t go well with all dishes. But in continental, alcohol plays an important role.