CHENNAI: During the Covid lockdown, my daughter and I played this game where we would rotate the globe. At whichever point the globe stopped, she would ask me to learn four dishes from that region and cook them at home,” says Varsha Panjabi, a food connoisseur. What started as a globetrotting effort through recipes in her kitchen, has now grown into a series, The Travelling Chef, four years later. As part of this series, Varsha visits homes and hotels and posts videos on her Instagram handle (@shasmultiverse).
As CE sits down with Varsha for a chat, she begins by talking about her latest cooking escapade at Mathsya Egmore. She calls it one-of-a-kind as she had to cook the authentic Mysore Masala Dosa on a 110 kg dosa tawa for her recent episode. “The excitement is real and all of this is an experience of a kind,” she tells us.
For The Travelling Chef Varsha spots and stops at places where food is celebrated. Be it a five-star restaurant or a farmer’s house, Varsha is on a mission to reach out to them, learn a recipe, recreate it, and build respect for them and the food they cook. She says, “It’s like my way of paying an ode to the culinary world. I’m cooking for the chef and he gets to judge me, who is not a chef and do not cook professionally, because a chef is judged for his food every day.”
Varsha might not have graduated from a culinary institute but has honed her skills and knowledge by completing courses — some virtual — from various universities. She is also a certified food anthropologist in the five states of south India. Varsha says, “I know which rice comes from which part of Tamil Nadu and why they grow what is farmed in each region. I know the background of each kind of produce in a particular area from the south of India.”
Working for brands
Her passion for learning different cuisines began during her extensive travel in her modelling days. Sharing an incident from 2009, she says, “I was shooting on a farm in Pollachi and I could smell something too yummy. Tracing the smell, I reached a farmer’s house. I knocked on their door and asked them to make me a plate. The farmer’s wife served me rice, and yellow dal and sprinkled some salt on top. She took something out that I can only describe as liquid gold. That was homemade ghee, which gave the aroma when added to the dal. Even today when I close my eyes I can smell and taste the meal.”
Such instances helped her build her command over food. Additionally, she has learned from people she has interacted with. During her school days, she went to a Ponnuswami hotel with a notebook. She wrote down the recipes from the 70-year-old Chettiar cook and picked up her knowledge of Chettinad cuisine from him. “He gave me insights on why Ajinomoto was used in Chettinad food. The region’s primary import and export was with Burma. They brought this flavour enhancer to Chettinad food. Additionally, he taught me things like why curry leaves should not be pulled off the stem, but split into two for the juice to come out, which is healthy,” she narrates.
Creating a brand
While Varsha had an inclination towards learning, which was fulfilled with her travels to different cities, her daughter’s food requests only made her explore more. “When I say cuisines, I don’t mean learning only one dish and claiming to know it entirely. At least a minimum of five to six dishes should be known. So it started like that. In that eight months of lockdown, I would have cooked about 150 dishes,” shares Varsha.
This was also when her good friend Mad Chef Koushik and her husband Govind Ketty, pushed her to showcase her food and talent. In March, the first episode of The Travelling Chef was uploaded. The series is for anybody who loves food and wants to learn hitherto unknown recipes. “What you cannot find on the Internet, you can find it on Travelling Chef,” says Varsha.
In one of the episodes, the Travelling Chef reaches Kerala Express at Kora Food Street. In this video, the secret recipe of Kari Dosai is revealed as she cooks it for her fans. Giving a tidbit from behind the scenes, Varsha shares, “As I entered the stall, the dosa master asked me, Neenga samaipingala? (Do you cook?). I had to assure him that I could indeed. When he tasted the final dish, he advised me, Evlo recipe therinjalum, adhu kai la irukanum (You can know many recipes but the magic lies in the hands to cook a wonderful dish).” And the chef liked the dosa. On this journey, Varsha also visited the Bombay Food Court in Triplicane during Ramzan and prepared Iftaar snacks. She shares, “It was heartwarming because for a non-Muslim to cook at a place which is Muslim-dominated was great. But I believe food sees no religion.”
Plans laid
Gathering knowledge from every place she visits, Varsha wants to “leave footprints, not in the heart but in the stomach.” Her expertise lies in cooking regional Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Sindhi, and Punjabi food and international cuisines like Korean, Italian, Mexican, Spanish, Jamaican, Caribbean, Asian, and Thai. “I want to be somebody who could provide global cuisine in a local language by travelling,” she shares.
Now, she is documenting the recipes that she learns from other chefs with a plan to write a coffee table book. It will contain anecdotes from her episodes, messages from the chefs, and recipes. A parallel plan is to start a YouTube channel and upload long videos of hotels. “In these videos, I will be staying at hotels and reviewing them on the stay, accessibility, aesthetics, and the food,” she says. She also wishes to start another series titled Takku Takku Samayal where simple, easy, and beginner-friendly dishes will be taught. All these efforts, she hopes, will lead to the inauguration of a culinary institute where Varsha teaches recipes taught by experts.
In her upcoming episode, Varsha is going to explore Chennai makkals’ love for biryani. She has visited the Ahmedia Hotel Since 1975 in Vaniyambadi, known for their Dakini biryani. Here, she cooked four kg of biryani as “it is cooked out of so many emotions.” “It was overwhelming to be there,” she says.
Stay review
The Travelling Chef has also made its way to the Sea Gadabout, a French Hotel in Puducherry. In this episode that is yet to release, she reviews the stay. Having shot the video, she says, “It is a boutique hotel but a luxury style. This place is very contemporary, and rustic and teleports you to some parts of France.”