Chef Kunal Kapoor’s next book will inspire men to cook with easy recipes. He chats with Divya Kaushik
The sweet aroma of rich cocoa, cream and pure chocolate was heavenly to say the least. The only sound audible was of whisking and whipping. All eyes remained fixed on the huge bowl that was decorated like a royal room, with everything that was glistening and a huge glob of ice cream was at the center just like the most flaunt-worthy decorative of that room. Chef Kunal Kapoor, the man who was adding and removing things from that bowl, broke the silence.
“Add some faluda on the ice cream, drizzle some sugar syrup, sprinkle rose and kewra syrup, pour some rabri and top it all with gold warq,” he said as he gave the finishing touch to his rabri faluda that was prepared with Magnum ice cream to show it to the guests how one can come up with interesting desserts in a matter of few minutes with an ice cream. Apart from chocolate ice cream faluda, the chef came up with the dessert prepared with chocolate ice cream and a mix of egg white, icing sugar and lemon juice. Once he was done, the chef told us that it is rarely he does such experiments with his chocolate or with his ice cream. “I would rather have a small piece of chocolate on an everyday basis to satiate my craving rather than coming up with a special recipe. But one should know about such quick and easy recipes so that if you have some special guests over, you can come up with something unusual in less time,” said the chef.
Kunal can be often seen in city these days, demonstrating interesting recipes and holding cook out sessions, and his fans would know that he is much leaner than what he used to be earlier. The chef has been paying a great deal of attention on fitness since last few days and he says that he wanted to lose weight to stay healthy. “Those days are gone when you would not imagine a chef without a big belly. Every one today is health conscious and it is good to promote fitness while you talk about food. The reason I decided to lose weight was because I noticed that almost every chef that I knew was suffering from some health problem or the other at a very young age. Sadly, there were many chefs from whom I learnt the craft and they were all gone at a very young age because of the health problems that they faced due to obesity. I want to stay healthy and therefore it was important to lose weight. But while I have been losing weight, I have never abstained myself from eating anything, I just try and eat healthy and balance the calories,” the chef told us.
After coming up with one recipe book, chef Kunal has already partially completed his next book, which will be all about men and cooking. “It is a widespread perception that men can’t cook. Even in this day and age, men in our society are never questioned if they can cook or not. So my book is all about men and cooking. The book is written in a way that it will inspire men to cook. I have divided the chapters as per the moods of a man. For example, if he is in a mood to host his friends over for drinks, what should be the menu like, what all can he prepare if he is planning to watch a cricket match with his friends etc. It will be a recipe book but it will have some interesting facts to lure men to read and inspire them to cook. Through this book I am trying to break this myth that men can’t cook at homes but the biggest problem is how to make men interested in reading a cookbook. I was contemplating on the idea of putting some pictures of beautiful women in the book so that at least men would read it,” he shared.
After MasterChef India, Kunal has stayed away from TV but he said that he will be back soon with something interesting. “MasterChef India sets a certain bar and I only wanted to do a show that raises that bar, hopefully I will have a TV show soon,” he said.