Celebrity Chef Ranveer Brar thinks it is necessary to understand people’s palate and range of taste first before introducing them to another cuisine. R Sharma reports
Chefs are best comfortable behind the kitchen counter — chopping and dicing vegetables, seasoning their food, marinating meat and garnishing the final dish. Very often do we come across a chef who can be as comfortable in front of a camera as with a ladle in his hands. Chef Ranver Brar smiled, posed and also shared a few tricks off his sleeve when he spoke to us about the recent invasion of pasta in Indian kitchen.
A similar arrangement was assembled for a pasta festival in NCR, where celebrity chef Ranveer Brar with the combination of his good looks and culinary skills let women drooling over the counter while he whipped up some savoury pasta for them.
The event kickstarted at eight in the morning and the chef kept people engaged with his stories, ideas and interesting recipes that people were thrilled to know about. The chef from lucknow shared that people create hype when chefs prepare a dish. “At times, we use the same recipes that are usually cooked by women in general but we gave them a twist with our seasoning and dressing so people give us more credit,” said Brar.
The host and judge for shows like Breakfast Xpress, Snack Attack et al shared that his journey started when he was seven. “As a child, I used to go to Gurudwara and I would notice how they would prepare langar. So I started with preparing langars and then there was no going back.”
The youngest executive chef of his time in the country at the age of 25 told us another story where he actually stayed away from his home for eight months to prove his seriousness for the profession. “When I told my parents that I have real interest in cooking, they thought I wasn’t serious. I would change my mind very soon but that did not happen.”
Brar who was in city to announce the winner of its ongoing culinary contest, delighted us by cooking pasta with a flavour of pungent orange for us. “There is a need for us to experiment with the Italian cuisine. I have indianised this version of pasta because if I don’t put spices and herbs in it, it is all tasteless for most of us,” shared he.
Talking about the invasion of pasta in Indian kitchen, he explained how people found (spaghetti) it similar to vermicelli. “The similarity between vermicelli and spaghetti was the one reason which actually made people accept pastas very easily. In 1980, with the advent of pizza, people here in India realised the combination of flour, tomatoes and cheese. Though pasta was an easier transition, it became famous only ten years ago,” shared the host-judge of food shows.
He further pointed out,
“The pastas that we prepare at home usually are overflowing with the amount of soup. The right way to prepare it is when you don’t have anything left on your plate after eating it”
Italian food has seemingly made deep inroads into the Indian urban middle-class; pizza has always been the face of Italian cuisine in the country. This trend, however, is changing as larger section of Indian consumers i.e. the middle-class, find pasta—relatively affordable, easy to cook and open to unending gastronomic innovations, including enough and more vegetarian options.
The increasing acceptance and growing popularity of pasta has several reasons behind it. Most importantly, it is a versatile food. It is an incredibly flexible food, one can adapt it to suit any taste without compromising on the authenticity. Moreover, the flavour palates of Indian cuisine can be infused into the pasta.
While sharing some interesting tips and recipes for those who think making pasta is difficult, chef Brar has a worth sharing advise. For him, “We can make pasta with curry of aloo matar, matar paneer or any other curry. The easiest way to cook pasta is to us leftover curry and add boiled pasta in it. This way, it enhances the taste and saves your time as well.”
The chef believes in his instincts while he is in the kitchen. When asked what is the best pairing that he can suggest for pastas in Indian kitchen, he readily replied, “kasoori methi and tomatoes.”
The culinary expert who has earlier tried his hands on hosting and judging food shows is now have a book in pipeline, Come into my Kitchen. “The book is about memoirs, recipes that I have collected in past many years. It is also about spending a morning or evening in my kitchen, how things work in Ranveer Brar’s kitchen,” concluded he.