David Rocco's new show will air on Fox Traveller next week. He talks to Iknoor Kaur about cooking with Indian spices and fresh Italian ingredients
Getting around on a rickshaw, cooking food with Neha Dhupia, falling off an elephant, celebrating Holi, visiting a Gurdwara, touring a winery… David Rocco could go on about his experiences in India and still crave for more. He loves being Italian, eating Mediterranean and cooking almost everything that smells Indian. So much so, that he even coined a new term for the cuisine he cooked during his recent visit to India for Fox Traveller’s new series, David Rocco’s Dolce India (starting March 20). Inditalian, as he calls it, is a fusion of Indian and Italian food. According to Rocco, the two cuisines are actually so similar that they blend almost instantaneously. He said, “It is amazing how similar the two culinary cultures are: you have tomatoes, onions, garlic, legumes, rice and more. I never do fusion just for the sake of fusion. It is always about respecting each culture and bringing the different elements into each dish.”
Rocco feels that Indian dishes focus a lot on spices, whereas Italian dishes are exactly the opposite. However that never got in his way while fusing the two, he shared. “I was shocked by the variety and the complexity of Indian spices. It tends to be the focus of most Indian dishes, whereas Italian dishes are more about the assembly of fresh ingredients. But it was surprisingly simple to fuse the two because of the similarities between the processes and core ingredients. It was hard to go wrong,” he elaborated.
Rocco took a liking to mustard oil while he was here. He said, “I still use it in some dishes now that I’m back home.”
Along with the food, Rocco also enjoyed intermingling with people in India. “Obviously there’s a lot of food featured on the show, but I was very blessed to have such a rich, cultural experience. I used to get around on a rickshaw all the time and I also got a chance to cook with Neha Dhupia,” he informed. In addition to that Rocco recently wrote about the show on his blog and said that “beyond all the good stuff like beautiful scenery, recipes for delicious dishes and a cast of interesting characters, there’s also plenty of surprises (Spoiler alert: I may fall off an elephant at one point).” Thus, marking one of the high points of his tour.
Rocco finds a disconnect between Indian and Italian humour and narrated an incident where he thought he had offended someone really badly. He said, “I was in a restaurant where the portions were on the smaller side, but the food was really amazing. Our server (waiter) came up and asked how everything was, and I said, ‘It’s amazing. You can bring the rest of it now!’ He looked horrified. He didn’t realise that I was actually kidding. Poor guy.”
The masterchef may seem fancy when you watch him toss vegetables in a pan, but in reality he believes in simplicity. Thus, his secret to cooking healthy, flavoursome food is “cuccinapovera or poor man’s cooking. It’s about fresh ingredients, and ingredients that don’t cost much. There’s not a tonne of meat, it’s more fish, vegetables, legumes and olive oil — simple, healthy ingredients,” he shared.
Molecular gastronomy is one of the latest fads in the food industry, but Rocco feels it’s not for him. “It’s an interesting experience, but it has no application in day-to-day life. What I love most are family recipes, the ones that have been passed on from someone’s grandmother. I love to cook without measuring. It’s all about instinct, eyeballing it and just having fun in the kitchen. In Italian we call it quantobasta, which means as much as you like, and in India they call it andaaz,” he concluded.