DINING OUT: Diya Turns Five with the Menu of a Masterchef

QUICK BYTES

WHAT: Five Years of Diya with Kunal Kapur

WHERE: The Leela Ambience Hotel, NH-8, Gurgaon

WHEN: Till July 27. Open only for dinner (6:30 to 11:30 p.m.).

DIAL: (0124) 4771255

PER PERSON: Four-course meal (vegetarian) Rs 3,350++; (non-vegetarian) Rs 3,850++

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Masterchef India co-host
Kunal Kapur earned his spurs
as chef de cuisine at Diya, the
under-rated Indian restaurant at
The Leela Ambience Gurgaon,
where he's now the executive
sous chef.

FIVE YEARS AGO, after dining at Diya at The Leela Ambience Gurgaon, I'd hailed the restaurant as the next big thing in Indian fine dining, without knowing that the chef who had sweated it out to inspire me to write that glowing review was the now-famous Kunal Kapur, the endearing (and enduring) face of Masterchef India.

Kunal was then an uncelebrated chef de cuisine, but he brought with him the experience of working at some of the finest Indian restaurants of the Taj Group hotels -- the old Handi and Haveli in Delhi; Southern Spice at Taj Coromandel, Chennai; Karavalli at The Gateway Hotel on Residency Road, Bangalore; and at the Holiday Village, Goa, under the greatest exponent of the state's cuisine, the inimitable Urbano Rego. Yet, Diya hardly ever figures in drawing room conversations, or in animated Facebook food group discussions. Neither does Made in India at the Radisson Blu, Noida, where Kunal worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the under-rated master chef, Arun Tyagi.

In the last five years that Diya, and the hotel, has been around, Kunal has become a celebrity TV show host and best-selling cookbook writer (he has moved up the corporate ladder as well), and the restaurant is now headed by Angshuman Adhikari, a former acolyte of the Michelin-starred, UK-based chef-restaurateur, Atul Kochhar. You can imagine my joy therefore when the hotel invited me for a meal cooked by Kunal, who has returned to his old kitchen to showcase the cooking skills that got him the ticket to fame. Giving me company were the hotel's friendly (and hands-on) General Manager, Michel Koopman, and the charming Nidhi Verma, the marcomm manager, who's a fund of stories.
I have had a lunch orchestrated and served by Masterchef Australia co-host Gary Mehigan at the Grand Hyatt, Mumbai, where I shared my table with a media baron who had just made a lot of money selling his popular afternoon newspaper, but who insisted on describing himself as a farmer from Alibaug (of course, he knew more about farming than all of Delhi's farmhouse owners put together, so he could qualify to be a farmer!). Mehigan wasn't cooking; his executive chef was. On July 15, however, it was Kunal who prepared dinner for me and at the end of it, I was happy to see my long-held view -- that TV chefs can't cook, so they are on TV -- lying in ruins around me.

The mutton shank guddu kurma
is one of Kapur's stand-out
dishes, which showcases his
ability to meld the influences
and flavours of India's many
kitchens into an unforgettable
taste experience

Kunal surprises you not in the Gaggan Anand or the Manish Mehrotra way, with modernist drama and molecular gastronomy, but in his orchestration of flavours and influences he has imbibed from across the country. His style of cooking is classical with a contemporary twist, a touch I find missing in my favourite Indian fine-dining restaurant, Dum Pukht at ITC Maurya. The most eloquent representative of his style is the multi-textural haleem kebab, where the solidity of the mutton boti is balanced by the slight mushiness of dal, daliya and jowar -- biting into one is like having a generous helping of the Hyderabadi dish (a Ramzan must-have), whose taste is reinforced by the quenelle of haleem that is served along with the kebab.

The Hyderabadi influence kept showing up, first in the grilled scallops served with the saalan of a baghare baigan, and then in the guddu kurma, where mutton shanks were cooked in a rich bone marrow gravy. If the surprise of the evening was the 'Punjabi bruschetta' -- liver, kidney and diced mutton cooked in the tak-a-tak style, topped up with a kachumbar salad, and served on toasted French bread -- the murgh malai shorba with a vol-au-vent island stuffed with murgh khichda was a treat for the senses: an explosion of flavours that did a tango with the taste buds. But the desserts blew my mind: cinnamon-flavoured shrikhand with juliennes of a Granny Smith apple (its tartness the perfect counterfoil to the shrikhand's sweetness) and the Bailey's chhena payesh must at once be declared the national dish of Greater Bengal! Kunal is not just the co-host of Masterchef India; he's the master of his craft.

This review first appeared in the Mail Today edition dated July 18, 2014. Copyright: Mail Today Newspapers.

Masterchef Australia’s Gary Mehigan Will BBQ Lamb Chops at Ticketed Event in New Delhi

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

MASTERCHEF Australia co-host and judge and Melbourne restaurateur Gary Mehigan was in Mumbai some time back to promote the culinary wealth of his home state, Victoria. He’ll be back in India on Sunday, October 20, when he’ll preside over ‘A Great Southern BBQ’ at the Australian High Commission in New Delhi. The ticketed event has been planned to pump up the second round of Oz Fest as well as Australian lamb (don’t we all love it?), which has finally been allowed to be imported after a 12-year ban.

Gary Mehigan, on his favourite motorbike, the Royal Enfield,
with his Masterchef Australia co-host and judge George
Calombaris riding pillion in New Delhi. Since this picture
was shot last year, Calombaris has lost 20 kilos!

On a four-city tour covering Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Jodhpur, Gary will conduct a cooking demonstration with Australian lamb from Sanger, a Sydney-based company which has been in the business of meat exports since 1973. Joining him will be celebrity chef, television presenter and cookbook author Ritu Dalmia, who’ll be donning her hat as Fisher & Paykel brand ambassador and conducting on-the-spot cooking competitions for Gary to judge.

Now, just in case you’re wondering what Fisher & Paykel, a New Zealand kitchen appliances brand is doing at an Aussie event, it is because the event is being powered by the Australia, New Zealand & India Business Association (ANZIBA). The event will also see the Manesar-based La Carne Cuts, a new name in the business of charcuterie products and value-added meats that we will hear a lot of in the coming days.

“I am so excited to be returning to the saffron land for my third trip,” Gary is quoted as saying in a media release issued by the Australian High Commission. He came last year with his Masterchef Australia co-host and fellow judge George Calombaris last year as a part of the Oz Fest. The enthusiastic welcome the two got in India, and of course the impressive ratings of their show (Masterchef Australia has the highest viewership outside Australia in India), have been the reasons for Gary to keep coming back. Unsurprisingly, Gary, who makes no secret of his love for parantha, dosa and naan, is the ambassador of the ambitious Oz Fest for the second consecutive year.

Gary’s other engagements around the country will include a visit to the Royal Enfield factory, where he’ll hit the road with the new Continental GT racer, and a ‘BBQ duel’ featuring lamb from Mulwarra, which is another New South Wales company, at the Hyatt Regency Chennai. In Mumbai, Gary will autograph books for fans at Crosswords Bookstore, In-Orbit Mall, Malad, on 25 October. He will also join celebrity chef Vicky Ratnani on his new show ‘Party Kitchen’ on NDTV Good Times to dish out party recipes.

That’s a lot of travel, and it’ll all be filmed for his new television series pilot, ‘Far Flung with Gary Mehigan’. There’s never a dull moment in the life of celebrity chef.

Tickets are priced at Rs 3,000 (wine and beer included) per adult and Rs 750 per child below 12. Send an email to administrator@anziba.in or call +91 8285371826.

Masterchef Australia’s George Calombaris Loses 20 Kilos, But Gary Stays Happily Prosperous

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

HOW does it feel when your television show co-host loses 20 kilos and you don’t shed a gram? Masterchef Australia co-host and judge Gary Mehigan talked about his futile battle to lose weight, although his television other half, George Calombaris, has shed 20 kilos by going on a no-alcohol, no-carb diet. “You should see him tasting food on the Masterchef sets,” Gary said with his usual warm and welcoming smile. “The cameraman keeps pleading with him, ‘George, I am not seeing what you are eating. Can you have a bigger portion?’ ”

Gary tried to go on a diet after shooting for Masterchef Australia Season 5, but he has evidently not been very successful. “If George had lost only 5 kilos, I could have tried harder, but I can’t do 20,” he said on the sidelines of a lunch masterminded by him and his executive chef, Dan Schwartz, at Celini, Grand Hyatt Mumbai’s Italian restaurant, for Tourism Victoria. Of course, his broad smile seemed to suggest that he’s not seriously ruing the fact that he hasn’t shed that much weight.

Gary Mehigan (left) now has a
prosperous gut, but his co-host
George Calombaris has shed
20 kilos (Image: Courtesy of
www.penguin.com.au)

Sharing his Delhi experience last year at our table, which I shared with the well-known publisher, Tariq Ansari of Mid-Day Multimedia, and Nitin Mongia, who runs the boutique hotel CCaza Commodore at Mandwa in fashionable Alibaug, Gary finally shed light on his absence from the side of George when the other half had gone to Chandni Chowk to sample the jalebas of Old & Famous. He had a bout of Delhi belly thanks to the gol gappas that he had a day before. “The coriander water just didn’t agree with me,” he recalled, even as he prepared to hit the streets of Mumbai and sample pav bhaji with NDTV’s Anisha Baig.

When Ansari insisted that Mumbai, like Melbourne, was the food capital of India, Gary couldn’t stop talking about Manish Mehrotra’s menu at Indian Accent. He was bowled over by the spicy tamarind-glazed spare ribs and the gorgonzola naan. He made sounds that expressed his feelings much better than words.

Earlier, speaking at a master class for journalists, who behaved more like fans than stuffy professionals, Gary spoke of his frustrating experience trying to get a paneer masala recipe from his followers on Twitter. Each recipe was so different that he decided to develop one of his own.

He even tried to get some recipes out of Jimmy Seervai, whom you may remember from Masterchef Australia Season 2 (2010), but he turned out to be an “eight curries kind of guy”. Australia is in dire need of a chef who can showcase the best of Indian cuisine and “make a killing”. Gary said Indian restaurants in Australia are still stuck at a time when the first wave of Indian immigration happened more than 30 years ago. “And we don’t know anything about South Indian cuisine,” he said. “Melbourne is a good place for good Indian chefs to go and make a killing.” Gary mentioned how Melbourne chef Adam DeSilva, after a visit to Mumbai a couple of years back for yet another Tourism Victoria event, launched an Indian fusion restaurant named Tonka and got rave reviews for his paani poori! I am sure a lot many of our chefs would jump at Gary’s offer and get Melbourne eating out of their hands.

My next blog post will have the story about the master class that Gary held for journalists.

Getting Ready for a Masterclass with Masterchef’s Gary Mehigan

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Hosted by Tourism Victoria, Gary Mehigan will be
in Mumbai today to conduct a masterclass for
the media at the Grand Hyatt. Image:
Courtesy of Gary Mehigan's blog

I AM in a state of high excitement because I shall be spending a good part of the day with Gary Mehigan, co-host and judge of Masterchef Australia as well as Melbourne restaurateur, the series that is watched by more people in India than Down Under. Hosted by Tourism Victoria, which naturally would want to showcase the culinary wealth of Melbourne, Gary will conduct a masterclass for the media at Celini, the Italian restaurant at the Grand Hyatt, Mumbai, and then serve lunch to invited guests. Victoria’s Tourism Minister Louise Asher will also be present at the event to showcase her state and its many attractions.

Last year, when Gary and George Calombaris came to Delhi, I spent a day with them, first at a farmhouse cookout, where India’s most famous Aussie, Bill Marchetti, presided over the suckling pig, and then as the host of an appearance they made for their publishers, Penguin Books, at the Landmark at Ambience Mall, Vasant Kunj. They’re easy to get along with and very professional — and they were surprised as their celebrity status in India. “We are learning to get used to it,” Gary had said to me. Well, I am looking forward to another day of seeing Gary get mobbed by women and children, who are his biggest fan, in one of Mumbai’s finest restaurants.