India Today Conclave to Showcase the Pastry Chef Who Made Macaroons A Global Gourmet Phenomenon

A part of this article has been drawn from the curtain-raiser I wrote for the Mail Today dated March 7, 2012.

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

IN THE 13-year history of the India Today Conclave, the only chef who has had anything to do with the country's definitive festival of ideas is a self-effacing man named Rajesh Wadhwa, who presides over the kitchens of the Taj Palace, New Delhi, and ensures that each gala dinner is more memorable than the one before.

A little later today, for the first time in the history of the India Today Conclave and its many copycats, a chef is going to take the centre-stage. France's most celebrated pastry chef and the god of macaroons, Pierre Herme, will showcase his world of flavours, first at a solo session and then at high tea, where the delegates will get to sample the confection that has the world from London to Qatar, Dubai and Tokyo eating out of his hand.

Pierre Herme is the youngest
man ever to be named France's
Pastry Chef of the Year. Picture
Copyright: Jean Louis Bloch Laine

Herme, who's on his first visit to India, is being presented by the Embassy of France. The Ambassador of France, Francois Richier, a master of nuclear diplomacy in the mould of our own Rakesh Sood, the Prime Minister's Special Envoy on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, was worried that Herme's macaroons may sideline weightier matters such as nuclear power and the space programme.

It may happen, though, that the Picasso of Pastry, which is how Vogue magazine has described the patissier, wakes up the delegates and get them into the mood to discuss the eclectic range of subjects lined up for Conclave's Day Two -- from psephology to robotics, terror to space exploration, cinema to sanitation, and finally, Salman Khan on 'Being Human'. France is the Conclave's partner country -- and you can't imagine it without good food and wine. Hence Herme.

The youngest person to be named France's Pastry Chef of the Year, and the only member of his profession to be inducted into the Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, the French equivalent of a knighthood, Herme is best-known for his unusual macaroons, his most famous creation being the one with olive oil and vanilla.

Christophe Gillino, a world-travelled Frenchman and Executive Chef of The Leela Palace New Delhi, underlined the importance of Herme when he said that the extraordinarily talented pastry chef was responsible for turning around the fortunes of two old French gourmet institutions -- Fauchon and Laduree. Then he went on to create an international chain of gourmet patisseries. Herme will interact with the city's pastry chefs and gourmet bloggers at Le Cirque, The Leela Palace New Delhi's signature restaurant, on Monday, March 10.

Heir to four generations of an Alsatian bakery and pastry-making tradition, Herme is not a stranger to generous accolades. Paris Match magazine has called Herme the "magician with tastes", The New York Times hailed him as "The Kitchen Emperor" and The Guardian described him as "The King of Modern Pâtisserie".

Herme, 52, started apprenticing with the pastry-making legend, Gaston Lenotre, when he was 14, and then went on to revolutionise his craft with his original philosophy of taste, sensations and pleasure. He was the one, for instance, who promoted the idea of the use of sugar as salt -- "as a seasoning to heighten other shades of flavour".

When Desserts by Pierre Herme was released in 1999, the world therefore wasn't surprised to see him overturning established norms by marrying unusual ingredients, such as black pepper and an optional sliver of habanero in his Warm Chocolate and Banana Tart, or a basil chiffonade as garnishing for his Basmati Rice and Fruits-of-the-Moment Salad.

He is a thinking person's pastry chef and a successful business baron who made the idea of 'Patisserie Haute Couture' an international statement of style, which has powered the growth of his chain of pastry shops from Tokyo in 1998 to France, England, Hong Kong, Qatar and Dubai.

Before he launched his empire of taste, Herme was the pastry chef for 11 years for the French fine food merchant, Fauchon, and in 1997, he was powering the expansion of another French institution, the luxury bakery, Laduree. He brings to New Delhi this vast experience and he will be here to talk about his life's journey with "pleasure as the only guide".

Taj's Grand Master, Hemant Oberoi, Unveils his First Book and a Tempting New Menu at Masala Art

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

ONE OF the biggest mistakes The Oberoi group made was not to hire Hemant Oberoi. He was asked to tweak his surname because there could be only one Oberoi in the group. The young man destined to become the country's most accomplished chef of his generation refused to relent. Instead, he joined the Taj, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Hemant Oberoi, Corporate Chef, Taj
Hotels, unwinds at Masala Art, the
restaurant he created 12 years ago at
the Taj Palace in New Delhi. This
picture has been taken by Hoihnu
Hauzel, journalist and food writer.

I met the Corporate Chef of the Taj Hotels at Masala Art, where he was celebrating the launch of his debut book, The Masala Art: Indian Haute Cuisine (Roli Books), 12 years after the restaurant, one of his three famous babies, opened at the Taj Palace in New Delhi and revolutionised the way people looked at our country's gastronomic heritage. It made good old-fashioned ganne ka ras (sugarcane juice) sexy. It gave a new spin to the everyday phulka by getting it made a la minute on a trolley by the table. It introduced the fashion of cooking in olive oil and pairing kebabs and curries with wine. Its menu carried art by Paresh Maity and Prabhakar Kolte, and on its walls hung the works of Jitish Kallat -- that was when nobody knew him. It did away with live ghazals in favour of contemporary piped music.

In other words, it did what no Indian restaurant had dared to do before. Since Masala Art, as Oberoi said with his characteristic blunt wit, there have been many CCPs (cut, copy and paste restaurants), but the original has stood its ground and spread to Mumbai -- Masala Kraft at the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower and the more seafood-driven Masala Bay at Taj Land's End -- as well as Bangalore in the avatar of Masala Klub.

Oberoi subsequently developed two stellar new concepts -- Blue Ginger, the country's first Vietnamese restaurant (first in Bangalore and then in Delhi), and thereafter Varq at the Taj Mahal Hotel, New Delhi, which introduced the city to Oberoi's Indian take on haute cuisine -- but Masala Art remains his most definitive contribution. It is only appropriate therefore that he has chosen to name his first book after the restaurant.

"What next?" I asked the grand master. "Wait till next year," he replied. "I am presenting a concept that I have been working on for seven years. The restaurant will be the first of its kind in India." Oberoi did not elaborate, but he did rev up my imagination.

The first thing that struck me as I leafed through the lavishly illustrated book is the work schedule he still follows. He may have served presidents and prime ministers (in fact, if he writes a book on the dignitaries he has fed, it will be a runaway best-seller), but his working day still stretches from 9 in the morning to 11:30 at night, when he returns home to a cup of tea. It reminded me of the early days of Masala Art.

In the course of an interview, I asked him whether he ever gets family time. He narrated a very funny story. He said that people he knew described their growing children in terms of their height, but he could only talk about his two sons in terms of their length, because he always saw them sleeping. It's surprising that the two boys have followed in their father's footsteps, but they must have been fired by the awards and accolades he has earned in his crowded life.

That was also the time when the then prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, insisted on taking Oberoi around the world so that he could showcase the best of Indian cuisine in official banquets. I asked Oberoi how it was to live out of travel bags, hotel rooms and airport lounges. He said he works on restaurant concepts on flights because he gets uncluttered time only when he's flying! Unsurprisingly, he doesn't let his mind rest even after he launches a new restaurant.

At Masala Art, for instance, he has launched a new menu, which is more national in character. It has beauties such as the broccoli and kaffir lime shorba, crab masaledar (or peppered edamame for the vegetarians) in filo, balchao seabass, bhatti ke asparagus, haleemi gilawati (a refreshing departure from the standard gilawati kebab), ghee roast chicken (Oberoi has retrieved an original recipe of this favourite dish of Aishwarya Rai's community, the Bunts of Kundapura in Karnataka's famed Udupi district, dating back to the 19th century), bharwan guchchi with malai ki sabzi (stuffed king-size morels with a curry made with cream), and an amazing gajar ka halwa filo cigar with rabdi, fresh strawberry elaneer payasam and malt kulfi, which must rank as one of the chef's most striking innovations.

His proverbial rabbits from the magician's hat, though, were the see-through glass mini-handis for the dum ki biryani, which the renowned German glassware makers, Schott Zwiesel, took two years to develop. Oberoi's brief to them was that they should produce a glass handi so that each portion of biryani is cooked individually in the oven and the chefs are able to see it rise. It takes a grand master to visualise a product that turns a meal into a gastronomic journey.