Kwality's Corporate Chef Sultan Mohideen Eyes Guinness World Records with 72-Kilo Paneer Tikka

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

Kwality Group's Corporate Chef
G. Sultan Mohideen, who served
a long list of VIPs during his stint
with ITC Hotels, created history
by cooking a 72-kilo paneer tikka
at a Delhi farmhouse on April 12

IT IS chicken tikka masala (CTM) that's been making history. Back in 2001, the then UK foreign secretary Robin Cook declared it to be "a true British national dish". More recently, in 2009, Pakistani-born British MP Mohammad Sarwar tabled a motion in the House of Commons seeking protected geographical status for Glasgow's CTM.

Now, it's time for the rise of the underwhelming paneer tikka. Kwality Group's Corporate Chef G. Sultan Mohideen, who has also written a Ph.D. thesis on the Indo-French cuisine of the court of Tipu Sultan, produced what he claimed was the world's largest paneer tikka on Saturday.

Mohideen started his quest for the paneer tikka Holy Grail in the afternoon, in the presence of a jury consisting of, among others, a magistrate, an inspector of weights and measures and the well-regarded chef Sudhir Sibal of the ITDC.

By the end of the day, after Mohideen had cooked the monstrous 72-kilo block to perfection in a custom-made tandoor with a diameter of 4 feet and cut it into 1,650 pieces (each a 1.5-inch square) at a Chhattarpur farmhouse, he was confident that his feat would qualify for the Guinness World Records.

The chef started working towards the paneer tikka world record some time back by first getting a fabricator to develop a mould to produce the humongous block, which he sexed up with spices. He also got giant skewers made to hold the block in the tandoor, which had 50 kilos of coal burning, and these were supported by heavy-duty chains operated by a pulley.

The mould came with a sliding door so that the block of paneer could be rolled out without much fuss. And to ensure the flavours were distributed equally down to the core of the block, Mohideen injected the marinade into it five to six hours before undertaking the challenging task of cooking it.

Commenting on the feat, Indian Accent's celebrated master chef, Manish Mehrotra, said no one had ever attempted to cook such a big block of paneer, so it was indeed deserving of a place in the Guinness World Records.

Monish Gujral, Moti Mahal's Brand Custodian, said the chef couldn't have chosen a more appropriate dish. "Paneer tikka remains the most ordered starter in any North Indian cuisine restaurant," Gujral said. Each of the 150-plus Moti Mahal's Tandoori Trail restaurants, he added, sells, on average, 25-30 portions of the dish every day. Mohideen said the 70-plus-year-old Kwality restaurant in Connaught Place, which is famous for its Pindi chhole-bhature, seekh kebabs and tomato fish, moves an average of three kilos, or 100 pieces, of paneer tikka a day.

The hara bhara kabab follows the paneer tikka in the popularity sweepstakes, according to Gujral. The record-chasing chef, though, believes tandoori mushroom tikkas and bharwan aloo follow in the pecking order.

Mehrotra shares Gujral's bullish sentiments on the paneer tikka. "It gives vegetarians a sense of getting a bigger bang for a buck," he said. "They see it to be a product whose value is equivalent to that of a chicken preparation." In the case of the other vegetarian preparations, they get the feeling that they are paying a lot more than they should. The humble paneer tikka has finally found the pride of place its fans would like  it to have.

Olive Culinary Academy Students Rock Food & Nightlife Awards Show

By Sourish Bhattacharyya

LAST NIGHT, the first batch of the Olive Culinary Academy (OCA) stunned the packed-to-capacity gathering at Food & Nightlife’s Delhi’s Most Delicious 2013 Awards at Pullman Gurgaon Central Park by producing a three-course meal in 14 minutes and 45 seconds — their allotted time was 15 minutes. Food and travel writer Rupali Dean tasted the smoked gazpacho and could only speak in superlatives, and Food & Nightlife Editor Sumit Goyal just couldn’t stop having the tiramisu.

What we were seeing on the stage — the audience consisted of the doyens of the food and hospitality industry, starting with K.B. Kachru, Anil Bhandari, Alok Shivpuri, Arvind Saraswat, Manjit Gill, Davinder Kumar, Sudhir Sibal, Arun Chopra and Shaju Zachariah, so it was indeed a moment of revelation — was the birth of a new generation of chefs: sassy, savvy, good at their work, and just loving it. Their backgrounds were as diverse as India, which made the group just the kind of melting pot that would produce the country’s first genuinely international cuisine experience. It is the generation that can talk about dining at Eleven Madison Park (the New York Flatiron district restaurant ranked No. 5 in San Pellegrino’s World Best 50 Restaurants in 2013) with the same ease as they can comment on their mother’s rajma-chawal.

The brainchild of Olive Bar & Kitchen’s founder AD Singh and his star chef, Sabyasachi ‘Saby’ Gorai, OCA is a brilliant initiative to nurture batches of young chefs who are, to quote HR jargon, ‘industry ready’ and little powerhouses of talent. After the show, I took AD to one corner and told him he should be prepared to lose his entire first batch to an industry famished for talent. He did seem worried at the thought, but he was excited by the idea of producing a new generation of chefs whom any company in the world (especially his own!) would love to employ. And as was to be expected of him, he was already planning how to retain these talented people by reinventing the role of the chef. What about making them brand ambassadors, for instance?

I could think of Eesha Singh, whose repartee left the normally loquacious ‘sadhak chhaap chef’ and TV presenter Saransh Goila, easily fitting into the role. When she was explaining the dishes being prepared by her fellow students, Eesha combined knowledge, good humour and a radiant smile. Yet, she has the most un-cheflike background — an English Literature graduate from Gargi College, Delhi University, she went to study contemporary dance at the Broadway Dance Center and the Pushing Progress Company, New York, learnt bartending while there and then worked with Ashley Lobo’s Danceworx Academy for three years before becoming a student all over again.

Sabyasachi 'Saby' Gorai (third from left) and the young faculty of the OCA

The other stories are equally inspiring. Padmaja Kumari Jadeja, whose father is the cook of the family, decided to become a chef after studying English Literature at Indraprastha College for Women and Fashion Marketing at the Pearl Academy of Fashion. Arshhia Chawla, who notched up 85 per cent in Humanities from Apeejay School, Saket, and then studied the Law for a year, chose to be a chef and not a lawyer. Sahil Arora from Faridabad went against the wishes of his elders, gave up his Business Administration studies midway and abandoned the safety net of his family business to become a chef. Mansi Chauhan, a Maths whiz, is pursuing a B.Com. along with her dream of becoming a head chef, in five years, of a successful fine-dining restaurant. Ritu Saigal is already preparing to open her own London restaurant in 2014. Divija Singh from Mayo has a law degree and a Master’s in Social Welfare from Jamia Millia Islamia. How many industry veterans you know come with such qualifications?

In this inspiring young group, Sofia Leyzarova is a name that stands out. Originally from Minsk, Belarus, Sofia grew up in a small town in New Jersey dominated by Italian and Puerto Rican immigrants, studied accounting and psychology at Rutgers, visited Delhi as an exchange students at St Stephen’s College in 2009, and was working for three years in New York City till she decided to join the OCA in the hope of eventually opening a Russian restaurant in Delhi. With so much diversity, I can see the kitchens of tomorrow taking on a completely new look. Each time I meet Saby’s protégés Dhruv Oberoi and Megha Kohli (a product of The Oberoi’s STEP programme, she has joined OCA after a stint at Olive Beach), I can’t stop wondering about the cultural shift that is taking place in our stand-alone restaurants. India’s culinary future is in very safe hands.