Of Curries and Croquembouches...

So here it starts. I've been wanting to write about food since long. Though I am not the best cook myself, nor do I write professionally about food. I still love to try out new delicacies and watch food related shows. Indian television does offer some cooking and food reality shows, but they come across as a bit bland and boring after one has had a taste of the western cookery shows. Well we can't blame only 'Westernization' for that. For decades we had only Sanjeev Kapoor's 'Khana Khazana' as a cooking show, and only one celebrity chef, Sanjeev Kapoor himself. Along with Khana Khazana there also aired a show with chef Tarla Dalal. English language cooking shows and food related shows were virtually nowhere on the list.

The tables have turned now. We have far more English language cookery and food reality shows ever, across various lifestyle and entertainment channels. Be it Star World's MasterChef series or Zee Cafe's Hell's Kitchen or even Fox Traveller's Eat Street, Indian audiences are opening up to newer avenues, and are welcoming foreign cuisine with open arms into their living rooms,err..well kitchens.

While the fate of cooking shows is restricted to simple 'nutritious' dishes, by housewives and for houseviwes, we have only one celebrity chef. Doesn't this seem quite ironical for a country obsessed with food, being such a culturally diverse country offering hundreds of different cuisines which are nowhere similar to each other?

What must be the reason? Why do we not have young and dynamic celebrity chefs, like the Australian hearthrob of kitchen, Matt Moran or the recent Masterchef winner Andy Allen, Or the ever gorgeous Rachel Allen and of course the most beautiful celebrity chef, yeah you guessed that right, Nigella Lawson.

Nigella Lawson with her Spaghetti

Many of our very own chefs have pursued a successful career overseas, simply because of a lack of opportunities and exposure in India. Vikas Khanna, the Michelin starred chef based in New York City, or Vineet Bhatia, the successful chef of 'Rasoi' based in London who also hosts 'Twist Of Taste' on Fox Traveller, are some of the very talented chefs and are among the most respected in the culinary world.

New York based Indian chef Vikas Khanna

Efforts are being made to encourage taking up cooking as a profession. With MasterChef India: Kitchen Ke Superstars already in its second season, it has provided with the much needed adrenaline to cooking reality shows rather than the plain old 'Poushtik Cutlet' recipes which our traditional shows focused on. Series like MasterChef have given a sense of competition and have made even cooking something very exciting. It has also encouraged people to break free from their daily monotonous lives and try their hand at cooking.

But then again, the question remains, why we do not have any more shows like them, whereas it is clearly evident that people love to watch them. 

Probably cooking is kind of looked down upon,  is not given much heed, and is considered to be a woman's job (another stereotype of a predominantly patriarchal society) and so that's what Indian Television does, caters to its viewers what they want. And that's the reason we don't have any food icons, to look up to while cooking in itself is looked down upon. And with all this hullabaloo going around, one does not simply become a celebrity chef when all the viewers wanted was, a simple recipe to attract kids to karela and baingans! 

India is a diverse country, we have the richest of the richest and poorest of the poor, so while most of the housewives are busy jotting down '2 chammach cheeni, aur namak swaadansuar' the younger lot is busy guffawing when Gordon Ramsay (host of Hell's Kitchen) yells "Pack up your knives and go!" or absolutely melting inside when Adriano Zumbo cuts a slice of his famous V8 Vanilla Cake. 

 Patissiere Adriano Zumbo with his signature dessert Macaron Tower.

'Why do you watch MasterChef Australia?' I ask Srushti, a regular 16 year old girl, who fits perfectly in the target audience of English language channels like Star World India, Zee Cafe and Fox Traveller, and pat comes the reply "because it exposes me to the cuisines of the world, and I can have an understanding of what people like to eat, outside India". Another 17 year old student, Kumar replies that he just watches the show for the fun element of it, the races, pressure tests, the team challenges and of course the food. 'Dessert rounds are my favorite' he remarks with a twinkle in the eye.


With chefs like Adriano Zumbo who is regarded as the Dark Lord of Desserts and The Patissiere of Pain who dishes out famous signature desserts like the Macaron Tower, the croquembouche or his V8 Vanilla Cake, the audience can't seem to get enough of it. With chocolate cakes oozing with hot chocolate ganache, sprinkled with castor sugar or the perfectly wobbly chocolate mousse with a dash of orange zest and praline look so tasty on TV that people have started calling it 'foodporn'!                          
They say the food looks so tasty that it's almost orgasmic. Seriously, who doesn't love themselves a little foodporn, its indulging in food, with zero guilt. So go on, switch on the idiot box and Droooool...