| Chef Rule By Lavina Melwani
A
toast to the people behind your favorite chicken tikka
masala and malai kofta.
He
cooked for Indira Gandhi and now he’ll stir up her
favorite stuffed karelas for you.
Pannalal Sharma, better known as Panditji, is the
man who headed Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s
kitchen cabinet, her personal chef who whipped up
the stuffed karelas and bindhis that she loved.
Now he cooks a lifetime of special dishes at restaurants
in New Jersey, regaling his clients with stories of
the celebrities he’s fed. What did Indiraji like to
eat for breakfast? What was Amitabh Bachchan’s favorite
food when he dropped in? You’ll get the scoops on
everything inquiring minds want to know and some authentic
regional dishes to chew them on.
Indian
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s personal chef Pannalal
Sharma will stir up her favorite karelas and bhindis
right here in New Jersey for you.
America’s Curry Revolution has attracted an eclectic
band of cooks from all parts of India to the New World.
They and their battalion of helpers are the foot — er
— food soldiers in the Battle of the Spices, which is
conquering the American palate with mustard seeds and
cloves and cardamom.
Be it Atlanta, Georgia, or Washington, D.C., or Austin,
Texas, you can be sure that somewhere out there the
samosas are sizzling merrily in a karahi of hot oil
and the tandoori chicken is being grilled to the third
degree in a clay oven. No longer do you have to venture
to the big cities for your fix of chaat papri or bhel,
for enterprising Indian Americans have brought these
desi delights to the far corners of the U.S.A.
Yet, have you ever wondered what stories lie behind
the kebabs and chicken tikka that you devour at Indian
restaurants? Whose hands shaped them, who stirred these
pots? Where did these unseen, unknown feeders of thousands
come from? And when at night the restaurants close and
it’s time to dream, where do they go? Where do they
fit into the jigsaw puzzle of America, far from their
towns and villages, their families and their past?
Private caterer Geetika Khanna.
While some have achieved fame, drawing six figure salaries,
and have become name brand chefs, the majority of them
are the anonymous stirrer of pots who rarely venture
out of the kitchen. In America’s celebrity culture,
chefs in crËme de la crËme restaurants become demi-gods
with their own following. They appear on television,
create special dinners for benefit events and have their
pictures splashed in the media. A few Indian chefs,
like Floyd Cardoz of Tabla in New York or the late Raji
Jallepalli of Restaurant Raji in Memphis, achieved that
stardom, most Indian chefs toil in the shadows.
Although some Indian chefs trace their history back
to a family profession of cooking, there are others
who picked up the knowledge while pursuing other careers.
Then there is also a whole generation, which has attended
professional cooking school, and treats it very much
like a career, moving from one five star hotel to the
next.
As Indian restaurants have spread across the United
States, chefs and cooks of every caliber have arrived:
some of them work in upscale chandeliered restaurants
while others in small mom and pop operations where a
meal can be had for $4.99. As the Indian American population
continues to grow, a lucrative new market for desi cuisine
has arisen. Earlier Indian restaurants catered just
to the mainstream and the few Indians there did not
eat out that much, reasoning that they already cooked
Indian food at home.
But in the past decade, the whole scene has changed:
Indians are going out much more and spending their dollars.
Whether it’s a sweet sixteen, graduation or engagement
ceremonies, or even just a family gathering, desis are
celebrating in a big way and most of them prefer to
feast on their own Indian cuisine. Many five star hotels
have started catering to this with the introduction
of Indian dishes into their menus or by collaborating
with Indian caterers to organize the food for events.
Interestingly enough, the second generation — born and
brought up in America — still loves the spicy chicken
and gulab jamun of the faraway homeland, with the result
that these young professionals who don’t just make the
big bucks, but also have the American appetite to spend
them, are also frequenting Indian restaurants.
Indian cuisine in America, which earlier comprised of
just North Indian cuisine, has finally got nuances,
with many regional dishes finding their way into the
repertoire of chefs. Now you can find the cuisine of
every region from Gujarat to Kerala. So the chef who
can make a perfect dosa or handle the tandoori oven
will never lack for a job in America.
Dhandu Ram is the man behind the tandoor at Bukhara
Grill in New York. He is a master tandoor, who hails
from Rajasthan, but got his training on the job at the
famed Bukhara at the Maurya Sheraton in Delhi, the place
where Bill Clinton and many other VIPs have got their
fix of Indian cuisine. Ram worked there for 12 years
and the diners there included just about every celebrity.
He recalls that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was particularly
fond of the pudina paratha at Bukhara.
Ram first learnt cooking from his mother in the village
of Kishorepra. He says that as a young man he thought,
“If one learns cooking one will never take a beating
in life.” His contact with the late Madan Lal Jaiswal,
the famed chef at Bukhara, was his ticket to the culinary
secrets of the tandoor, and Jaiswal became his guru.
Bukhara Grill’s Dhandu Ram.
He recalls his own dedication to mastering the art:
“While most people would work eight hour shifts, I would,
in my passion to learn, come in at 8.30 in the morning
and leave at 11 p.m at night.” He worked these relentless
hours for two years with the result that he mastered
the Northwest cuisine.
Once he came to the United States, Ram worked first
in Chicago and then in New York restaurants like Baluchi
and Diwan. He came as a master tandoor chef and trained
others, got his green card and settled down with his
family. Recently he joined Bukhara Grill in New York,
a restaurant which incorporates many of the noted dishes
of the original Bukhara. Interestingly, he is the partner
in this venture with Raja Jhanjee and Vicky Vij, who
also worked originally at the Maurya Bukhara.
Ram is known for his tandoor specialties — sheesh kebab,
mulmul kebab, tandoori chicken, malai kebab, tandoori
alu, tandoori mushrooms and tandoori raan in which the
entire leg of lamb is cooked. Bukhara daal and butter
chicken are the other specialties, although many other
dishes have been added here for the diverse American
diners. Then there is the whole spectrum of tandoori
breads, including silky roomali rotis, naans and parathas.
There is also the family naan, which is three and a
half foot long and two and a half foot wide, enough
to feed half a dozen people.
“The northern Indian cooking is mostly superb, with
the sort of precise, resonant, yet subtle spicing that
is all too rare in Indian restaurants,” wrote Eric Asimov
in the New York Times. As a tandoor chef, Ram is the
star attraction at Bukhara Grill and agrees that more
respect is given to chefs here than in India, perhaps
because while so many know this art in India, here it’s
hard to get experienced tandoor chefs who know how to
do it perfectly. He points out that a tandoor chef generally
gets a green card because this is a task that no one
else can really do.
Balwant Singh has taken Indian food to the American
streets -- in a pushcart.
A man with a past is Panditji, the chef who has cooked
for Indira Gandhi and her VIP guests. Sharma, who came
to the United States in 1989, carries his illustrious
roots with him. His profession has been handed down
the ages and is part of the “parampara” of his family.
He says, “It’s a gift from the Gods and the family;
my father and grandfather were chefs in the court of
Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir.”
His childhood was spent in the courtyards of Amber Palace
where his father was a master chef: “I often assisted
Papaji in cooking the food. Some of his famous dishes
were khatta meat and salan ka saag. I also remember
a big room under the ground of the Amber Palace where
the royal ladies had a swimming pool. Papaji would often
cook kebabs for them there and there was a special barbecue
place.”
Sharma learnt all the courtly cuisine from his father.
When the maharajah would go on a hunt, the royal party
would come back with partridges, rabbits and deer and
he would assist his father in cooking these for the
table.
His father’s recipes, many in Urdu, also guided him.
Sharma was a chef for Presidents V.V. Giri and Giani
Zail Singh and has also been a chef for the Hyatt Hotel
chain and Air India. While he was the personal chef
to Indira Gandhi, he won the gold medal at an international
competition where 3,000 chefs participated.
Perhaps the most memorable years for Sharma was the
decade that he was personal chef to Indira Gandhi. “We
used to call her Madamji and everywhere Madamji traveled,
I went with her. Madamji was not only my mother but
she was also the jannini who made my life. I was a poor
man who would never have been able to travel the world.
With her, I got to see the world and learn the languages
of different cuisines.”
She often arranged for him to stay on in foreign lands
to learn the cuisine so that he would be adept at them
when the leaders of those countries visited India. Personally
she was fond of sausage and fish, but says Sharma, her
tastes changed after 1979, when she moved towards vegetarian
food. She particularly liked South Indian food and Rajasthani
dishes like ghatta kari, as well as fresh vegetables
and daal. Complex woman that she was, there were certain
requirements. Says Sharma, “Five people had to taste
the food before it went in to her. She was a tough lady,
but she liked to eat simple food.”
Sharma, who is a Kashmiri pandit, specializes in Kashmiri
cuisine as well as regional dishes of many states. Here
in the United States, he has been a consulting chef
to many restaurants including Namaskar in New Jersey,
and Bombay Bistro. He now cooks at Milan and Flavor
of India, both in New Jersey. He also cooks special
dishes for catered events, but misses the challenge
of intricate cooking since here the tandoori and Punjabi
cuisine seems to be served everywhere. He says, “People
don’t know the Kashmiri or Gujarati cuisine; they just
know the generic dal makhni or palak paneer or chicken
korma. I like to bring them new dishes.” Sharma does
that as a regular weekly guest on a cooking segment
of the radio show Anil-ki-Awaaz every Saturday in New
Jersey.
Ask him if his life seems a shadow of the colorful one
he had traveling with the prime minister of India, he
says, “You cannot compare the past to the present because
that was not my personal life, but a gift bestowed by
Indiraji.”
Crossroad’s Murali Iyengar.
Another chef who has really been around — above and
below the water — is Murali Iyengar, owner of Crossroads
Restaurant in Central Jersey. Although he is an engineer
by profession, the spices and masalas of his childhood
found him out. Growing up in Mysore, he started cooking
when he was eight years old. He recalls, “I worked at
the chula since I was a small boy since ours was a large
family with seven kids. My father was an electrician
on an 800 acre farm, owned by the King of Mysore, with
over 900 cows.”
The family lived in quarters provided by the King, but
since the salary was meager, his mother always needed
a helping hand with the cooking. Iyengar developed a
passion for cooking, but studied to be an engineer.
He joined the navy as an engineer and was posted on
cruisers, destroyers and even a sumbarine. As the engineer
in charge of the galley, he had to maintain the electric
appliances in the kitchen, and saw firsthand the cooking
of 900 breakfasts, 1,000 lunches and 1,500 dinners everyday.
He absorbed the techniques of many different regional
cuisines in the navy and says, “In the defense forces,
no matter whether you’re from Punjab or you come from
Madras, you are one unit. More so in the navy because
you’re living in confined spaces.” When he moved to
the United States, as an engineer he often did technical
work for the many Indian restaurants in the tristate
area and once again saw the inner working of the food
business. Always keen to combine his engineering knowledge
with his passion for cooking, he says he was the first
to introduce the dosa grill to the streets of New York
during the India Day Parade in 1990. With his extended
family, he also started catering services on the weekends.
With the knowledge he had gathered since childhood,
Iyengar decided to take the plunge with Crossroads,
earlier a steakhouse, in Central Jersey. As the executive
chef, his specialties are Chicken Hariyali, Goat Achari,
Chicken Chettinad, Goat Masala, Fish Fry Cochin and
Malabar Chicken Curry but he also serves Northern dishes
like Chicken Tikka Masala: “I try to mix and match and
keep a balance. Our clientele is mostly Indian and being
certified by our own people means the food is really
authentic.”
This engineer turned chef says, “I love what I do. I
work 14 hours a day but when I go home, I sleep well.
I know I’ve done my best when I see tired, hungry people
glow when I present them the food. That’s my reward.
This is food cooked with love.” While restaurants are
doing well, desi cuisine is becoming so popular that
some chefs have found they can cook, even without a
restaurant! Home catering is becoming a big business
and chefs as well as small-time cooks are whipping up
the meals for a hungry desi populace, which has little
time to cook in fast-moving America.
Sachin Chopra—work of the khansama.
Shankar and Mahadev are two brothers who have achieved
their American Dream by making tens of thousands of
alu tikkis and jalebis over the years. In the process
they acquired green cards and wives, and now one of
the brothers is even opening a restaurant. The two brothers
have been a lifeline for Indian families in the tri-state
area. They started out from a cramped kitchen in Queens,
but word of mouth about their delicious food spread
like wild fire amongst the desi social circles in Long
Island and Manhattan. Whether it was a party for 30
or 300, the brothers were the ones to call — and they
would turn up with their bounty wrapped in aluminum
foil, towing portable ovens. Or they would come and
whip up a magical meal ranging from kathi kebabs to
a main meal of meats and vegetables, right down to rasmalai
and rasgulla. They would even add in intricacies like
green dal ki pooris. They soon became quite indispensable
with the result that you could be invited to several
homes and know that you were going to be treated to
food cooked by the brothers.
The stories of Shankar and Mahadev are duplicated many
times over across America for many cooks have realized
that desis in this country, hard pressed for time, need
their services. While the majority cater to the Indian
community, there are others like Geetika Khanna who
provides interpretations of Indian cuisine for the mainstream.
A psychologist who decided to turn chef, she studied
at the Culinary Institute of America. Upon gradutaion,
she landed a job as the executive chef at Raga, a brand
new restaurant in the village. Her French/Indian fusion
cuisine won her many devotees and glowing reviews in
the American media.
After two years at Raga, Khanna left to pursue the dream
of opening her own place. Having segued from the fame
of the New York Times pages to a quieter existence,
she found that catering could be equally rewarding.
She started by working for catering companies and her
food was so popular that she decided to go into the
business herself. She works with private clients who
want anything from intimate dinners for two to cocktail
parties for 75.
While she had earlier concentrated on French cooking
with Indian overtones, she is now giving her clients
a mix of different cuisines, rather than fusion. She
has found that her clients often want her Indian dishes.
She says, “People who always eat in restaurants don’t
know how good it can be so a lot of dinner parties I’ve
done I’ve served traditional Indian home cooking. People
really seem to enjoy that.”
Her clients are mostly non-Indian, including Park Avenue
families who have their own home cooks, but still want
to try something different. She says, “I have no Indian
clients; they might like what I do, but the older set
don’t want to pay more than $10 a person. I’m comparable
to other New York caterers. I’m not very expensive.
They can call five other similar companies and they’ll
quote similar prices.” An average cocktail with 7 hors
d’oeuvres for two hours can run from $35 to $40 a person
and a sit-down dinner with 4-5 courses is $ 65-75 per
head.
She says, “A lot of Indians have tons of money, and
I think maybe they pay for non-Indian food but when
it comes to Indian food, they feel, ‘Oh, I can make
a samosa at home!’ But it’s not a samosa like any other
samosa.” Khanna who incorporates all the services of
a party planner, is currently involved with an upscale
wedding in Cape Cod and just did a wedding on a boat.
She says, “My goal is still to open a restaurant. But
it’s really tough to find investors. I guess I don’t
know how to speak the language of money!”
Yet she finds the catering business much more rewarding
than her career as a psychologist. She meets many people,
spends her mornings buying greens at the Union Square
Market and creating new dishes. She says, “This is fun
because every event is a new event. It’s not monotonous
and I don’t have to sit in an office and do the same
stuff everyday.”
One hears of other young Indian Americans joining culinary
schools and planning a career in the hospitality industry.
Khanna feels there is a change among the younger crowd
and it’s becoming a viable career. She recalls, “My
family is educated and pretty progressive. Yet when
I first changed my career, they couldn’t understand
it. It was like, ‘We all cook, so what’s the big deal?’
Then when I got all this press, they got excited. It’s
not really a stigma but they’ve not seen it so they
feel anyone can do it so it’s not that special.”
She agrees that chefs in India, except for some noted
ones, don’t get the respect accorded to the profession
here. She points out that many tandoor chefs in the
small restaurants are on their feet for 10-12 hours
and get paid poorly. “They work really hard, but don’t
get the respect. Using the tandoor is a skill and not
too many people can do it. If I knew the tandoor I would
sell it as a special skill. It’s a lot to do with education
and exposure.”
Knowing how to sell a skill can indeed be important
and many cooks and chefs from India don’t know how to
market themselves. While most dosa makers toil in anonymity,
the Soho Chutney Company has turned this skill into
theater where the dosas known as wraps, with innovative
fillings, are made behind a glass window. The company
does a rip-roaring trade and the owners learnt the art
of dosa making in India.
A whole generation of young Indians in the home country
are taking to the hospitality industry as a viable career
choice. Sachin Chopra is the face of this new chef,
a savvy, educated professional. Chopra, who is from
Delhi, was all set to become a physician but when admission
to medical school proved elusive, he applied instead
for hotel manage-ment. He recalls, “At that time, in
1993, a lot of young people were going in for it. Hotel
management was becoming hip and there was an interesting
buzz about it when I was in college. Even then, I wouldn’t
say it was a mainstream career to be chosen by most
people. I was the first one in my family to go for this
career while the rest were all doctors and engineers.”
Chopra studied at the Pusa Institute of Hotel Management
and also trained with the Taj group in Delhi. He later
worked with several hotels, including the Ashoka, the
Hilton and various Taj Hotels. Even though his family
accepted the idea of hotel management, they couldn’t
understand why he wanted to work in the kitchen: “At
the end of the day for my parents and people in their
generation this was the work of the ‘khansama’ or cook.
When people asked them what their son did and they said
‘chef,’ nobody really understood that. It was really
weird but now I believe things have changed.”
After coming to the United States, he studied at the
Culinary Institute of America in New York, focusing
on classical French and American techniques. He says
that in India secrets were often handed down from master
chefs to their own sons, but it was like they never
wanted to teach anyone else. He recalls, “We would face
much more opposition from the chefs who would think
we were college educated yuppies who were trying to
take over their positions. So you had to learn things
the hard way.” While studying in the Unitde States,
he particularly enjoyed the freedom to experiment, whereas
in India things were bureaucratic, always done in the
traditional way. Chopra worked for a year in the prestigious
Restaurant Daniel and was also sous chef at the Grand
Hyatt and then became the chef at Kumar Kalantry’s Tiffin,
which showcased regional cuisine. Chopra created his
own version of regional cuisine such as Mumbai dosas,
which are mini chickpea and corn crepes served with
cucumber yogurt sauce.
He left last year to open his own restaurant, Tapaserie,
but his timing — two months before Sept. 11 — proved
all wrong and he had to close the place. Chopra is back
at Tiffin, but the restaurant, which was close to Ground
Zero, is now called Spice Grill and has a new ambiance
and menu. The food is a mix of classical Indian as well
as fusion, and says Chopra, “It gives me a lot of opportunity
to experiment.”
He says, “Indian restaurants are really coming into
their own and Indian chefs are given a lot of respect,
and it’s thanks to Floyd Cardoz (executive chef of Tabla)
for putting us on the map. I’m also inspired by Rajji
Jallepalli who did amazing work. I would like to be
in her shoes one day.”
As Indian food continues to seduce the mainstream, an
innovative cook has taken his cuisine to the streets
— in a pushcart. Balwant Singh was once a chef on a
cargo ship feeding a hungry crew for two years and also
worked in a small restaurant in Iran. He came to the
United States in 1984 and worked in Indian restaurants
in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts for 25 years. Singh
recently moved to New York and decided to take his food
to the American masses, with his son and a helper, Kamal
Bihar. Their cart is parked at the exclusive Park Avenue
location offering the office crowd an attractive deal
— a full Indian meal from raita to naan for $3.99. The
line at lunchtime snakes long, and they have many regulars.
Next month they are opening a restaurant in Richmond
Hill in Queens and also acquiring another pushcart.
Indian immigrants are also bringing their peculiar tastes
to America. Chinese takeout may have been a staple of
every small town in America, but few have known about
the concoction known as Indian Chinese food. For those
who have lived in India this is a delicious taste unmatched
in the original Chinese food and enterprising chefs
are bringing this special cuisine to Indian immigrants.
Sidney Chang, who came to the Umited States about a
decade ago, has created Hot Wok, both in Chicago and
downtown Atlanta. The restaurant with is unusual blend
of flavors was voted Best of Atlanta 2000 in Atlanta
Magazine.
At Hot Wok one can find the dishes immigrants from India
love — the Bombay-style Manchurian soup, the chilli
chicken, vegetables in Manchurian sauce, the chilli
prawns. For vegetarians, there’s the added bonus of
paneer, which is never used in regular Chinese restaurants.
Chang’s grandfather migrated to India from Canton, China,
and he himself is a second generation India-born Chinese
who grew up in Calcutta and Bombay. He ran a small restaurant
in Andheri, Bombay, with his brother-in-law, but got
most of his experience from working in the very popular
China Gardens for eight years.
As he points out Indian-Chinese food is much more flavored
and pungent than that available in the Chinese restaurants.
When he moved to Atlanta with its large Indian population
he decided to open an Indian-Chinese restaurant, Bombay-style,
drawing desis in droves.
He says, “It attracts Americans too, but it’s usually
the younger, yuppie crowd which is more adventurous.
Since we have so many Indian customers, we don’t serve
pork and now I’m also taking beef out of the menu. A
lot of my Indian clients come from out of town, and
if they are there for three days, they want to eat Indian
Chinese all three days! I tell them not to overdo it
and give it a break.”
How does Chang see himself? Chinese, who was born and
grew up in India and now lives in America — so is India
also a part of his identity? “Yes, it is. Even when
my friends and I spoke Chinese, we’d add in words in
Indian languages. I saw myself as a Chinese, but I looked
upon myself as Indian.”
A U.S. citizen now, he says, “I still hold on to my
Indian passport. It kind of reminds me of who I am.”
He thinks that the spicy Indian-Chinese dishes will
catch on also with Americans: “People have to have an
open mind and not expect the standard dishes. When they
come in and ask for moo shoo chicken, I tell them to
try one of the other places. I’m one of the unique ones!”
As the Indian population gets more diverse, so the diversity
of its cuisine, which is increasingly penetrating the
mainstream. For Panditji Pannalal Sharma, this is almost
a sacred duty. Every year he organizes a big cookout
in New Jersey with several other chefs who either learnt
from him or worked under him and this is open to the
public, an invitation to come and taste the best of
Indian cuisine. He says, “Bharat ka naam barate hain
shaan se. We want to build our name, food and culture.”
And what of the future? Desi carts of bhel and chaat
in Manhattan perhaps. Indian fast food places on the
corner of Main Street as you now have pizza places and
Chinese takeout. And of course, as Indian food continues
to gain in cachet you will also see many chefs who have
graduated from American culinary institutes getting
the star power-mantle of a celebrity chef.
Food for thought. Chew on that!
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