JOIN USThe magic of local ingredients: Chef Verma
I can’t remember exactly when this happened but my mother was my inspiration to start cooking. I would often spend time with her in the kitchen and watch her create dishes with the ingredients available at home.
When I graduated college, my cousin brother, who was working in the hotel industry, asked me to join. He somehow saw that I had the potential to work in the kitchen and that’s how my culinary world started.
I slowly realised that my cooking interested leaned towards Pan Asian cuisine. I studied everything I could about it and that became my forte. There’s so much to explore — from Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian and so on. Each of these places has their own specialities too. I love that my experiments never end. But my personal favourite is ‘dal and chawal’ that my mother prepares.
Working in the kitchen for years now, I realised that I like cooking even on my day offs. Most of the chefs, after several years, end up managing the business and get buried with paperwork. While that’s a good thing, a restaurant works best when the work in the kitchen is done properly.
Most of the young chefs nowadays end up taking shortcuts to get things done. When I was starting off, in fact even now, I know that it’s important to work hard and give it my all when I do something. It’s important that the youngsters take more risks and get better at what they do.
The culinary work is growing so rapidly that most of us forget that we have local ingredients that we can use in our cooking.
I recommend that chefs go out and check what is available in the local markets and use them in their cooking. This will help our farmers as well.
The recipe for the week is Crème Brulee that you can make with three different flavours — classic vanilla, cinnamon and Baileys Liquor, coffee and kahlua liquor crème brulee. It’s quite simple to make and everyone can enjoy it too.
Ingredients
Rich cooking cream, 500 gm
Nestle milk, 100 gm
Sugar castor, 100 gm
Egg yolks, 12
Vanilla stick, 1
Coffee powder Nescafe, 20 gm
Kahlua, 120 ml
Cinnamon sticks, 5 gm
Baileys Irish Cream, 120 ml
Method
Take a saucepan and pour milk, sugar, cream and make it warm. Add egg yolk after removing from the flame. Divide the mixture into three equal portions. Add vanilla stick into the first mixture. Add Kahlua and coffee to the second mixture. Add roasted cinnamon powder and Baileys to the third mixture. Pour the mixture in ramekin (serving bowl). Take a baking tray and fill it with hot water. Arrange the ramekin (Serve bowl) in the tray, Bake it for 1hr at preheated 130°C. When it is baked take it out and make it cool. Keep it in the cooler for 30 minutes. Before serving, on top of the ramekin put some caster sugar. Burn with blue torch.
Rural Blues