Slow-cooked in a hurry

Last week, at the South East Asia challenge of the S. Pellegrino Young Chef 2016 awards, at the Durset School in Bangkok, Tarun Bhatia was one of the 10 contestants. Bhatia (29), chef at the Olive Group’s Ek Bar in New Delhi, didn’t expect to win, so he “didn’t bother to put on a suit.”

But the judging panel of six professional chefs — Alvin Leung, Umberto Bombana, Ian Kittichai, Bo Songvisava, Will Meyrick and Emmanuel Stroobant — were unanimous in their decision: Bhatia’s ‘Inspirational Daab Chingri’, made with fresh prawns marinated in a malai curry puree, was declared the winner.

In the traditional Bengali dish, the prawns are steamed inside a tender coconut. But Bhatia removed the soft coconut flesh and replaced it with prawn mousse, then cooked the prawns in the sous vide method. The malai curry was prepared with smatterings of yellow and black mustard. To add a crunchy texture, he created edible ‘sand’ using sea bass fish bones. He then added Gondhuraj gel, foam, and lemon aroma made using dry ice to complete the dish.

A Dehradun boy, Bhatia grew up devouring his grandmother’s halwa.

He began his culinary career at the Goa Marriott. After a brief stint at Hilton in Australia, he moved to Singapore. But in 2013, he decided to return to India to give his homeland a taste of modern Indian cooking.

In a telephone interview from Delhi, Bhatia says the road to victory wasn’t easy as many of his key ingredients were missing before the competition.

“I had been asked to carry a list of ingredients, which were unavailable in Bangkok. But instead of providing me with a whole coconut for cooking my prawns in sous vide , they gave me a shaved coconut, which wouldn’t work. And, I got frozen, small prawns instead of large and fresh ones.”

As a result, not much was achieved on the first day allotted for prepping. That night, Bhatia stayed up calling local suppliers.

“One of them barked at me for calling him at 5 a.m. But I was not going to give up. A butler explained my situation to the taxi driver, who told me that there was one shop in all of Bangkok that might have what I needed.” The shop had a stock of 200 whole coconuts. “When I saw them, I thought I had already won the competition,” he laughs.

He rushed to the Durset School, getting there just before noon for the second day of prep. He then had to spend more than half the time he had available cutting through the coconut — “They didn’t have a cleaver or a saw” — and wound up with just 45 minutes to cook the sand, foam and gel elements that formed his dish.

Bhatia pushed on as “giving up without putting up a dish was out of question.” Even judge Leung’s advice to change the approach of his dish didn’t deter him from sticking to the recipe.

All thanks to the encouragement from his executive chef Sujan Sarkar back home. “He stood by me when I decided to send the entry and encouraged me to master each element. I served it to him around 10 times as practice before the competition.”

Mumbai restaurateur A.D. Singh, managing director of Olive Bar & Kitchen, is stoked at Bhatia’s win. “With the company’s support, formerly chef Saby, and now Sujan Sarkar spend a lot of time mentoring our young chefs and helping them participate and prepare for culinary competitions. For the company it is important, as such success helps encourage them and their peers to grow. Their growth only helps us. With the world’s increasing obsession with food, there is amazing talent springing up everywhere and winning a competition is a great honour.” Interestingly, this is the second year that a chef from Sarkar’s team participated in the talent search.

Sarkar says, “Tarun [Bhatia] sent his entry four months ago to Italy and two months ago he learned that he was a semifinalist. Tarun had the right attitude to nail this one.”

For Bhatia, the next stop is Milan, where he will represent South-East Asia at the world final. He will be up against 19 other young chefs and will be put to the test by seven top-notch judges, better known as the Seven Sages: Gaggan Anand, Elena Arzak, Mauro Colagreco, Carlo Cracco, Wylie Dufresne, David Higgs and Roberta Sudbrack.

Out of the frying pan and into the sous vide machine, you might say.

The author is a freelance writer