Cooking with Kunal Kapur

Late last year, Patiala in Souk al Bahar received a very special delivery. Chef Kunal Kapur of Pickle Nation and NDTV's My Yellow Table was going to take over the Indian fine dining restaurant and inject some of his "Kunalish" magic to the food and vibe of the place.

I caught up with Kunal at Patiala last October for wknd. (Breaking the mould with Kunal, Nov 6) where the humble chef - he said he's just a simple Punjabi kid from a family of bankers, trying to shrug off his celebrity status - divulged a little about his efforts to get people to be inspired enough to cook at home and the importance of good farming and produce. In good faith, he said that we should cook together someday, which I gladly, reflexively, said yes to; when a chef asks you to cook with him, you just say yes. No questions asked. So I was more than a bit flustered to get a call from him last week to see if the offer still held. Of course, it did.

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We met at the Deira fish market during the Friday morning rush so we could pick up some ingredients and inspiration for lunch. A few feet into the market, a fan spotted Kunal and stopped us to shake his hand while I was trying to explain to him why his wheely laptop bag was not the most ideal thing to be dragging behind him in these parts. "But it's my whole life," he exclaims, "Besides, it has been through worse," he adds, trying to allay my offers of holding onto it instead.

We spot some ripe jackfruit and breadfruits - in season and absolutely perfect for everything from chips to curries. "Whatever looks good, we buy," he says, before starting to bargain with the vendors on the price of the jackfruit, which would end up going into a totally on-the-spur-of-the-moment salad later on, with some green papaya, nectarines and parsley. We also spotted some Australian cherries; "Let's turn this into a chutney," he says, to which I reply, "You're the chef. I'm just your sous chef for the day."       

At which point another fan, a lady who watches 'all his shows', insisted on taking a selfie with the chef. "It's not a big deal for me. I don't mind the celebrity status, but she said 'God bless you' after we took the picture, and that's more important to me. I like to be a positive person," he says. I'm not positive about a laptop bag in the fish section, but onwards we went, to pick out our protein for lunch. We would be cooking tiger prawns, fish (hammour/grouper) and even a lonely crab that made it into our bag - after a customary haggling, walking away and renegotiating routine, of course.

At Patiala, Kunal says he's reminded of his time in culinary school as we roll up our sleeves and start shelling and de-veining prawns. He has prep chefs doing this stuff now - the perks of climbing the ladder. I'm thinking, 'at least I can say I shelled prawns with Kunal Kapur'! When it came time to fillet the fish, Kunal lets me in on a bit of a secret. "The last time I did this was during my days at culinary school. I hope I can still do this," he confesses after which I let him know that I had his back as I did one just two weeks ago. Turns out he's still got it, and we were soon marinating it in all sorts of spices and contemplating coating it in semolina, which eventually led to talking about farming in Dubai and his latest work with Jamie Oliver and Jacqueline Fernandez for Food Revolution Day (May 20) in India. "We're losing a lot of our traditional farming in India, and it's really sad that by using so many pesticides and fertilizers, we are even damaging the soil." He adds that while he's not working on his shows or his YouTube channel, his time goes into working with communities and encouraging people to eat healthier.

"But I am quite amazed by how many things they have started growing here in the UAE. I hope the market we went to gets more variety, especially with specialty produce and local ingredients, so that more and more chefs in Dubai will be motivated to find their ingredients there," he says. "Right now it's more of a home-cooking market than a chef's market. Maybe that will be the next project," he says, laughing.

Next, we pit and halve the cherries and put them in a pan with sugar and balsamic. Kunal snaps a picture and tweets it out to his followers, who all send in suggestions of what spice to add. We picked our own (sorry, twitterati) of roasted cumin, which proved to be the best choice. And black salt. You can never go wrong with black salt. (Side note, try black salt with sweet lime juice or lemonade. It's very refreshing!) Next we chopped up our parsley and nectarines, got our papaya grated, sliced up our jackfruit, and made a sweet and sour dressing of lime and jaggery. The other chefs in the kitchen were invited to taste, and we got several thumbs ups. One of them even asked if I was a chef. Oh happy day.

Once we got going, we settled on a menu: a baked whole fish, a crab and raw mango curry, stir fried shrimps with kasundi (Bengali mustard sauce), our inspired jackfruit and nectarine salad, cherry chutney and some sauteed Chinese kale. It all looked pretty impressive on the table. "I envy families that get to do this every weekend," he says, when I explain that we often end up cooking and eating way too much on Friday afternoons. "That's the life, though! You eat a good meal, take a nap, wake up and have tea. That's the best thing."  Well, that, and getting to do all that with a celebrity chef!

rohit@khaleejtimes.com