An eight-year-old boy who went to one of Sydney?s best restaurants sent back his steak because it was not the perfect medium rare. Gary Mehigan, best known all over the world as MasterChef co-host and judge, clearly savours this tale when I meet him at the Australian High Commission. ?On one hand, restaurants have benefitted from the food culture spurred on by the show. On the other, they need to be very careful now,? he says.
The influence of MasterChef Australia, of course, goes far beyond that continent. In India, where the show has been a huge hit in the last three years, it has impacted not just restaurant-going behaviour of the aspiring middle class, equipping it with a knowledge and vocabulary of international cuisines. But more than that, it has also spawned an interest in cooking, in the most unlikely of segments of our urban, young population.
Cooking is the new cool amongst the fashionable and young in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai. And what these otherwise busy executives, trendy singles and even schoolchildren are cooking is not the traditional fare of most domestic kitchens in the country. India is, of course, one of the few countries where cooking at home has remained the norm than exception. In the first world and many developing countries, thanks to the ready and cheap availability of supermarket foods, cooking at home all but died down. It is just about making a reappearance now, in part due to the focus on healthier lifestyles, awareness about provenance of ingredients, concerns about carbon miles and the like, and aided by lifestyle shows such as MasterChef Australia that have an audience far beyond the conventional afternoon foodies/homemakers.
In India, the show has found an altogether new audience for itself?not really the conventional cookery show watchers of old. This is a more discerning audience with a penchant for anything ?gourmet??the result of growing prosperity levels, enhanced travel and exposure to a more global lifestyle.
At the Australian High Commission, scores of schoolchildren between 11 and 13 years of age, for instance, turned up to make their versions of smoothies. The winning team attempted some innovative fusion cooking with our own chef Ritu Dalmia. But it was interesting to talk to parents and schoolteachers who accompanied these children and shared insights into their behaviour. I spoke to a teacher from Sanskriti School and she confessed that not only were a huge number of middle-school boys keen on cooking (?pasta, bakes, cakes?) but that when the school chose the two students who could go to the MasterChef event, there was a great sense of competition and heartburn for those who were left out.
Children are not the only new segment either. A look at so many Facebook posts would tell you about the growing number of sophisticated young cooks (both men and women) in our midst, creating stunning cup cakes, inventive dips and snacks and Asian or Western street food or tratorria specials on weekends when they can dabble in their passions, away from work.
At the International Institute of Culinary Arts, the country?s only institute specialising in cuisine (rather than hospitality management), chairman Virender S Datta talks about how in the last two-three years, the profile of students coming to him has completely changed. ?We have trained engineers, management graduates, chartered accountants and so on coming up, wanting to take up professional cooking because they feel a passion for it,? he says. The institute also has been reporting a huge number of takers for its short-term courses for the amateurs.
The new cooks are different from the old timers who would have cooked for their families or thrived at the kitty party attention this brought them. The new cooks are not confined to domestic pursuits?though they equally seek the attention a well-made dish brings in its wake. Rather cooking is an expression of a larger ?international? lifestyle?just like a good-looking pair of sunglasses, an expensive bag or dress or ballet class, cruise or exotic vacation abroad becomes.
Which is why the new cooks?our weekend bakers, bread, desserts, tapas and sushi makers?are all armed with not just YouTube-enhanced sophisticated skills and techniques but the perfect vocabulary too. Whether it is coulis or creme anglaise, emulsion to aioli, wine sauce to port sauce, they know the difference and will nit-pick when they want to.
Sadly, since Indian cuisines do not come with a cool tag yet, the new cooks haven?t quite taken these up. But still, creating anything, food or experience, is an affirming exercise. And though in India we may not still have reached the crazy levels of ingredients being sold out in local markets because someone on MasterChef cooked with them, the fact that so many of the young are taking to the kitchen is definitely cause to cheer.
The writer is a food critic