Day In The Life Of An Indian Master Chef

hi i'm alvin and i like making videos about the people who make the food we love to eat one cuisine i've always wanted to learn more about was indian food i actually grew up eating quite a lot of it but never fully understood the stories and the context behind why it was so good meet chintan pandya he's the chef and partner at tamaka an indian restaurant that's been getting a lot of attention for its unapologetic regional cuisine they serve incredible vibrant dishes from all across india which i really wanted to learn more about and possibly eat lucky for me chintan was kind enough to let me spend the day with him and the team at tamaka for a real behind the scenes look this is a day in the life of a master chef [Music] so i normally walk in by around 11 or something and the first thing that i'll do is i'll go through the reservation list we have a number that we stop at reservation and if we are hitting that number i call up the manager to stop the reservation so we have 100 covers tonight that we start off with it looks like there are few vips we have because it's a regular day and then i start working so this rabbit dish actually is like more of a hunting dish and we actually only do one a night we don't have capability to cook more than one so you need to pre-order at least 48 hours in advance here goes the rabbit inside this i think there are humongous amount of misconceptions about indian food there are these six seven dishes which people compartmentalize indian food in chicken tikka masala butter chicken sak paneer naan samosa these are the common things that people have seen across all the indian restaurants what we are trying to do is break that mold of indian food and that's why we are doing regional dishes which you might not have even heard of yeah it's a 7 45 pickup so yeah it will be in from right now till like 7 30. [Music] so i'm just putting on the stock that we use these are the lamb produce lamb chard very phenomenal in the taste and everything so even for the other mutton dish we use this as a stock so it's very flavorful so i'm putting a blend of spices over here and this is now going to get boiled and reduced cardamom cumin cinnamon cloves bay leaf red chili it's going to be there till the time you want to start for the service you want to have a cup of coffee yeah yeah sure what happens with indian food a lot of time is that we are not focused on the ingredients what we do is we actually invest a humanless amount of effort and money into ingredients that's a fried onion we only use red onions in our indian food we don't use white onions i didn't even knew what was the white onion till the time i came to america what happened when you saw it for the first time i thought it was expensive and a better quality one so i tried to cook with it and i just couldn't achieve what i wanted to achieve so then i realized this is a fake product is that milk yeah thank you thanks man cheers cheers why is there so much milk that's to make the paneer that's a very secret recipe it took us months so we actually don't share it with anyone we inform a customer that if they can get a better quality paneer than ours get your receipt of what you're dying today we'll give you cash has anybody found anything here no no i'm making the property now for the property shop normally we have a recipe for it and people measure it like i make sure everybody measures it when i do it i i just papi is this crisp that i'm making chaat is a generic word for a street food the concept was that you eat with your hands and you lick your fingers but there are multiple stories to it so the pulao is this rice preparation that you might have eaten we actually make it as you order it so we make it with raw rice it's not cooked rice i've been cooking for 21 years so 21 yeah i'm 41 years old so i started cooking when i was around 20. oh we are frying the properly now apparently chef ginseng is going to make me a special snack wow it's beautiful so just mix it up mix it up wow that's for the mutton so it's marinated overnight that's with the uh you know yogurt red chilli powder garam masala everything the one whole thing choices yeah so this is one of our signature dish the champagne mutton a sheep less than one year is lamb a sheep more than three years is mutton biggest misconception about indian food is that it is a buffet food it is not indian food is not stagnant indian food is dynamic there's humongous amount of depth and layer in the food so one of the concept of slow cooking was very prevalent in india long time back so what happens is once you see the pot the heat will never escape it's just going inside so it will come out at like 5 45 or something goat neck when you're looking at different versions of making a biryani with something very specific and unique things and surprisingly we realized that the goat neck was actually giving a humongous flavor and also has a lot of good fat in there that's what prompted us to do the goat make biryani try something oh wait me too we travel across the country to do our india i think there's such unique perspectives out there so the fact that this is not your conventional southern fried chicken is really unique it's not a taste you gotta understand so i'm cutting the chicken for the stock meal i'm gonna do like a chicken and a rice powder rice and spices and everything these ginger garlic paste chili powder you know basically they're gonna have one meal a day so we want it to be more nourishing and something that makes them fuller they shouldn't feel hungry during the middle of the service and everything what happens is the morning team came in they did their chopping of onions they did the all the paste they did everything over there now our taste starts where we start actually cooking that make foreign biryani so we put the meat inside and the bread to make your cobble you're the bread master oh yeah wait so if i make bread am i going to look like that what's that eric what are you working on the cheesecake little servant oh we called it uh chenna butter it's like a burnt chicken they call this ammo cheese it's like a indian cheddar thing oh wow thank you and you have eggs you have vanilla sugar a little bit of salt a little bit of uh if you flour you're gonna stay back right yeah i'll make you thank so those are onions which we've browned it's been nearly an hour we have been doing it and add some red chili powder a little bit of turmeric powder so this is like a base we call it onion tomato masala it's just be using multiple things over there so i think the key to indian cooking is the slower you cook it the better your product will come up or just a few shelves one two three four and the wines can just stay there all right this is the fairway middle field thanks chef all right who knows you guys better know this person so guys he's a very regular guest he has been here at least six seven times i think last to last present he was the guy who ordered rabbit he works with this company called as does everybody know what it is so that's seven top uh it's vanilla it's in your section okay so right now we have 150 for the counts we do have one rabbit uh biryani we have 19. okay we have 28. oh so we have 150 now it's gonna be a crazy night just be careful with that okay thank you guys have a phenomenal search this is literally the countdown before the shuttle takes off there's a saying the more you sweat in peace the less you bleed in war the entire energy of your dre is those hours where you are performing that is the time where everything that you have done over the last few hours comes into play that is the time people will question you that is the time you will be judged so we are like 10 minutes away from opening up the restaurant now we are just lining up the biryani this is what we sell in first few at least an hour and a half this is the boat we made today and we are just now lining up over here it's like saying that you watch a 90-minute movie the 90-minute we might take a year to make or two years to make the dinner time is the final show but the entire show to succeed is when we do the other things if we don't do the other things the show will fail so it's like an orchestra now indian food is as colorful as the people of india and something that we do is we are unapologetic about our food so if it is spicy it is spicy it's supposed to be they would order a stuffed pepper and then say it's spicy but it stays stuffed pepper it doesn't say a stuffed strawberry and we are not apologetic about it indian food is vibrant the literal meaning of the word tamaka means a blast this is a burst of flavors burst of emotions that we want to give to people on the plate on the table in the food in every form possible to you know get them excited about indian food so yeah the paneer tikka is one of the highest selling dishes that we have and we grill it and we serve it with the chutney and the pickled onion it's like a soft cheese it just needs to melt in your mouth [Music] so i think what happens is people order the appetizers in the main course so that's when the appetizers will move first and then the main coat will start on guys one yeah because uh naan is like something that we eat when we go out to restaurants paratha is something that we use on day-to-day basis so he says why not challenge ourselves and say that no none because that's the common thing that everybody will ask in an indian restaurant but it's not a bread that we eat regularly at home what is pressing it with the towel dude so what it does is it makes this fresh and you get this texture indian food is as fun and adventurous to eat as it is to cook in fact we also ask people that if they want to eat with their hands they should eat with their hands that's what we encourage there would be spoons and everything but you'll end up eating with your hands that is a feeling that you actually cannot put in words you need to experience it [Music] how are you feeling good good it's a busy night man it's going to be fun so eric basically handles the past property chart and pullover he does it entirely uh the dessert comes from there we bake it over here for him so we're making a chicken pulao a mixture of green chili ginger cilantro yeah they're soaked rice this is the rice that chicken soaked for like the whole day yeah no the marinated chicken like all the juices of the chicken goes inside the rice so it tastes better for sure like we usually sell like 30 30 of these at night so every main course is actually served in the same dish that it's cooked in so if you are looking for a sexy kind of a looking food then maybe we are the wrong place the entire concept of the restaurant came through ida when i ate something at home which my wife cooked she cooked a gourd and a potato sabji we call it tindora as soon as i had the first bite in my mind i'm like i would never find this taste of freshness in indian restaurants why you know at home we don't we don't eat plated food we just my wife will cook in those pots we keep the pots on the table and you just scoop it out of the pot and eat it but that experience that taste that feeling of eating it that's what i craved so that's why we what we cook and we serve it and that [Applause] thank you that's what you want oh my little more is getting quite cold something that we do is try to cook everything fresh over here the menu is very small it's very tight menu we focus like instead of doing 100 things at 10 percent we do ten things at hundred percent that's our philosophy we layer up the entire rice and the biryani around 16 to 17 layers then we cover it with a dough and then it's baked in oven for like 20-25 minutes and we call that process as dumb cooking which means cooking in its own steam so we have been using it for a long time like hundreds hundreds of years back but it became a very common culinary term like cooking under pressure like two three decades bake in the western culture [Music] so basically all the accompaniments of the table will go then the rabbit will go they will open up the rabbit on the table and portion it out for everyone [Music] all our food is designed to be shared we culturally always had the concept of communal table in our houses so we never have the concept of plated food individual noon there's no concept like that our food is all communal i just want them to enjoy i just want them to feel that what they've come here for what they're paying for they're getting a value for it [Music] how are you feeling good good so we have now the last rush going in so that should start in next 15 minutes or so are you tired no what happens is when you plant so much it looks like a clockwork nobody feels that pressure whoa that's for you oh this for me yeah wow thank you guys holy moly so we actually only have one dessert in our restaurant but we love the simplicity of it and it is actually baked fresh as you order from the hot temperature as it on the table it's going down in the timber the taste keeps on changing i feel this is when we get the final rush the final round of guests and everything this is the final storm no i'm just looking at the orders what i need to do what i need to do hey m1 is on top [Music] it's 10 40. we're sending out the last ticket [Music] [Applause] how was today's service it's a little bit busy but you know you don't have no choice between me eric ronnie and tina if we have something to discuss we'll discuss that a lot of people say oh it's a very difficult job but there are thousands of jobs in this world it is what you chose to i chose to become a chef and i want to give 100 to it i don't see any hardship [Music] spending the entire day with chintan was astounding to say the least hearing the stories behind each dish learning the deep and rich history of all these incredible cooking techniques and tasting the delicious end results were something else i realized that indian food isn't a short list of six or seven dishes that i had grown up eating it's a vast beautiful library earlier chef chintan said indian food is as vibrant and as colorful as the people of india and i couldn't agree more i'll see you guys in the next adventure you

Channel: About To Eat

Views: 5,802,824

Keywords: K_fe, Tasty, Zuh7, baking, breakfast, breakfast recipes, buzzfeed, buzzfeed tasty, cooking, dessert, dhamaka, dhamaka chef, dinner, dinner recipes, easy breakfast recipes, easy cooking, easy recipes, eating, food, food porn, fun recipes, healthy breakfast recipes, how to, how to bake, how to cook, how to make indian food, indian chef, indian food, kid-friendly, kid-friendly recipes, lunch, lunch recipes, quarantine, quarantine recipes, social distancing, tasty recipes

Id: 29ZP8ADQJ1Y

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 26 2021