Celebrity chefs to spin specialties in Agra

NEW YORK: New York master chef Vikas Khanna who has cooked in the same kitchen with US homemaking icon Martha Stewart does not believe that too many cooks spoil the broth. Khanna who has written several cookbooks including the bestselling The Spice Story of India is going to fly into the Taj Mahal town of Agra with a plane-load of celebrity chefs to create a feast fit for kings. 

Star chefs from the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia will prepare their trademark specialties at the two-day culinary arts festival in Agra in June next year. There will be 500 dishes for visitors to sample in booths set up at the food fair for tickets starting at Rs 500. The foreign chefs will shop for fresh ingredients, meat and fish at the bustling Agra bazaar.

“I am not telling any of the masters what to cook. The big challenge is that the international chefs will have to nose around the local market and find ingredients,” said 35-year-old Khanna. “I am confident they will manage — translators will of course go out with the chefs on their shopping spree.”

Legions of foreign diplomats, Bollywood stars and corporate donors are expected to book tables to a scrumptious feast cooked single-handedly by Khanna and his helpers on the first day of the culinary arts festival. 

“The feast that I prepare will be served in an ancient haveli which has the 17th century marble memorial built by emperor Shahjahan as a dramatic backdrop,” said Khanna.
“The other chefs will prepare dishes for the main food sampling the next day.”

“I am not Bono but I get very excited about putting together events like this. I haven’t visited India in five years but I am going to spend a whole month there planning the ‘Soul of Taj’ festival,” said Khanna, a founder of the “Cooking for Life” foundation.

He raised $500,000 through a tsunami fundraiser using the talents of 20 chefs at the Tribeca Rooftop restaurant in Manhattan.  Khanna has personal reasons for bringing the extravagant culinary arts festival to India which will raise funds for two NGOs — SATH and Amarjyoti.

“I want to raise half a million dollars through the Agra festival for people with disabilities. You see me standing on my feet today but as a kid I couldn’t walk. I was disabled and still have a clot in my left eye,” Khanna told DNA. 

“I was born at the height of the 1971 India-Pakistan War when all the hospitals were closed in Amritsar. My mother rushed me to Delhi when I was 10-days-old where I got my first leg alignment and feet correction operation,” recalls Khanna. 

He ran for the first time at age 13 when doctors removed his cumbersome leg braces; “I ran and ran when the braces came off. Now I want to do my bit — I come from a working class background. My parents really struggled to get me the treatment, leg braces and correction shoes to get better.” “I remember the correction shoes came from China and were always the wrong size. My feet got badly pinched but I just kept quiet because I knew the shoes cost the earth and I didn’t want my parents to spend more of their limited resources on me.”

Khanna got his first job in New York as a dish washer on the Upper West Side but later studied in the Culinary Institute of America, in Cornell University and New York University. Of late he has been invited to lecture at Harvard.

But he says it all started with helping his grandmother in the small kitchen in Amritsar.

“At the age of 14, I catered for a wedding for 1,000 people with two assistants to help me,” laughed Khanna.

“I come from a simple background so I like to keep it real. Hollywood stars like Natalie Portman and Richard Gere like my food but I am just as happy cooking for Mother Teresa’s soup kitchens.” Khanna is bringing his culinary arts festival “The Living Pyramids” to Egypt in July this year as a precursor to the big festival in India.