For Chef Ajay Chopra, food is as much about flavour and tradition as it is about technique. From his first memorable creation, murgh ki potli, to his love for dim sums and Indian regional cuisine, his food journey has been diverse. In an exclusive interview with HT Lifestyle, he opens up about his inspirations, comfort food, umami and the Indian dishes he believes deserve more attention. (Also read: Chef Kunal Kapur shares simple rice trick that can take your homemade fried rice from sticky to ‘wok-worthy’ )
For Chef Ajay , cooking is a journey shaped by curiosity, mentorship and a deep appreciation for flavour. His passion began in college, when he participated in a chef’s competition and created one of his first modern dishes, murgh ki potli, chicken cooked in a potli and finished in the tandoor. His culinary journey was shaped by mentors including Inder Balani and Paresh, followed by chefs such as Vinay Jairaj, Elton Hurtis and Prashant Kulkarni at The Oberoi. He also counts Atul Kochhar, Vineet Bhatia and Sanjeev Kapoor among his influences. “When it comes to my biggest inspiration for cooking, I think it is all of these chefs who continue to cook day in and day out. Despite his years in professional kitchens, chef Ajay’s comfort food remains simple: instant noodles. He also loves rajma chawal, although he jokes that making it himself would hardly qualify as comfort food. The seven-layered saat parat ki biryani is among the most complicated dishes he has made, with the challenge lying in getting every layer perfectly cooked. His favourite dish, however, is prawn har gow at Yauatcha. A fan of dim sums, he loves the delicate wrapper and flavourful prawn filling.
“It was quite a creative dish for a college boy, but it is still one of the dishes I remember fondly,” he recalls. Their dedication to the craft is what inspires me the most,” he says. “If somebody could make it and give it to me, I would happily eat it,” he says.
Chef Ajay has explored umami in his book Discovering Umami in Indian Cuisine. He believes the savoury flavour has long been part of Indian cooking , even before it had a name. He points to tomatoes, onions, mushrooms and fermented foods as sources of glutamate, while meat and certain other ingredients contain inosinate. “It is just that we never really called it ‘umami’. We understood it as ‘labab’ or simply as something delicious and full of flavour.”
“Umami has actually been a part of Indian food for a very long time and is naturally present in many of the ingredients that we have been using in our kitchens for generations,” he says. “You see this in so many Indian dishes, whether it is butter chicken, our fermented batters, or simply the way we cook with onions and tomatoes,” he says.
