A Chef's Quest For The Perfect Recipe

From his grandmother's rustic chulha to the aromatic street food of Lucknow... Chef Ranveer Brar spoke to Brut on how he fell in love with food.

Transcript

00:30I think the inspiration for me deciding to be a chef, it will always be the city of Lucknow.

00:42My parents said, no, you know, you'll be our landlords and so on so forth and it was just

00:52and they said it's an infatuation.

00:54So this was more to convince them to say, hey, I'm very serious about it and I'll show

01:00you the next six, seven months, this is all I'm going to do, I'm going to just stay away

01:04from home and do this, that will probably make you believe that I'm serious about it.

01:24My grandmother used to make this for me when I was a kid, it's called churi, a very typical

01:42Punjabi concoction, quite similar to the churma laddu that we know.

01:48So and that's a very, very clear and vivid memory of my grandmother and I used to say,

01:55I'm hungry.

01:56She used to go into the kitchen, make some hot chapatis, put hot ghee on top, put shakkar,

02:02you know, the gur wali shakkar and then just mix the whole thing and I used to be amazed.

02:07Now when I look back, I take a lot from her.

02:18At one point in time, the person who used to cook, he said, today you have to cook meethe

02:28chawal banane, gur wali, because of the lady who used to do it, she had gone, apne maai

02:34ke gayi bhi thi hoon.

02:35So I had seen it till then, I had seen it every Sunday, you know, and so it was sort

02:42of in my memory.

02:43And I cooked that out of memory and it came out pretty well.

03:13Every time you cook, you're sharing a part of you, whether it's an emotion, a feeling,

03:17a memory, your happiness, you're sharing and it's selfish not to share.