She came to India from London because she loves history, architecture and food, and India�s got all! Her dream was to travel as a tourist; she has ended up working here.

MARIA Del Carmen Cero Free (�that�s all my name�) is Le Royal Meridien of Bombay�s new and exciting find. She�s cute and petite and a wizard in the bakery. Which makes her, her curriculum vitae says, an excellent and dynamic pastry chef. Well, she is. And if you could sample Maria�s Pavalovas, or her Lemon Tarts, you would swear by her too. �I call the Pavalovas my babies. They are very sensitive, beautiful, crunchy outside and soft as a meringue inside,� she says, rolling her words Latino style, because she is Latino, very South American and from Colombia.

She came to India from London last November because she loves history, architecture and food, and India�s got all! Her dream was to travel as a tourist; she has ended up working here. It�s a huge challenge in her career. Other expat chefs might complain about the traffic, poverty and pollution, Maria saw only beautiful and friendly people. �They made me feel at home, I got so busy immediately, I never missed London,� she says. Her team at Le Royal Meridien is all male. �But they are so nice and helpful, they all give me a hand. In London, it is different, there are individuals, nobody worries about anybody else.�

But the challenge was in her work because the Indian products she had to work with are complete different from what she has ever used before. �The flour, butter, sugar... I had to adjust my recipes to take in Indian ingredients!� She goes into the Bombay markets to see all the fruit. �The custard apples, the guavas are so wonderful, I�m trying to work with them in my first season. I don�t need to import fruit here. I will use the Indian seasonal fruit, their flavours are so fresh,� she gushes.

Maria, who studied fashion designing in Colombia and then went to London for further studies, was interested in cooking ever since she was a child. �I grew up in a family that was into food. We ate everything from turtle to rabbit and from carrot to custard apple. I�d see my father catching and feathering the chicken, cleaning the fish, and I learned and grew up. At 12, I asked my mother if I could cook. She said I was too little but could start with the basic stuff, like a soup. But I was reading magazines and recipes and was crazy to try and cook,� says Maria.

And so in London, Maria enrolled at the Westminster College�s Hotel & Catering Department and discovered that her hands were very good when it came to do anything with food. �I could not do what I had studied, which was fashion designing, because in London I needed the right contacts. So I chucked designing and took up food,� she says. Her first job was as a Commi Pastry Chef for the Mezzo complex which included a restaurant of 700 covers, a cafe, private dining rooms and outside catering. It is the biggest chain of its sort in Europe and employs 120 chefs. Maria got into the pastry department. She was baking bread at night and making fresh puff pastries, tarts, canapes, cakes and other savoury products during the day.

From 1996 to 2001, which is all the time she spent in London with Mezzo, because she was always hungry to learn, Maria rose to become the Senior Chef de Partie for Pastry with Mezzo. She looked after the Mezzonine restaurant and private dining rooms, planned menus, introduced new items, going as far as doing six plated desserts for 400 covers and 12 de jour desserts for the private dining rooms. �I started at the bottom and went up, up, up,� she says. �I learned to do everything but realised I was best at pastry. My hands are light. My desserts are not sweet-sweet, people are put off by that, so I make them balanced. I like using the natural flavours of fruit. Like lemon juice in the tarts, ooh la la, it is so crunch and tasty!�

Between 2001 and 2002, Maria worked at the Almeida Restaurant in Islington, London, as its Pastry Chef. It was a new and upcoming French restaurant and she faced the challenge of dealing with 140 covers every night. �It gave me the opportunity to try my hand at provincial French pastries. I made gateaus with lemon, apricot, all the fruits in season, and creme brulee, mousses, what a great experience. I could mould the place. People saw what I could do. I got good reviews from the press, from the London Observer and The Times, their food critics were pleased with my work. That made me happy and gave me more confidence,� she says. And from there, she went to the Lindsay House restaurant run by a Michelin chef that specialised in Irish cuisine and did 100 covers a night. It was difficult but she learned to keep on top of the situation. �I learned when you do something from the heart, and you do it for the money, it�s not the same,� she says.