The Kamasutra Chef

He’s known for going back to his roots, back to Mother Nature for ingredients to use in his food. Chef Bhairav Singh works hard at what he does and travels the country to source the freshest offbeat ingredients for you.

Chef Bhairav Singh Rajput
Head Chef, Native Bombay

Interviewed & Photographed by Farzana Contractor

The climb up the success ladder for Bhairav has been neither short nor easy. But der aya par durust aaye certainly applies to this chef who has been in the making for 20 years. It’s been a tough toil. It’s his sincerity, grit and passion, which has got him thus far and if you believe us, his best is yet to come. He has the zeal, the commitment and a wife, Vaishali, who supports him enormously. To the extent that she learnt photography, bought herself a good camera and has become his personal photographer. He cooks, she shoots! You have heard of the adage, ‘Behind every successful man…’

When you study Bhairav’s CV, you will be amazed to see the diversity of this chef. Not just as a chef but in areas linked. A cross range of culinary activities has really maketh the man. He started off in Nagpur in 1993 in the ‘utility department’, which he smiles and says is a dignified term for what his job was – that of a potwash. But then look where he took himself; worked up the ranks to emerge as a Master Chef for Indian Cuisine, heading many Indian restaurants in several hotels, 5-star category, included. Currently he is at Native Bombay at Ballard Estate, drawing rave reviews for his skills in the kitchen.

There isn’t anything he hasn’t done. That is apart from being the hands-on chef he is. He has been on a host of TV culinary shows on leading channels, a few which include The Great Indian Global Kitchen, Gaon Raan, Vedic Food, Zaika Express, Swasth Rahein, Mast Rahein. He has given several demos at culinary conventions, in India and abroad, as well as helped set up kitchens and menus, designed recipes, developed concepts for restaurants, and guided pre-openings in countries including Greece, Vietnam, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Taipei and of course India.

But by far, his deep and abiding passion has been Ayurveda. Chef Bhairav pursues this knowledge unrelentingly. He loves to combine ancient recipes from the Vedic times incorporating them to adjust to the modern mould. Not an easy task. Just in this section alone he has held over 40 similar concept-based food festivals across hotels and hospitality companies, under intriguing names such as Rajputana, Lost Recipes, Sand Cooking, Maulviganj and Kamasutra.

The last mentioned has been Chef Bhairav’s forte. Readers of this magazine will recall his numerous articles we published; recipes incorporating established and not- so established aphrodisiacal ingredients. He has studied this subject pretty minutely and has an enviable list of clients, which he is naturally very private about. These concoctions have worked for them and they are happy Chef Bhairav helps them push their libidos along, favourably. In what form is this aphrodisiacal food, we enquire of Bhairav. “It’s a pasty concoction, like a spread that you just lick off. One tsp at bedtime for 21 days and have a cup of warm milk after,” he enlightens. Made from leaves, roots, berries and fruits, that he scours from his sourjons into forests and hills of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Sawai Madhopur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh among others. His interest in this subject started when he was but a young lad doing the dishes at Zero Mile restaurant in Nagpur, when he met and tutored under a local vaid.

His pet project though has always been to create recipes not just using healthy ingredients but also unknown ones. He seems to dig these out from the places we mentioned above or somewhere or the other. ‘Dig out’ would also probably apply literally, for Bhairav is always on these expeditions to remote and unheard of areas searching for jadibutis. He must be among the very few who has the knowledge he does. Once he made jam from mahua flowers for UpperCrust in Patalkot, where we had accompanied him. This was deep down in a canyon in Madhya Pradesh, an adventure in itself.

Chef Bhairav has well-honed taste buds. He makes sure his focus is on the core ingredient, that’s the taste that should stand out, he says. “If not, it’s one big ‘khichdi!” If there is what is known as ‘mindful’ eating, there is also ‘mindful’ cooking, for Bhairav. Treasuring the sanctity of a recipe, preserving the health aspects of nature while preparing the food. Says the chef, “It’s we who make Indian food unhealthy. We do not have to use the amount of oil that we do. Or masalas. In fact, in many recipes we can completely do without ghee or butter. Plus, there are so many techniques available to us; steaming, sand-roasting, stone cooking, leaf-wrapped cooking…”

He is full of food stories... Of bees the size of microscopic fruit flies, who make angura honey in stone crevices in tribal areas, where the size of the beehive is that of a grape! Takes eight to 10 years to make just one tbsp of honey, which tastes like nothing you would ever have. He talks of the best lychees which come from Muzzafarpur and apricots from Kargil. He tells us how a drink called peja builds immunity like no other. It’s crushed Indian corn soaked overnight in water, boiled and then drunk at breakfast time. How in Guwahati they use very fine khoriga bamboo sticks as skewers to roast all kinds of meats on wood fires, which, due to this particular bamboo, give an astounding flavour to the food.

So what’s his dream project now? Pat comes the answer: to find some good investors who are good human beings, interested enough to work with him to start Ayurveda restaurants. And is he generally content with life as of now? “Of course, Ma’am, is se badi baat aur kya ho sakti hai ke ek kisan ka beta, jisko army join karna tha, nahi kar paya, kyoonke education nahi tha, lekin wo bartan dhote, dhote, yaha tak pahuch gaya hai!”

Kudos, Chef Bhairav, it’s because you are a farmer’s son that your value system is so strong, that you are as respectful of food and people.

Way to go, Bhairav!