...While they cook to make a living

New Delhi: Perhaps antakshari comes first to mind when you have to while away the hours with your family in these days of the anti-coronavirus lockdown. But there’s something more interesting cooking. Chefs, barred from their hotel kitchens, are using the break to stream cookery sessions. These are helping people not only to bring out their inner cooks, but also proving it is more stimulating to wield a ladle than sing about one.

Home cooking and home workout are the only two online trends beating the news about the novel coronavirus. The drudgery of being imprisoned at home appears suddenly to be lightened by the cardamom and almond phirni of chef Abhishek Gupta, the carrot coconut and turmeric soup and tomato rice of chef Megha Kohli, the pancake recipe of The Grammar Room and the corn khichdi and green chilli prawns of Comorin restaurant. And for those inclined more to liquid sustenance, no antakshari success could outdo the sessions on how to make heady Quarantini and other cocktails by mixologists Nitin Tewari and Yangdup Lama.

These chefs are enabling people to prepare dishes with minimal, available ingredients. Chef Vanshika Bhatia related how her friends started messaging her for recipes of basics like roti and parantha. “Many singles in the city rely on ordering in or domestic maids for their meals. I realised many of them hadn’t cooked in their lives and were facing a genuine problem,” said Bhatia. “That is the reason I decided to keep my recipes simple and use readily available ingredients.”

Bhatia has posted videos on making pizza and bread as well as preserving and pickling. She taught how bread can be made without yeast and crepes with kuttu atta for Navratri, suggested ways to make pizza toppings and sauces and even showed how easy it was to make cough remedies. Most usefully, she suggested alternatives to fancy ingredients.

In one session, chefs Anchal Bhalla and Suchana Bera discussed how to enjoy the simple but popular Bengali staple, aloo makha (mashed potatoes), with flaxseed chutney. Both Bhalla and Bera concurred on the need to stop binging on unhealthy snacks at home, with still quite a few days of indolence left. Bhalla has posted videos, for instance, on healthy home-made crackers. “I am trying to post videos of essential dishes for single professionals and dishes that a mother can cook with a rkid, such as a cake, with the ingredients normally found in homes,” explained Bhalla.

From his home in Uttarakhand, chef Pawan Bisht has been countering the overall despair and panic through his videos. “There was so much negativity online that I thought rather than be an expert on the coronavirus, I would share what I know,” Bisht said. “When I started posting the cookery videos, the response showed that people needed a break from the information deluge on Covid-19.”

Bisht is also acquainting Indians with his native cuisine, cooking with ingredients from his home state. His videos teach people how to use alternative ways of cooking. Bisht laughed and said he never imagined that people would be able to destress themselves by looking at him making bhang ki chutney, aloo ke gutke, sarson ka saag and urad dal ke vade. He certainly helped the citizens go one up on the national isolation.