CHEF SPEAKS

CHEF MANJIT

SINGH WHEN YOU COOK FROM YOUR HEART, IT NEVER GOES WRONG

Chef Manjit Singh is a Senior Executive Chef at Holiday in, Goa Mobor Beach.

By Rajesh Ghadge Cover Pic by: Aakash Ghadge

A senior executive chef of Holiday Inn and someone who also handles the Fisherman ’ s Wharf, Chef Manjit Singh comes from a place of passion for food and drink. He graduated from the Hotel Management Institute and post-graduated with a Master of Business Administration.

Manjit Singh has been a part of Holiday Inn for more than a decade. Being a Punjabi, he had an innate passion for food, and right from a young age, he had seen his mother, who, according to him, was the best cook in the world! He learned a lot from his mom about culinary art before he grew up and decided to join a culinary school to enable him to enter the food industry. According to Chef Manjit, he did not realise when his love for the food turned into his passion. “My father was working for Coal India and it was a transferrable job, so I was sent to boarding school and there, I really missed my mother ’ s food, ” he said, adding that it was during the vacations when he used to visit his mother and he would learn culinary techniques from her. “When my mom used to cook, I kept a close watch on each process without being aware that this habit will turn into my passion one day. ” Chef Manjit belongs to a family background of service (army, doctors, engineers). “I am the only one that entered into food & hospitality, and I give the entire credit to my mom who was my culinary queen, ” said Manjit. Chef Manjit firmly believes that you need to be an artist to enter into the culinary industry, “Art is a most essential ingredient to be in this industry and I always had it in me, ” he said. He tells us that his mom would always say that it is not important what you make. What you have to ensure is that whatever you make should have the flavours in it. “She always said that ‘the magic (taste) is not in the ingredients, it’ s in your fingers ’ and till today when I have to cook for someone special, I don ’t use a spoon and I let my fingers make that magic. ” After finishing his 12th, Chef Manjit joined the Hotel Management at NSHM Durgapur, “It was a 3-year diploma course and after that, I started my career at Club Mahindra in Goa. ” He had done his industrial training at Oberoi Hotels in Delhi, “While I was in college doing my hotel management, I was sent to Oberoi Flight Services for industrial training in the first year. There I learned the highest level of hygiene and sanitation and since I had done my entire training over 6 months in a kitchen, I made up my mind that this is what I’ m here to

do. ” Chef Manjit tells us that he was posted to various departments while undergoing industrial training but he did not last in any of those departments for more than a couple of days, “I knew that I can only survive in the kitchen and nowhere else. After doing a short stint at Club Mahindra in Varca, I moved back to Delhi to the Hyatt Regency, and then my journey into the food & hospitality industry began. I moved to many properties before moving back in Goa in Club Mahindra where I worked for almost a year. ” In the year 2005 Chef Manjit met Chef Ranjeet Pandey who made an offer to join the Holiday Inn, Goa. “Chef Ranjeet Pandey asked me to give it a try and I appeared for the interview. I I was selected instantly to take the position of Sous-Chef and from 2005 till date, I have been with the Holiday Inn, ” said Chef Manjit. Today, he ’ s a Senior Executive Chef at Holiday Inn Goa. “It’ s been a long journey but I am very content in this place and this journey will continue for a long time. ” Chef Manjit specialised in Continental cuisine such as Italian, Mexican, Lebanese and Mediterranean food, “These are my specialties, and if you ask me what else I am good at, I will say that I have expertise in barbeques, ” he said stating that there is a very interesting story as to how he got into barbeques. “I started working at junior level and I was

placed at the live counters at most of the places I worked, considering that I am tall and that will be an added advantage. Here, I remembered the words my dad once said ‘ you cannot hide your talent: if you do a good job, you will get appreciation ’ and I always kept that in mind while working at any level and never said no to anything, which helped me to learn a lot of new things. I believe that food has only two mantras: Food has to be fresh and food needs to be juicy-and while barbequing, I always keep this in mind. ” There ’ s a cliché that Punjabis would be good at making butter chicken, tandoori, and dal makhani. However, Chef Manjit developed his interest in Continental food, so when I asked him about the same he gave me a very witty reply saying, “there are two sides to this. Customers say, ‘ oh so is that you who made the dal makhani’ which is a positive response. However, I also had to face the negative responses also – some people would ask me ‘ are you the chef?’ and I reply in the affirmative. Then they would say, ‘the dal makhani and butter chicken does not have that taste ’ but the fact is, I was not the one who cooked it. So there are pros and cons to being known as the Punjabi Chef in the hotel. ” According to Chef Manjit, India is a country of diverse cultures and that also goes for the food, “In India, every 100 km the language, culture, and food changes. “When I was in Delhi Oberoi, my Guru, the Chef, told me that if I go for the Indian cuisine, I will have to struggle for 10 to 12 years, but if I go for Continental cuisine, I can achieve the similar position in 6 to 8 years. Indian cuisine is very vast and you cannot gain expertise in everything, and hence, to master Indian cuisine, two to three decades are also not enough. I have been in this industry for more

Vegetable Jubilee - Mesclun mix with asparagus, grapefruit jelly and curried sesame seed emulsion

Roasted pumpkin and ricotta tortellini served with pumpkin tartare and beurre noisette

than 20 years now and I still feel that there is so much more to learn. ” Chef Manjit has also specialized in all types of steaks. “The whole game of preparing the steaks is dependent on the marination and temperature and one has to know two things while dealing with Continental food, ” he said. He tells us that earlier it was only foreigners who used to request and order Continental cuisine but now it is very much in demand from Indians as well. “Let me tell you the situation 10- 15 years back- people would come and place an order for dal makhani, butter chicken, and tandoori roti. The orders were fixed because people were reluctant to experiment but now things have completely changed and the new generation is more exposed to international cuisine and they don ’t mind experimenting. ” Although the demand for Continental food keeps growing because people travel more, that hasn ’t meant that we ’ ve given up on traditional food. Chef Manjit maintains that staple food is always going to be in demand regardless of what trend comes in. “Take an example of a Goan. Wherever he goes and whatever he eats, at the end of the day he will need his fish curry and rice. Similarly, dal makhani, naan, and butter chicken are stapled foods of Punjab and it won ’t change. Trends will come and go but tradition will always be there forever. ” Talking about his achievements in the culinary domain and the milestones that he has achieved, Chef Manjit Singh tells us that he is even in the Guinness Book of World Records. “I am a part of the Culinary Forum of Goa and I am the General Secretary for the Forum. We have made the largest fish patty in the world that weighed a whopping 396KGS, then we made a chocolate mud pudding and the third one is the largest bread & butter pudding in the world weighing approximately 1.5 Ton!!. ” When I asked Chef Manjit what other interests he has in life that he wanted to pursue, he said that he also had a passion for sports and if he was not a chef, he would have been an athletic champion but he could not pursue this passion due to the responsibilities and commitment towards his duties. “I was a school champion in athletics and I would always achieve gold medals for my school. But my father was not in favor of me getting into the sports field, as according to him, sports had no future then. He would always say, ‘it’ s good, but what about your career?’ and that was the breaking point for me to give up sports and enter the food industry. But I am very happy in what I am doing. ” Manjit is doing very well in his profession and maintains a very good balance between his work and family life and he always thanks God for providing everything that he asked for and even for the things that he did not ask for. “I am very content in my personal life and career. I never asked for increments till date, but my seniors, especially Chef Ranjeet Pandey Ji, have always given me more than my expectations, so there is no issue with money and the work culture is so good in our kitchen that people don ’t want to leave. Chef Ranjeet Pandey always takes the team out once a month for food and cocktails and that creates a very strong bond it is very rare to find such a positive atmosphere which matters the most. For me, humanity is first. Finally, honesty is the best policy, and give your best and the best will come.