Kitchen mechanics

From medium-temperature vacuum cookers to foam guns, two contestants of Indian origin on Masterchef Australia find that haute cuisine is more than just knives, oven and a few choice ingredients

Indian chefs can cook more than just curry - Rishi Desai and Neha Sen have been proving just that on MasterChef Australia, currently being aired on Indian television. As these two contestants of Indian origin whip up sauces and curry, and fillet, poach and roast their way into people's hearts, they have won applause not just from the judges but from avid viewers of the show in India as well. Their culinary journey on MasterChef Australia involves not just winning challenge after challenge but also taking on commercial restaurant-kitchen equipment and techniques.

For Desai, who hails from Kolhapur and is a public servant in Queanbeyan, which is in south-eastern New South Wales adjacent to the Australian Capital Territory, using the foaming gun was a new experience. Also challenging was creating celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal's edible garden in the MasterChef kitchen. "Heston has his own take on food, so when he was on the show we used ingredients like Xanthum gum, Locust bean gum and Maltodextrin to make the garden," he says. Another technique that was new to the duo was sous vide, which requires you to vacuum seal ingredients in a plastic bag and cook it in a water bath at a particular temperature. "We were working with $2,000-dollar equipment for this technique. It was something that I had not practised with before. So, I had to train myself to use it," says Sen.

Taking on a host of talented chefs from across Australia in challenge after challenge is no cakewalk and both Desai and Sen had to put in hours of practice before appearing on the show. Desai, a self-proclaimed foodie, has been dishing out fare from India, China and Italy for some years now. "French cooking techniques are essential for every chef to know so I focused on practising those. I spent hours making French sauces, cooking a piece of meat, deboning chicken, filleting fish and working on techniques such as smoking and poaching," says Desai who must have spent two hours daily for a month-and-a-half perfecting these techniques.

Meanwhile, Sen, an IT consultant was familiar with the basics of cooking, but dishing out restaurant-quality food was a different ballgame altogether. "Mediterranean, Italian, French, Mexican - I practised it all. I must have spent 10 to 12 hours daily in the days leading up to MasterChef," she says.

Having interacted closely with the stalwarts of the culinary world like Adriano Zumbo, Matt Preston, Curtis Stone and Maggie Beer, the duo are ready to carve a niche in the food industry, once the show is over. And when they open their own restaurant, they will have the same high-end equipment that they were introduced to on the show. "I will definitely have the foaming gun, sous vide machine and planetary mixture. But the most important equipment that I would like to have is the Indian spice blender," says Desai. Sen, on the other hand, wouldn't dream of a restaurant kitchen without the pressure cooker. "No matter how many different kinds of equipment you have, a pressure cooker is the bare essential everywhere," she grins.