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KHANA KHAZANA Sanjeev Kapoor

Sanjeev Kapoor agrees he cannot think beyond food. One of the most successful chefs in our country, Sanjeev’s journey has been quite masaledar — manning kitchens of top-notch star hotels, an award-winning television show, innumerable best-selling books, a successful chain of restaurants…

“There are four verticals in my business,” says the master chef about his varied interests. He even participated in the dance show, Jhalak Dikhla Ja, last year.

The market for cookbooks is good. And so, Sanjeev keeps coming out with one often enough. If a couple of months back it was on no-oil cooking, this time around it is a mini series of six books on Chinese, Punjabi, seafood and microwave cooking., which has been published by Popular Prakashan.

“It is not difficult to make each book different from the others, since there are so many parameters in cooking. Anyway, being different is not my criteria while writing recipe books. I just cater to what people want. There are so many titles I haven’t touched upon. I still don’t have a dedicated book on cakes and baking, which I am working on next,” explains the 40-something chef.His ideas for cookbooks, he says, come from people themselves. “The other day, one woman asked why I haven’t written a book on Indian food for diabetics and, on hearing that, another woman came and told me to be more specific about juvenile diabetes. I just have to keep my ears and eyes open.”

His globetrotting introduces him to new ingredients. “Recently, I picked up that special rice from my trip to Spain and roasted crushed chillies from Turkey.”

News that he is going to launch a 24-hour channel devoted to food is doing the rounds, and Sanjeev goes into a shell the moment you ask him anything about it. “I don’t know where people manage to get this information from,” the chuckle in his voice cannot be missed though.

“Yes, I will soon, but cannot say how soon. It’s too early to talk about it now.” And the day it he does, he promises he would pack all information about health, food and fitness into it. Success has come to him relatively easily, considering that becoming a chef was never really his dream. “I don’t believe it when someone tells me that they wanted to be a doctor or an engineer since childhood. How can a child know all that? It’s only with age that you mature enough to decide.

In my case, I just knew I wanted to do something different but never had anything specific in mind. When the opportunity came knocking, I opened my door happily,” he quips.

MANGALA RAMAMOORTHY

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