Two talented chefs from India – Vaibhav Vishen and Varun Toorkey – are celebrating the festival of lights in New Zealand with a special dish that’s an homage to their Indian heritage and adopted homeland.
Their dish – Goda Masala Paneer Stuffed Kulcha, served with a Kiwifruit Panch Phoron Chutney – doffs a chef’s hat to the flavours of Vishen and Toorkey’s respective childhoods in Kashmir and Mumbai in India, alongside their time in Wellington, New Zealand.
Chef Vishen is the owner of Chaat Street, a genuinely Indian food eatery in Wellington that brilliantly showcases the complex, lip-smacking combination of textures, flavours and spices that go into Indian street food. Chef Toorkey is an actor who left behind a 13-year career in the glitzy world of Indian television to follow his culinary study dream in Wellington.
The chefs are both (or have been in Vishen’s case) students of Le Cordon Bleu New Zealand’s Bachelor of Culinary Arts & Business programme.
The dish they have created is a suitably festive one to add to any Diwali table but isn’t too decadent to be off limits. The creative and emotional aspect of cooking food is what inspires Chef Vishen to play with flavours and textures.
“Food not only allows you to be creative, it’s also a canvas where you get to showcase your emotions, what you feel, not just by cooking but also by looking at someone consuming your work of art. That relationship of cooking and feeling is addictive. I love how a community can come together with food,” Vishen says.
For Toorkey, creating this dish with Vishen was a wonderful way of reliving fond Diwali food memories.
“Food is the perfect way of bringing together family and friends. What better reason to get family together than food? We’d love celebrating Diwali every year, lighting up the house, stuffing our faces with treats and visiting friends and family,” he says.
This year, the chefs are both looking forward to creating some new Diwali memories in their adopted home of Wellington.
“It’s brilliant how Wellington has embraced a wide range of cultures, you can see it in how the community comes together to celebrate. The special Diwali fireworks display on the Wellington waterfront is definitely a highlight,” says Vishen.
