Ajay Mehra of Mehrasons isn’t quite the traditional "kitchen cook".
Billiard tables greet me right at the door when I enter Ajay Mehra’s palatial home in south Delhi. “Kids come first in this house,” he says. He adds that his two sons are quite into cue sports and aesthetics in the interiors can take a back seat. He feels that if children play in the foyer, they are automatically around the family. So, I am not entirely taken by surprise when he suggests we cook in the living room.
“I’m not a kitchen person. But I like being around my family when I cook,” he reiterates, making it clear that he’s never been the kind to labour over a meal. “When it can be done quickly I don’t get the idea of stressing oneself.”
Today’s menu keeps with the simplicity. Mediterranean pita pocket and caramel custard will take only a few minutes to furnish. Freshly cut veggies are lined neatly on a food trolley in the living room, which overlooks the green lawn. The winter sun streams in as we sip on some tea.
He tells me how business has fascinated him, since he was 11. While a long-standing family business like his — dating back to pre-Partition days — is cause enough for a flurry of daily activity, Mehra takes solace in his style of vertical functioning, training his employees so he doesn’t have to supervise all the time.
“While everybody is firing, I’m hiring. It’s the best time to hire the best of the lot. I’m opening a fourth showroom in Delhi and retail outlets in other states too are on the anvil, in Punjab, UP and Bengal. In the jewellery business, I have learn’t that branding doesn’t work. People still want to shop at family jewellers,” he says.
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The question of an economic crisis, he points out, doesn’t affect jewellery sales. “The economic flux doesn’t hold over sentiment, does it? The family unit is too strong in our country for it to affect the marriage budget.”
But when it comes to food, Mehra would readily choose Chinese or Italian over Indian. “I’m not a big fan of the spices. I like it very light and healthy,” he admits. “You know, I started cooking while I was at boarding school in Woodstock. I took cooking classes but always messed up because I was only eager to eat the food at the end of the class.”
He laughs as he recalls a time when in school he went hiking with nine others and tried to cook chicken in the woods, which turned out to be a disaster.
He now buys cookbooks, works around fresh Continental and Mediterranean recipes and gets his family to sample the results. Like the conductor of an orchestra, with an efficient wave of the hand, he assigns tasks to the right people to make sure that what finally appears on the plate is a job well done.
FAVOURITE RECIPES
MEDITERRANEAN PITA POCKET
1 can hummus
4 pita breads
For the dressing:
1 chopped garlic
3 tsp olive oil
4 tsp lime juice
A pinch of black pepper
1 tsp crushed sugar
5-6 gherkins
4-5 jalapeños
For the salad:
100 gm each chopped cucumber, carrot, lettuce, tomatoes and capsicum
Shake all the dressing ingredients together in a small box. In a salad bowl, toss the veggies with the dressing. Cut the pitas into halves. Apply hummus on the insides and stuff the pita with the salad, garnishing with gherkins and jalapeños.
CARAMEL CUSTARD
3 eggs
1/2 litre milk
A few drops of vanilla essence
3 tsps of caramelised sugar
In a custard dish, pour a bit of caramelised sugar and a few drops of vanilla essence. Next, beat the eggs in a separate bowl with milk, and add a few drops of vanilla essence. Pour this into the custard dish. Cover with a foil and steam the dish in a large vessel with some water. Cover the vessel with foil as well. After about 10-15 minutes, take the vessel off the flame. Open only the vessel foil and put ice around the custard dish. Remove the dish from the vessel after a few minutes and upturn on a plate to free firm custard. Place in freezer for 10 minutes and serve.