Subverting the sauce

Brief Lives

Why would an Italian chef dabble in martial arts and feng shui? Probably because he has worked in both Japan and China, but more specifically because his wife of seven years is Chinese.

Leandro Carrega, chef-de-parte at Senso in Delhi, may pack in boyish appeal with his floppy hair and lazy smile, but he's no Johnny-come-lately when it comes to dishing up a mean anti-pasti, having started as a trainee chef in Geneva in 1982.

It was 1988 when he quit Italy to go work in China and, later, Japan, before finding himself tied down to a two-year contract in India.

In a sense, the job found him. "I'm in touch with other, expatriate Italian chefs over the Net," says Carrega in his heavily accented English, "to share common problems such as local produce, or to exchange ideas or recipes, and sometimes to explore job opportunities."

After a spat with his boss, Carrega was open to offers, Senso had just opened in Delhi, and so he moved in with his bag of sauces and skills to dish out what he hoped would be the city's finest Italian cuisine.

He hadn't anticipated the resistance to his efforts then. "In Beijing, or Shanghai, or Hong Kong where there is a large population of Westerners, diners want authentic Italian flavours.

In Japan too, it is trendy to go to an Italian restaurant, even if they don't like the cuisine. But in India, people want to taste something they're familiar with.

Very few Indian guests ask for real Italian flavours. Instead, they want a lot of sauce with their food, and strong garlic and chilli flavours."

But then, you'd expect that from Italian food anyway, right? "Italian food has sauces, but not so much, not like Indian gravies, and though we use garlic and chilli, that too would be less than what Indian diners expect.

In fact, a lot of guests don't even look at the menu, and order something that's probably in their mind, leading to strange requests."

Part of this comes from the Indian need to mix up all flavours together.

"They want a pasta that has chicken and mushroom and broccolli and tomatoes and zucchini and prawns, all together. Or they ask for a sauce that has tomato and basil and pesto together, when these are all separate sauces."

It's enough to make the chef sweat in his kitchen so that he can Indianise his recipes sufficiently to please the local palate without losing his Italian speciality.

Lucky for him, Carrega is not a traditionalist, having learned to experiment on the road, as it were. "Most of my recipes don't come from books. Yet, it is Italian because it satisfies my Italian palate. The first person who has to like my dishes is me."

Personally partial to cooking seafood, he finds himself at a disadvantage in landlocked Delhi where the frozen supplies aren't in as high demand as, say, chicken.

"Sometimes I joke with my colleagues that I work in a chicken kitchen," he says ruefully of Delhi's love for the broiler.

He's used ideas from his stints in Japan and China in his cooking style, and if he ever leaves India, it's more than possible that he'll carry a bit of it away as part of his repertoire.

After all, India's managed to subvert every cuisine so far, and chiefly Chinese, to its own palate.

"My wife likes only Chinese food, and has been to four or five restaurants in Delhi, but says she'll never do it again because it's nothing like the Chinese food we eat at home by choice. Here, the Chinese food has an Indian flavour." And no matter how long Carrega resists it, he may well have to succumb to the native flavour for Indo-Italian dining.