Around the country in 2,000 dishes

For his next culinary tome, chef Vikas Khanna has been touring India, living the tribal life and building bridges with Pakistan.

Chef Vikas Khanna is as busy in the kitchen as he is outside it. Currently, the Michelin-starred Indian chef, who played host for the second season of MasterChef India, has been busy writing yet another book. But this one, he insists, is going to take some time.

Chef-Vikas-Khanna

Having already invested three years in it, Vikas is looking to launch the tome in 2016. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he says, about his book titled India: A Culinary Epic. “It starts in Mohenjodaro, Harappa and traces the roots of Indian cuisine all the way to its current form in America. I’ve chronicled almost 4,000 years of food history and mythology in it,” adds Vikas, who has travelled to obscure corners of the country and the subcontinent to track the origins of various recipes and cuisines.

“On my next trip I will be going to Pakistan. We know Punjabi food of India, and now I want to discover its Pakistani version,” he says.

From eating silk worms to sleeping in mud homes and living the life of a spice farmer, Vikas claims this book will be “one of the biggest cookbooks in the world”. “We have to write our own history,” he says. One of his most-memorable trips so far has been his stay with the tribals on Andaman and Nicobar Islands. “We think ceviche is such a new-age dish, right? But the people here have been eating this for centuries — fish marinated with lime juice, chillies and salt,” says Vikas. “And the tools they use all emerge from their needs. For instance, they use the bark of a cactus to grate coconut, and with what speed!” At this time, Vikas is in Calicut, to sample their famous biryani. “After this I am going to Tellicherry (Kerala). It’s where one of the world’s most expensive peppercorns comes from,” reveals the chef.