On a Sweet Note!
Chef’s Table
On a Sweet Note!
The Oberoi New Delhi’s pastry chef, Vikas Vibhuti views life as a dessert. From getting his hands dirty in delicious chocolate to crafting the perfect choux pastry – Sommelier India chats with this master confectioner
M
Pastry Chef Vikas Vibhuti at The Oberoi New Delhi
72 Sommelier INDIA
aking pastries and cake requires a great level of perseverance – you really need to be in your own world,” says Chef Vibhuti. Well, his “world” – The Oberoi Patisserie and Delicatessen is a sweet-savoury haven with counters of candied goodies and out-of-theordinary pies and puddings. It’s safe to say he’s on a 24x7 sugar rush sans any side-effects. Growing up in Arunachal Pradesh in a family of doctors and engineers, he was pretty sure he didn’t intend on entering a clichéd career and wanted to do something different. After studying hotel management in Bangalore, he started training in the kitchen of The Oberoi Bangalore in 2005. “During my training at The Oberoi Bangalore, I decided to do some extra training to understand where my forte lay. After a lot of hard work, I realised bakery and confectionary is where I was meant to be.” Thereafter, he joined the Oberoi’s prestigious Oberoi Centre for Learning and Development (OCLD) following which Chef Vibhuti was posted to The Oberoi New Delhi – an icon amongst the various Delhi five-star hotels – that has now entered its 50th year and is still going strong. At The Oberoi Patisserie and Delicatessen the chef dons the robe of a perfectionist – somebody who continues to challenge the boundaries of his boulangerie. “Baking is a science,” he explains with “tools and equipment that form its key assets.” As a skilled sweets scientist, his exotic experiments start at around 8 am every day. Once he arrives at the hotel, he heads straight to seek blessings of the deity (?) for the smooth running of his day and his desserts. Like most
chefs, attention-to-detail and personal initiative are the tenets Chef Vibhuti lives and works by. Even as a trainee at The Oberoi Bangalore, Chef Vibhuti was eager to learn everything from scratch until he mastered the game. Needless to say, there were a few faux-pas moments but he continues to treasure them as life’s lessons. “As a trainee, our chef would lay down the ingredients and weigh them in front of us before teaching us how to make a particular dessert. Once we were being taught to bake the perfect cheesecake. Since I wanted to do everything myself, I gathered and whisked all the ingredients and put the cake in the oven. But after sometime, my boss came running to me to know why was the cheesecake flowing out of the oven? I then realised, I had forgotten to put the base!” he shares jokingly. But such glitches are a thing of the past because Chef Vibhuti is consumate a pastry pro now. And following a visit to Lenôtre Paris, France’s finest pastry school, Vibhuti is brimming with ideas and a renewed zest to create lip-smacking, luxury confectionary. “I learnt a lot during my stint at Lenôtre. Visiting iconic French dessert houses like Fauchon, Ladurée and Pierre Hermé, I realised that we still have a long way to go but we are definitely moving in the right direction.” Chef Vibhuti counts Chefs Soumya Goswami and Vikas Bogul as his food mentors – bosses who believed in his ability to design and bake the best bonbons. A dessert according to him should be a balanced mix of texture, taste
and visual appeal. “The important thing is to keep your dessert simple. But make sure it makes a statement on the plate and the palate,” he philosophises. According to Chef Vibhuti, dessert and wine make a great match. “Indian wines are doing really well. I use wine whenever I can as in a red wine poached pear or champagne sorbet.” But the future of dessert is neither winebased nor simple strawberry goodness. Desserts are going dégustation! “We are making miniature portions because we are getting sophisticated by the day. The use of a combination of sweet and salt, piquant flavours such as wasabi and vegetables dipped in chocolate will be on the rise,” he notes. Well, in all sweetness, we can certainly try out new desserts. Considering, there’s always room for more! v
Left: The Oberoi Patisserie and Delicatessen. Top: Walnut, vanilla and apricot parfait. Above: White chocolate and cherry mousseline
RED WINE & WALNUT BREAD
Chef Vibhuti shares this easy-to-make bread recipe Ingredients Refined flour - 500 gms Multigrain flour - 200 gms Caster sugar - 50 gms Salt - 10 gms
Yeast - 50 gms An egg Red wine - 200 ml Walnuts - 200 gms
Method Knead the flour, sugar, salt, yeast, egg with the red wine for 10 minutes at medium speed. Once the gluten is formed, add the softened butter followed by the walnuts; knead for another five minutes. Divide the dough into batches of 450 gms each. Roll the dough into a round ball. Prove the dough at 28°C with 70% humidity. Bake the proofed dough at 230°C for 15-18 min.
Sommelier INDIA 73
On a Sweet Note!
The Oberoi New Delhi’s pastry chef, Vikas Vibhuti views life as a dessert. From getting his hands dirty in delicious chocolate to crafting the perfect choux pastry – Sommelier India chats with this master confectioner
M
Pastry Chef Vikas Vibhuti at The Oberoi New Delhi
72 Sommelier INDIA
aking pastries and cake requires a great level of perseverance – you really need to be in your own world,” says Chef Vibhuti. Well, his “world” – The Oberoi Patisserie and Delicatessen is a sweet-savoury haven with counters of candied goodies and out-of-theordinary pies and puddings. It’s safe to say he’s on a 24x7 sugar rush sans any side-effects. Growing up in Arunachal Pradesh in a family of doctors and engineers, he was pretty sure he didn’t intend on entering a clichéd career and wanted to do something different. After studying hotel management in Bangalore, he started training in the kitchen of The Oberoi Bangalore in 2005. “During my training at The Oberoi Bangalore, I decided to do some extra training to understand where my forte lay. After a lot of hard work, I realised bakery and confectionary is where I was meant to be.” Thereafter, he joined the Oberoi’s prestigious Oberoi Centre for Learning and Development (OCLD) following which Chef Vibhuti was posted to The Oberoi New Delhi – an icon amongst the various Delhi five-star hotels – that has now entered its 50th year and is still going strong. At The Oberoi Patisserie and Delicatessen the chef dons the robe of a perfectionist – somebody who continues to challenge the boundaries of his boulangerie. “Baking is a science,” he explains with “tools and equipment that form its key assets.” As a skilled sweets scientist, his exotic experiments start at around 8 am every day. Once he arrives at the hotel, he heads straight to seek blessings of the deity (?) for the smooth running of his day and his desserts. Like most
chefs, attention-to-detail and personal initiative are the tenets Chef Vibhuti lives and works by. Even as a trainee at The Oberoi Bangalore, Chef Vibhuti was eager to learn everything from scratch until he mastered the game. Needless to say, there were a few faux-pas moments but he continues to treasure them as life’s lessons. “As a trainee, our chef would lay down the ingredients and weigh them in front of us before teaching us how to make a particular dessert. Once we were being taught to bake the perfect cheesecake. Since I wanted to do everything myself, I gathered and whisked all the ingredients and put the cake in the oven. But after sometime, my boss came running to me to know why was the cheesecake flowing out of the oven? I then realised, I had forgotten to put the base!” he shares jokingly. But such glitches are a thing of the past because Chef Vibhuti is consumate a pastry pro now. And following a visit to Lenôtre Paris, France’s finest pastry school, Vibhuti is brimming with ideas and a renewed zest to create lip-smacking, luxury confectionary. “I learnt a lot during my stint at Lenôtre. Visiting iconic French dessert houses like Fauchon, Ladurée and Pierre Hermé, I realised that we still have a long way to go but we are definitely moving in the right direction.” Chef Vibhuti counts Chefs Soumya Goswami and Vikas Bogul as his food mentors – bosses who believed in his ability to design and bake the best bonbons. A dessert according to him should be a balanced mix of texture, taste
and visual appeal. “The important thing is to keep your dessert simple. But make sure it makes a statement on the plate and the palate,” he philosophises. According to Chef Vibhuti, dessert and wine make a great match. “Indian wines are doing really well. I use wine whenever I can as in a red wine poached pear or champagne sorbet.” But the future of dessert is neither winebased nor simple strawberry goodness. Desserts are going dégustation! “We are making miniature portions because we are getting sophisticated by the day. The use of a combination of sweet and salt, piquant flavours such as wasabi and vegetables dipped in chocolate will be on the rise,” he notes. Well, in all sweetness, we can certainly try out new desserts. Considering, there’s always room for more! v
Left: The Oberoi Patisserie and Delicatessen. Top: Walnut, vanilla and apricot parfait. Above: White chocolate and cherry mousseline
RED WINE & WALNUT BREAD
Chef Vibhuti shares this easy-to-make bread recipe Ingredients Refined flour - 500 gms Multigrain flour - 200 gms Caster sugar - 50 gms Salt - 10 gms
Yeast - 50 gms An egg Red wine - 200 ml Walnuts - 200 gms
Method Knead the flour, sugar, salt, yeast, egg with the red wine for 10 minutes at medium speed. Once the gluten is formed, add the softened butter followed by the walnuts; knead for another five minutes. Divide the dough into batches of 450 gms each. Roll the dough into a round ball. Prove the dough at 28°C with 70% humidity. Bake the proofed dough at 230°C for 15-18 min.
Sommelier INDIA 73
