Meet our member of the month, Vikram Bapat, the talented blogger behind Breaking Naan
What was your original motivation for your blog? What keeps you motivated?
There are many sources of traditional Indian recipes. However, there are very few restaurants or blog content available which take a contemporary approach to the cuisine. Our motivation is to bring locally inspired perspectives on Indian cooking techniques which respect the traditional recipes and yet are not shy of bringing them in new avatars. We also love to cover recipes which are rarely found in Indian Restaurants but are a delicious staple of the food fabric in India. We thus hope to make Indian Cuisine more approachable and inviting by sharing our recipes through our blog and in person with the foodie communities in Wisconsin.
We also love to travel and in the past many years have always relied on first hand pictures and experiences of food bloggers to plan our trips to local restaurants. This has led to many a memorable meals and delicious finds. We thus try to return the favor and visually document our travel experiences so they may help others choose their dining experiences as well.
In the end, the encouragement for BreakingNaan comes from my wife, my friends and most importantly our family of readers who keep us motivated. Whenever a BreakingNaan blog post creates a dialogue around food is when it spurs us on to write more. Recently, my colleague in Germany tried out one of our recipes and sent us a little video of them making and enjoying it. Seeing their enthusiasm and happiness and the experience that food ideas can spread globally through this medium keeps us very excited to publish more.
If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?
This would have to be a dish from Western parts of India named Misal. This is a dish hugely popular in Indian cities like Mumbai, Pune, Kolhapur, Nagpur, and varies in composition every one mile that you travel! It was recently named the best vegetarian dish by a UK based publication. Much like Ramen Bowls or various recipes for Chili, Misal allows to create a different variation every day. Combine that with my love for it and Misal can easily last me a lifetime! We have written more about our love for Misal and a recipe here.
What has been your biggest cooking disaster?
I am a warrior in the comforts of my own kitchen. However, cooking in anyone else’s kitchen leaves me feeling nervous and out of place. I once enthusiastically declared that I would make a wonderful roasted butternut squash soup when we were visiting one of my dear friends.
I preheated the oven to 350 and prepped the squash in a baking tray with a drizzle of olive oil and sprig of sage and some seasoning. That is when we faintly smelled some melting plastic. Sprouted lentils are routine part of my friends Indian kitchen and they sprout much nicer in a dark and warm place. That day, the place for lentils happened to be her oven! I had begun to melt her plastic sprouter when I pre-heated the oven without checking what was inside. I did make up for it because after few more hours the soup did turn out fantastic and although my friend protested, she did allow me graciously to replace her sprouter. Since that day, I am always tempted to make the pre-heating line in my recipes to be “Pre-heat the oven to 350F after checking for sprouters!”
As fall is already creeping around the corner (ahh!), what summer dish will you miss the most?
Summer in Madison is extremely special after our demanding winters, and it really is all about the bountiful produce at our farmer markets. Although sweet corn is available throughout the season it truly shines through in the summer. It is tender and sweeter, and in summer, you can procure corn that has just been picked in the fields. We make a sweet corn soup to celebrate this produce and although it can be made year long it never really tastes the way it does when we use summer sweet corn. We have published a recipe here.
We also use this summer produce for an Indian style charcoal roasted sweet corn. Mix salt and paprika together to create the seasoning and slice a lime in half. When you have your beautifully charred black and gold sweet corn, dip the lime face down in the seasoning and then rub it over the corn squeezing the lime juice. Serve it nested in the corn husk as a serve-ware and enjoy!
If you could go anywhere on vacation, where would you go and what would you do?
Without doubt, we will travel to France. Me and my wife have been there before, but on each occasion we have gone on our own. I believe we only scratched the surface of wonderful things the country has to offer. We would love to travel back together and spend our time divided in Paris and in the countryside. The things we would do are countless and we will of-course try to plead our way into reservations at restaurants like Maison Bras to feed our curiosity as well as vanity. However we would love the trip to be long and quiet, to really be able to live and cook like the locals. I dream of forging friendships with the French home chefs and learning from them during the vacation in their home kitchens.