Sassy restaurateur and pastry chef Rachel Goenka ramps up the oomph factor of Indian sweets

Back in 1993, when Vineet Bhatia, the first Indian chef to get a Michelin star for his restaurant, invented the chocolate samosa on a whim in London, it did not cause even a ripple back home because mithai was then seen in restaurants and hotels as the domain of the un-inventive halwai. In those pre-Google, pre-Instagram days, the pioneers of modern Indian cuisine — Bhatia, Atul Kochhar and Vivek Singh, all in London — were struggling to be recognised by a market saturated with chicken tikka masala and freeze-heat-serve gajar halwa.

Twenty-six years after Bhatia’s chocolate samosa moment, Indian Accent opened in Delhi in 2009. It didn’t take long for it to become the definitive temple of modern Indian cuisine under Manish Mehrotra’s hawk eye. It announced the dawn of the new age of mithai with its signature doda barfi treacle tart, which uplifted the Punjabi Diwali-time favourite to a level of sophistication it had never seen in its long history.

Years before the doda barfi treacle tart, in 2002, Sudip Mullick, the fourth-generation owner of Kolkata’s iconic sweet shop, Balaram Mullick Radharaman Mullick, invented the baked rasgulla with condensed milk and nolen gur, and the mango sandesh designed and flavoured like the fruit, inspired by Japan’s wagashi sweets. But of course, it was Mullick’s chocolate truffle rasgulla that got Kolkata licking its fingers and talking reverentially about the modern custodian of Bengal’s sweet tooth.

These sparks of creativity do not alter the reality of our mithai not being able to charge the imagination of Indian chefs who are notching up Michelin stars around the world. We have not yet had our Gaggan moment in the world of mithai. I blame it on how mithai is perceived around the world: as being too sweet or too heavy, or both. A revolution has been overdue.

I believe it has finally happened in the form of this book with an unpretentious title. The labour of love of Rachel Goenka, who’s justifiably famous for her Sassy Spoon restaurants in Mumbai and Pune, which, in her own words, “became synonymous with unconventional, brazen, out-of-the-box and cheeky” since the first opened in 2012. There couldn’t be more appropriate words to also describe the contents of the book.

Goenka revels in marrying impossibly diverse ingredients, but the matrimony isn’t rocky; instead, these are instances of opposites — balsamic vinegar and chocolate, goat’s cheese and sugar, and coffee with cream cheese — co-existing in perfect harmony. I must declare here my love for Sassy Spoon’s fondant with molten white chocolate and basil core and their unforgettable guava chilli sorbet. Like these desserts, the book manages to be a cross-cultural treat for those of us rooting for that moment when an innovative chef consummates a fusion-without-confusion marriage of Indian with Western desserts.

Goenka, the daughter of Viveck Goenka, chairman & managing director, The Indian Express Group, grew up in Dubai with a deep interest in cooking and a passion for chemistry. She got her Bachelor’s in communications and English literature from Penn State University, USA, and then went to Ireland for the 12-week certificate course at the famous Ballymaloe Cookery School run by the mother-daughter, celebrity TV chef-author duo, Darima and Rachel Allen.

It was at the cookery school that she decided to become a professional pastry chef and baker, training further at Le Cordon Bleu, London and pursuing an apprenticeship with the famous English chocolatier, Paul Andrew Young. Goenka’s eclectic training and the ease with which she balances her international influences shows up in her book, whose text is as precise as its pictures are delectable. The book is first and foremost a match-making journey across India — someone said to me once that he had counted the number of Indian sweets and it added up to 650, so the permutations and combinations can be endless.

In one leap of faith after another, Goenka pairs lemongrass panna cotta with vermicelli kheer, creates eclairs with mohan bhog crème, invents the anjeer barfi treacle tart, or the Mysore Pak and tender coconut domes, or gives Nagaland’s black rice pudding, Nap Naang, a dark chocolate makeover. Gujarat is represented in the aamras and Malibu tiramisu (aamras shows up again in truffles, as do filter coffee and masala chai), Kerala in the rasmalai and elaneer (coconut milk kheer) pudding, Benaras in the malai chop sandwich and thandai macarons. You can smell Old Delhi in the coconut ice cream with imarti. From chocolate chilli ice cream and salted caramel kulfi to Maghai paan (piper betel) truffles and aflatoon cheesecake (aflatoon is a Bohri delicacy), it’s an impressive repertoire. I hope, for the sake of mithai, Goenka will keep pushing the envelope.

Bhattacharya is founding director, Tasting India Symposium