Browsing: Maneet Chauhan

Nashville, Tennessee is the home of American country music but now it’s also getting known as the home of Indian street foods, thanks to Maneet Chauhan, 42, who is striking some spicy notes in Nashville with her brand new restaurant Chaatable which brings the delight of Mumbai street food to Nashville.

In a world of shut doors and glass ceilings, success in life is difficult to achieve, especially for low income women of color, with little education. Enter Wishwas, an organization that turns the homely skills of these women into assets and helps them to market their hand-made products.

Wishwas, a fledgling organization started by New Yorker Nivedita Chandrappa had its coming out party at the beautiful Queens Museum of Art in Flushing, Queens with a cocktail fundraiser showcasing the work of the women of Wishwas. It was indeed a gathering of women helping women.

“The success stories are many, they say Wishwas has given them the opportunity to grow and learn. Our women have now started talking to everyone, know how to wish and how to negotiate, how to make extra income with the skills they already have.

I think each story is unique and personal – on the whole they are a happy bunch who work together, spend time together on a weekly bases, have bonded together, and they also do that while their children are safe around them.”

Get into the kitchen with noted chef Maneet Chauhan and it’s a daring marriage between Indian spices and ingredients from around the world. Chauhan, who’s cooked up a storm in India and the US, including the critically acclaimed Vermilion, is now working on two cookbooks and is a judge on Food Network’s Chopped. Here she shares some of her unusual recipes which pair the quintessentially desi masalas like Sambhar powder and pau bhaji masala with unlikely items like edamame and olives, which are rarely used in Indian cuisine.

After being the chef at Vermilion, the acclaimed Indian-Latin fusion restaurants in Chicago and New York for eight years and the first Indian woman to be a competitor on The Iron Chef and The Next Iron Chef, what do you do for an encore?

Well, if you’re Maneet Chauhan, you take a break. You go have a baby, become a judge on Food Network’s ‘Chopped’, work on two cook books and plan a new restaurant in Nashville, TN, partnering with the M Street Restaurant Group.
Here Maneet shares her life and recipes with Lassi with Lavina readers!

For Indian food lovers, this is the equivalent of Foodie Heaven! An opportunity to taste the food of not one, not two but 13 noted Indian chefs – all under one roof. The noted chefs include names which are familiar to fans of Indian cuisine – Floyd Cardoz, Vikas Khanna, Jehangir Mehta, Hemant Mathur, Prasad Chirnomula, Hari Nayak, Maneet Chauhan ,Walter D’Rozario and Peter Beck, with Sanjeev Kapoor flying in from India.
This would have been an unimaginable scenario a few decades back but now is a done deal, thanks to the Varli Food Festival being held in New York City on April 7 at the Altman Building in Chelsea.

Last call – the Thanksgiving countdown has begun! But what if you’re a klutz in the kitchen and would rather not be performing stomach surgery on a turkey? What if you’re tired of the traditional turkey taste and are yearning for some spice and fire in your bland holiday meal? The Indian culinary elves are at your service with Thanksgiving dining and takeout options.

Meet some of the Big Apple’s hottest and happening Indian chefs…

They are the interpreters of Indian Cuisine, the innovators who aren’t afraid to experiment and create, adding new dimensions to the food they grew up with, giving an exciting buzz to the ho-hum chicken tikka masala and palak paneer which has become the norm of Indian restaurants around the world. Some of them are at the helm of New York’s most noted Indian restaurants and bring in the foodies.