THE CANDY MAN
Would you put green tomatoes in your dessert? How about basil or coriander? If you’re cringing, you’ve got to meet Jehangir Mehta, the pastry wizard who’s created a big buzz in Manhattan. As pastry chef at the hot new restaurant Aix where the noted French chef Didier Virot holds court, Mehta has turned the concept of dessert on its head.
No namby pamby, wishy-washy vanilla scoops with chocolate sauce for him. This Bombay native takes diners where they’ve never been before, on a wild ride full of new taste sensations, adding a whole spectrum of unlikely spices and ingredients that leaves them clamoring for more.
And sometimes not! Mehta’s adventurous dessert recipes have generated reams of press, some favorable, some not. Moira Hodgson of The New York Observer proclaimed, “One of the most daring and original pastry chefs I have come across in New York. His creations are unexpected but with coherence and personality.”
At the same time, he’s been nicknamed ‘the sadist’ and some of his desserts have been called ‘plain weird’, such as a licorice panna cotta that some critics vilified as awful as chewing tar or tobacco.
Yet food critic Eric Asimov described it thus in The New York Times: “The panna cotta struck a special note with me, too: I loved it. A small circle of smooth, light and silky custard, it is deeply imbued with the warm, intense flavor of licorice, which lingers only so long as you avoid its accompanying pile of tangerine sections. Take a bite of the citrus and it stops the licorice flavor short; alternate bites and you have a captivating tennis match in the mouth.”
Indeed, that is the special skill of Mehta, orchestrating unlikely pairings and creating a taste that is vibrant and refreshing, something that didn’t exist before. If its springtime, you’re likely to even find fresh flowers in his light and airy desserts.
BOMBAY TALES
So how did a Bombay boy, growing up in Kemp’s Corner in a house full of staid chartered accountants get so wildly adventurous with food? “I liked working in the kitchen but there are no great stories to tell because my mother really didn’t like cooking at all and my sister absolutely hated it!” recalls Mehta, gregarious and with no celebrity airs, as we sit together in Aix, the beautiful Upper West Side restaurant inspired by Aix-en-Provence in France.
“Till this day they both don’t like cooking. We have a cook at home – my mother does make some very, very good stuff but she doesn’t love to do it at all. But I just love food. My whole family loves food, especially my dad.”
Mehta recalls a very cosmopolitan growing up with a lot of Parsi food mixed with Chinese, French and continental cuisine. Asked about the foods that excited him as a child, he says, “It was more sensory, the different spices and flavors and smells – it just made you feel rapt. I loved all types of seafood – fish, oysters and shrimp – I just adored the texture of fish, and Bombay being a port, we ate a lot of it and prepared it in many different ways.”
As a student, he was mad about the theater but was not encouraged to make that a profession, but surely the dramatics seeped into his culinary creations when he joined the Management Institute. He did a four-year course in hotel management with a backup degree in sociology. After graduating, he came to New York to study at the noted Culinary Institute of America, and earned his chef’s toque there.
Mehta has been a pastry chef in some of the most talked about restaurants in New York City, including Jean Georges, Union Pacific, Virot, Compass and Aix. He has worked closely with Didier Virot in Jean Georges, Virot and now Aix, which is a highly rated restaurant on the upper west side.
Paradoxically enough, Mehta isn’t big on desserts – that perhaps explains why he’s reed thin! Isn’t it revolutionary using herbs and spices in desserts? “It is to a certain extent and it’s also challenging to me and it’s also different for a lot of my customers. That’s the risk you have to take when you do something different, you have to be open – some people may like it, and some may not like it.”
SALTY CARAMEL TAPIOCA TART, ANYONE?
Salty Caramel Tapioca Tart – the name itself can turn some people off but the food critics loved it. The same with Green Tomatoes Salad with candied celery and a mint sorbet. Recalls Mehta: “It was a risk but people loved it and we got tons and tons of press on it and it became a big thing. And on the other hand, licorice panna cotta with star anise powder and oranges – it got thrashed completely! People said it tasted like tar!”
Six months later Mehta got a call from Eric Asimov, food critic of The New York Times who said he thought it was the best dessert he had ever eaten and was so happy that Mehta had stuck by what he wanted to do and hadn’t caved in to critical reviews.
“He wrote an entire article about it, ‘In Defense of Weird Foods’”, says Mehta. “After he wrote the article, our sales doubled up, everything was great. You need somebody of his calibre to tell you it’s good. When I thought it was good, it wasn’t good enough. It’s all very subjective.”
All his desserts are exciting, with twists and turns to them, and the inspiration can come from just about anywhere, from the shape of a scallop dish to the color of spring flowers. Ask him how his desserts take shape, and he says it’s a lot like building blocks, with bits and pieces coming together. “Sometimes I build up and then work myself down, sometimes it’s sideways, and sometimes it’s a sauce that comes up first. What’s in Provence? Green tomatoes – and that’s how it starts building and you start adding and adding.”
But he cautions: you also need to know when to stop. For instance in one dessert he mixed almond biscuit with pistachios and nougat, so that there are several different nuts in it and added candied celery and violet flowers to give it a whiff of summer. This Violet Celery Nougat Parfait could have become overwhelming but says Mehta, “Since I don’t like anything too sweet, I made a grapefruit marmalade that is so tart that it cut the sweetness of the dessert.”
In the same way, in the licorice panna cotta, the star anise and the orange really cut the taste of licorice, which just by itself might be too much. The secret, says Mehta, is in one word: less.
“When people try to make something different, they put so much – When you have nine different flavors on your plate, it becomes too much. But you also have to be true to your cooking. When you say there is something in your dish, put it in your dish, so the person can get it. If he’s expecting violets in his dish, let him get the full flavor, not just a faint taste of it.”
Mehta lives with his wife Hinata, who is in information technology, in Manhattan. Who does the cooking at home? He says, “Both, I would say. Sometimes I do a little more, sometimes she does more.” Besides providing the sweet endings to the elaborate meals at Aix, Mehta also runs Partistry, which creates customized handmade chocolates, confections and teas, fresh flower wedding cakes and wedding favors.
The handmade chocolates include truffles, which are a blend of chocolate ganache with Grand Marnier, an orange flavored French liqueur. Another specialty is whole almonds that are sugared and then coated five times with Valrhona chocolate. The teas and chocolates come in customized boxes and wraps from India.
Mehta also runs Candy Camp, innovative classes for children at Aix, where kids learn to make their own desserts and pizzas. These also serve as birthday parties where the food is the entertainment. He now wants to take it to the next step, where he wants to volunteer his services in New York public schools: “I think it’s a way to give back. Not all children have been to good restaurants and this is a way of introducing children from all walks of life to the finer things in life.”
Asked which is the one ingredient that can always make him happy, Mehta says it has to be tea:
“It just gives me joy to relax with a good cup of Indian milk tea with mint, lemongrass and cardamom. One of my favorite ingredients in food is mustard – add it to the oil with a few curry leaves and it’s so simple you don’t need anything more, whether you’re making cauliflower or shrimp.”
Would he add mustard and curry leaves to dessert? He laughs, “I’ve not tried that yet but I did do a mustard cake once. Today I’m doing a basil cake for the party.”
A devotee of spices and herbs, Mehta would one day like to run a small place with food, desserts and tea, a place that educates people about health and ayurveda, a subject he also plans to write a book about.
What gets him through good times and bad? He says, “I really think people are the key – friends and family are so important. I go back to India every year – I’ve given up jobs and not taken jobs on the basis of whether I will be given the time to re-connect back home.”
When I asked him if I was missing anything, he laughed, “You’ve got more information on me than the CIA!” Still, I couldn’t resist one last question.
What makes Jehangir Mehta tick, what is his passion?
“I think it’s people,” he says. “I love meeting people and making them happy through my food. It’s surprising people with new flavors and new tastes that they haven’t experienced before. Sometimes it can be something quite small – like taking a child into the kitchen to see how things are done – the reaction is so unbelievable that it’s like ‘Wow, that’s all it took to make that person’s day!’”
Yes, Jehangir Mehta is all about sweet endings.
© This article was written in 2005. Update: Since then, Jehangir Mehta has had a pair of twins, written a cookbook, ‘Mantra: The Art of Indulgence, appeared on The Next Iron Chef, and started his own restaurant, Graffiti.
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