Chef Mohammed Eliyaz, executive sous chef at The Leela Bhartiya City in Bengaluru, has a long record of rustling up unconventional dining experiences. He has recently been pushing the envelope with genetically modified fruits and vegetables. Not too keen on importing certain varieties of produce, he started looking for suppliers growing exotic fruits and vegetables in India. That was when he met Archana Shinde of Sarga Farms in Pune. Together, they created some rather confounding dishes not easily available in fine-dining set ups.
For instance, he curated a dish with 32 varieties of tomatoes in a smorgasbord of flavours (tartish, sweet and umami, to name a few), textures (gel, foam, raw and grilled) and colours (red, orange, yellow and black). Another curiosity he conjured was with a white capsicum, just to add an element of wonder and surprise. “We wanted to ensure the dish pays tribute to the vegetable’s many stages of modification,” says Eliyaz. “We decided to serve up a Mediterranean dish in which we used the capsicum in pulp form around the vegetable that was chargrilled and stuffed with broken wheat, sultanas and dried apricots for that sweet, meaty and textured bite. When you realise the extent to which fruits and vegetables can be modified, a whole new world opens up.” He insists that there has been no evidence to suggest that GM foods are harmful or risky to eat. Eliyaz does not like repeating his experiments. So, he recently created a panacotta dessert with asparagus!