(March 24, 2024) With a heritage that includes East Indian, Goan and Tamil genes, Chef Michael Swamy wanted to be a photographer and documentary filmmaker like his mother, Jane Swamy. At the age of eight he was gifted his first camera, and he grew up wanting to shoot food and travel the world. To translate his passion into a career, his mother suggested he first become a chef where he would have thorough knowledge of his subject. Chef Michael recalls, in an interview with Global Indian. “I did my degree in hotel management in Mumbai where I grew up, and a Grand Diplome de Patisserie at Le Cordon Bleu in London. Then, I worked with Noon Products in London – they are in the frozen Indian food business. Menu planning at Kuwait Airways followed, and I also started food styling and consulting once I returned to India. Some restaurants wouldn’t have big budgets so I would do the photography for them too.” All this between the years of 1995 to 2000.
Chef Michael Swamy
One life, many passions
An early start doing multiple things became the underlying foundation of his career. Multi-tasking is really his super power in the sense that his career doesn’t only follow one path. A diploma in photojournalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications in Mumbai ensured his photographs are a blend of technique and skill and they tell a story.
A multi-cultural background has led to a unique style of cooking and creating recipes, making the food media part of his career a significant one. He says, “I worked with Masterchef India Seasons 1 and 2, where I would handle all the backend aspects. I was teaching contestants, the chefs, arranging the ingredients …. I also worked with other TV channels including the BBC. This media work is ongoing; I have been doing it for the last 15 years. Recently, I worked with the Canadian Consulate and other Consulates like the Spanish, Chilean and Peruvian trade commissioners, to promote their products through several forms of food media.”
However, it is what Chef Michael currently does that has his friends envying him. He is associated with Pugdundee Safaris, a company with six resorts in Madhya Pradesh, where he is the Consultant Corporate Chef. Here, he designs menus for the resorts and trains the kitchen teams who cater to upmarket wildlife enthusiasts from across the world. He works in a similar capacity with the Te Aroha Resort in Dhanachuli in Uttarakhand and also has worked with Jim’s Jungle Retreat in Corbett.
Among other things, he teaches food styling at Symbiosis Institute in Pune and at the Welcomgroup Graduate School of Hotel Administration, [WGSHA] Manipal, which is considered to be the third best culinary institute in Asia. He also edits and designs the content for a newsletter that he publishes, called #FineDiningIndian.
Considering his love for photography and wildlife, he literally gets paid to do what he loves! Cooking and taking pictures. He agrees. “My friends always say they are jealous because I am living my dream life. I not only get to explore rural India, but also apply my learnings at the lodges in the midst of the nature. At Pugdundee, when the guests are treated to bush dinners, we use age old techniques with my spice blends and cook in earthenware over firewood or dung cakes…something that is done all over India.” Ingredients he likes to work with when in the city, include almost all English vegetables like asparagus and Brussel sprouts; salmon and cod fish, as also pomfret and prawns and lamb.
On the Spice Trail
Masalas are a signature of Chef Michael’s oeuvre of work, whether it is the recipe books he has written or the food he cooks. He creates his own blends, using the spices from various regions of India. He not only adds them to his dishes, but uses them as marinades and rubs before cooking. Spice rubs on lamb, which is then coated in clay and baked for four hours is his speciality. Though he has been asked several times to start his own line of spice blends, he says he doesn’t have the mental bandwidth to do so. “I would rather be a Michelangelo than a businessman. I like to create, that is my thing.”
Speaking of creating, Chef Michael has also authored several cookbooks. Masala Dabba is one his best-known, featuring recipes that have been created using spices from all over India. The East Indian Kitchen features recipes of the community; there is also a book for diabetics called The Diabetic Cookbook and six simple cookbooks for children on topics such as baking, desserts and drinks.
International yet Indian
Currently busy with pop-ups of Bhutanese cuisine across Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Kolkata for the Accor Group of Hotels, Chef Michael reveals that he is not a fan of progressive Indian cuisine. He says, “A minor twist here or there doesn’t make your food unique. There is a lot of hype about progressive Indian cuisine; I don’t agree because there are a lot of brilliant Indian chefs out there innovating with international techniques and Indian ingredients and no one knows about it at all. For example, Chef Srijith Gopinathan of The Taj in San Francisco in the US, got two Michelin stars ten years ago but few people know about it. Chef Naren Thimmaiah of Karavalli in Bengaluru, Chef Gagan Bedi at the Kheer Restaurant at Roseate in Aero City, New Delhi, make amazing Indian food yet they go about their work quietly, with the media not bothering to bring them into the limelight.”
Having said that, the challenges he faces lie in convincing people to adapt to local tastes. “When Gordon Ramsay cooks for you, you don’t ask him to tweak it the way you like it. There is only so many times one can make a Butter Chicken or a Palak Paneer.” In fact, when he was in London, he has even cooked for several celebrities who were guests of GK Noon and at the Bombay Brasserie.
A different lens
Luckily for Chef Michael, photography is his other major passion and his social media feeds are always brimming with pictures of stunning sunsets, arresting images of tigers and birds. He says, “Beyond tigers, I love shooting river terns, and birds, especially the common kingfisher. My favourite forest is undoubtedly the Kanha National Park.”
Future plans for this multi-talented chef include launching his own wildlife company some day that will offer sightings in the forests couple with culinary adventures – exactly what he is doing now except that will be on a freelance basis. He is also looking for sponsors so he can shoot a film documenting food and travel stories. Given how much he has already achieved in the last 25 years, Chef Michael is likely to reach this goal too in the near future.
You can follow Chef Michael on Instagram.
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