Chefs in Delhi cook up tasty treats for Covid-19 patients

NEW DELHI: When restaurateur Radhika Khandelwal saw home chefs posting online about cooking meals for Covid-19 patients, she realised that with her experience as a trained chef and availability of her professional set-up she could manage far more meals. She also felt that such meals didn’t need to be just staid dal, chawal and roti and could be rich in nutrients needed for recovery from the disease.
Khandelwal tied up with farms in and around Delhi and requested them to donate their extra produce for the meals. She posted about preparing meals for Covid-positive patients in home quarantine in Greater Kailash-II, where her restaurant Fig n Maple is located. Within no time, she received many orders.

Eat, pray, love: Hotels send out Covid meals
Since then, she has been sending out almost 200 meals covering 60-80 families in the locality. The meals include an array of dishes, right from tamarind fish curry to Vietnamese eggplant with noodles, Burmese hot pot and risottos made of barley paired with either pumpkin or beetroot, chicken with grilled peaches and kodo millet, Vietnamese fish with noodle, pumpkin coconut risotto and chicken or veg noodle soup.
Chef Anchal Bhalla Chopra of Tastesutra started sending out food to her friends and family members battling Covid-19 after realising that there were many people who didn’t have anyone to cook for them, but needed nutritious meals to recover quickly. As word went out, friends and family members chipped in with help. The Sainik Farm RWA decided to help with deliveries, along with home delivery services WeFast and Dunzo. Within no time, she was sending out 150-200 meals daily.
Many professional chefs, restaurants and hotels are using their experience and kitchens to send out nutritious meals to Covid-19 patients, health workers and the underprivileged across the city. Rather than merely preparing rice and rajma in bulk, these meals are nutritious, hygienically prepared and reasonably priced or if there’s a donor, free of cost.
Restaurateur Karan Nambiar observed that many senior citizens were in isolation. Their children were in different cities and domestic workers were not being called to avoid undue exposure to the disease. Their major issue was food. He turned his burger and pizza cloud kitchen into a meal preparation centre for senior citizens and Covid patients. Alumni from his alma mater, Modern School, pooled in resources and he started sending out hygienic good quality lunch boxes free of cost. A lot of his friends and customers regularly started donating for the meals. As a result, his kitchen has been able to send out almost 2,500 meals so far.
Hotels, too, are busy sending out Covid-19 meals along with regular gourmet orders. Hyatt Regency has joined hands with Entrepreneurs Organisation Delhi, a business network, to deliver set menus for lunch, mid meals and dinners to Covid-affected families or frontline workers. Some of their major demand has come from hospitals where the workforce needs quality meals just like patients. JW Marriott Aerocity has been delivering meals to Covid-positive patients within a 10-km radius. With multiple facilities being turned into Covid care centres and for housing doctors, Taj Hotels is using its experience of preparing nutritious meals and delivering over 20,000 meals within the city to medical personnel in hospitals.
Restaurateur Varun Puri of Imly said that unlike last year, this year has been about battling health emergencies within the family. Food has become an important aspect of recovery. Food delivery services also started a “ghar ka khana” section, which enabled many brands to tweak their menu to suit the needs of patients.
From outlets like I Sacked Newton donating meals in Noida to Lite Bite Foods’ multiple brands delivering subsidised meals across the city, restaurants have also become the preferred outlets for people willing to donate meals to the underprivileged. As a result, they have started giving about 2,000 meals to the underprivileged daily.
Puri said nowadays many people were gifting Covid meals to friends and looking at options to meet the protein, carbohydrates and vitamin requirements for faster recovery of patients. He added that a balanced diet was the need of the hour and many people were ordering that for friends or family.