Triumph in India’s beloved cookery competition was only the start for Nayanjyoti Saikia. The boy from Assam is on a mission to bring his family recipes to the masses, he tells Sudrisha Goswami.

In the vast map of India, the hamlet of Tinsukia in the north-eastern state of Assam is a tiny dot that Nayanjyoti Saikia calls home. “I never imagined that I would compete in MasterChef, because nobody from the north east had ever been on the show,” he says. 

Saikia would emerge as the first north-eastern homecook to lift the MasterChef India trophy following 13 weeks of challenges. However, it is not the title that he considers his biggest victory: “The day I got my white apron was when I knew that I would be able to make it on my own.”

A MasterChef success story is not written in a day

Growing up around an extended family, Saikia’s love for food is rooted in his home, where he watched his mother and aunts play with flavours in the kitchen. For little Saikia, just holding a ladle and stirring the food in a pan was an accomplishment. He says: “Food is my love language. The satisfaction I get from cooking and seeing people enjoy my food cannot be compared, even if I scored a hundred out of a hundred in my examinations.” 

Saikia started experimenting with his cooking in 2015 after he moved to Guwahati, Assam, to pursue a Bachelor of Engineering. The city opened the gates to myriad new ingredients and opportunities. He started building a food blog on Instagram, going from one restaurant to the other – seeking a break into the culinary world. 

However, the switch from engineering to professional cooking was not an easy one to make. “Nobody wanted to give me a chance because I do not come from a background in hospitality,” he says. Years of tireless efforts and rejection had taken a toll on him. “Somewhere in my heart, I had started accepting that I will probably never be able to pave my path in this industry.” 

Saikia’s family also envisioned a more secure future for him. “My father always wanted me to either follow his footsteps and become an engineer or help the family tea garden business.”

A relentless Saikia showcased his culinary art on @the_travellercook, his food blog on Instagram. His page caught the eye of many, one of whom worked on MasterChef and invited him to audition. 

While battling on the show, Saikia recollects receiving elaborate lists of questions from his father on each call. “He would ask me if I was doing okay before handing the phone to my mother and standing next to her, murmuring questions to ask me. My mother would then playfully scold him and say, ‘You were just speaking to him. Why not ask yourself?’” he says with a smile.

Not seeing family amid the cutthroat competition added a layer of difficulty to the show. When the time came for the ‘family challenge’, where contestants were surprised by visits from their family members, Saikia saw his father walk through the doors of the MasterChef kitchen. “I burst into tears upon seeing him proud of how far I had come in the competition,” he says. “I refused to watch that episode until my friends told me that most of the scenes with me weeping were cut.” 

Far from home in the MasterChef kitchen, Saikia dished out flavours from Assam throughout his time on the show. If there is one dish that defines Assamese cuisine, it is haah aru kumura, a delectable preparation of spiced duck meat with ash gourd that leaves any Assamese drooling. Saikia’s gourmet twist on the dish in the competition finale won him the MasterChef title.

Despite the long journey to the culinary crown, he could not resist a little laugh when the time came to inform his family of his win. “I called my mother, sounding very low. My entire family was gathered on the other side of the line. I told them that the competition had just wrapped up. No one spoke. Absolute pin drop silence. After a pause, I said, ‘Eh, I just won the competition…’ I heard a mix of confusion at first and then a roar of cheers,” he says. 

“I received a lot of love and recognition from winning MasterChef India. But it is the white apron that was the reward for all my hardwork.”  

Limelight on the north-east of India

While Saikia knew north-eastern Indian food is often overlooked in conversations about Indian cuisine, the season seven MasterChef winner felt the gravity of misinformation first-hand in a conversation with the contestants during his time in the competition. “When I told the other participants that I had not tasted momos [a type of dumpling popular in north-east India] until I was 16, they were in a state of utter shock. They thought momos and noodles are all we eat. That is when I realised that people know nothing about north-eastern food.”

He resolved to tell more people about north-east Indian cuisine once he left the MasterChef kitchen. “Assamese food (food from the state of Assam) has many similarities with food from the state of West Bengal; the way we cook with mustard oil, for example. However, the rest of north-east India largely samples a boiled diet.” 

Don’t picture the gym-goer’s standard boiled chicken breast when thinking of north-eastern food, Saikia pleads. “We may not use a lot of spices but the fresh herbs and aromatics in our cuisine pack bursts of flavours,” he says. “It is the kind of food that makes your body happy.”

After emerging as the winner of MasterChef India, Saikia took it upon himself to use his platform to promote north-east Indian flavours. His series on Instagram, “Food from the Northeast,” features recipes and visits to local farmer’s markets.

Clusters of farmers from remote and distant corners of Assam and other parts of north-eastern India visit towns and cities to set up stalls with the freshest produce from the day. These farmer’s markets are called haat bazaars, where indigenous harvests, meat, and ingredients are sold from sunrise to sunset. Reminiscing about his childhood, Saikia says: “I would always drop by the Sunday haat bazaar in my hometown on my way back home from art classes and be fascinated by the sight of fruits and vegetables I had not seen or heard of before.”

He also underscores that many ingredients from across the globe glamorised by the media as ‘exotic’ are locally available in the north-eastern region. “We see pandan leaves of Thailand and think of them as exotic ingredients when they are the joha paat growing in our homes,” he says. “Passionfruit is often considered exotic when they are growing in our forests.” 

Saikia is in the process of innovating gourmet dishes with local ingredients from the north-east for his first cookbook. He says: “Through the book, I want to put north-eastern food in the limelight from a fine dining perspective and attract people to the largely unexplored potential of our cuisine.”