How MasterChef mum Depinder gives kids a taste of their roots

Depinder Chhibber may not have taken home the MasterChef Australia trophy, but she’s still dishing out plenty of wins — from curries that wow judges to tasty parathas for her two children. In her Newcastle kitchen, the 34-year-old mum loves turning cooking rituals into playful family time. Chhibber talks to Pallavi Shankar about her recipe muses, how her love for food was nurtured in the langar kitchens of Delhi’s gurdwaras, and the bond she shares with her toddlers

Does parenting come naturally to you? How do you manage its rigours?

Nurturing comes naturally to me but even then, parenting is not easy at all. I have to be very organised around the basics (especially in Australia, where there is no luxury of house help) like getting the children ready, packing their lunch, tucking them in bed, and so on.

It’s easy to feel scattered when you are a young mother to very young kids. Planning is how I can get everything done on time. I have ‘to-do’ lists and calendars to make the most of my time. Meher (3) and Piri (2) go to a daycare centre two to three days a week, when I am away at my part-time pharma job. I am not good at multitasking, so I segregate my career and care for kids. When I’m at work, I focus solely on that and am available exclusively for my kids when we are together.

Your first child arrived after your first MasterChef Australia innings in 2021. Was that a little scary too?

There’s no right time for a baby to arrive — it’s a blessing, but yes, it can be overwhelming. Thankfully, my parents and my husband Gurkirat’s parents are here, so I have an active and invested support system. During my first stint at MasterChef Australia in 2021, I had left my job to participate in the show. It was a career transition and out of the blue, I found out I was pregnant. But it was also during the Covid pandemic, so everyone was at home.

Looking back, I feel it was a good time to welcome motherhood. I was home and working on and off, so I cooked healthy meals, I read, I rested and took good care of myself.

What recipes did you make for your kids when they were young?

I gave them a lot of sooji (semolina)-based food like sooji kheer when they started having semi-solids. I gave ‘dal ka paani’, often mixed with pumpkin purée, apple purée, and other fruit purées. I also made large batches of pumpkin soup for me and my kids. It tastes great, is very nutritious, and is good for the cold climate of Australia.

Are your girls easy-going or picky eaters? Do they like your cooking, or do they criticise you sometimes?

They are typical kids — very fussy. Like all mothers, if I stick to certain things I know they will like, it’s easy. But if I try new things, I know it will take time for them to get used to. Meher is older and open to food experiments. Piri is fussier, possibly because she’s younger and still getting used to a variety of food textures and flavours. And yes, my kids are very critical of my cooking sometimes and will say, ‘This is yucky.

’ They are my harshest critics so far!

What do you pack in their tiffin boxes? Is it parathas, like you had in your lunchbox during your school days?

I have literally grown up on parathas. It was a tiffin staple in Delhi and even in Newcastle, I was proud of my parathas, and I ate them with pickles, while my friends had their sandwiches. For my girls, I pack a snack box, some fruits, eggs, and parathas are a common item too. I do many kinds of parathas, from aloo and methi to thepla-style. On days when there is nothing much at home, I stick to a regular wheat paratha made with ajwain, a pinch of turmeric, and salt — the same things we grew up eating.

I also mix leftover dal with dough to make a paratha. Meher and Piri love it, as do I.

As a parent, how do you inculcate a love of food in your kids? Have you introduced them to cooking yet?

My girls help me in the kitchen all the time. When I am making eggs or boiling corn, I ask them to mix salt and pepper in it. When I bake, I make them do the toppings and sprinklings. They also do the dough-making playfully. It’s not just about cooking. I want my kids to have a healthy relationship with food and make them understand that there is a process to it: someone grows crops on farms, which is bought from grocery stores and then cooked.

The idea is to make them understand that rice on a plate is not magic. Meher and Piri are exposed to a lot of food because I experiment with food at home, from India’s regional cuisines to Australian favourites. For them, I try to be as creative as possible. While I focus on Indian recipes, I also make sushi for them one day and noodles the next. They relish both.

What’s your favourite childhood memory of food?

I started cooking when I was around 12-13. We were new in Newcastle, and my mother used to travel a lot to India to visit my grandparents or for family functions.

I started cooking out of necessity, though my father also cooked, but it was personal interest above everything else. I remember an eight-year-old me sitting in the kitchen, asking different aunts how rajma or other recipes are made. They were never dismissive, explaining every intricacy of cooking with passion.

I absorbed it all. Those memories inspired my cooking in both seasons of MasterChef Australia.

Does your husband also cook? Is he a hands-on dad, or do you think he can pitch in more?

Gurkirat claims he can cook, but I don’t get to see him cook much because I am cooking all the time.

But he is good with barbecues, and uses the tandoor very well to cook meat. He’s a surgeon and works for very long hours, but that hasn’t stopped him from being a great father. He’s very hands-on at home and with the kids. There is not a single job he will say no to. He takes Meher and Piri for swimming, does their hair after getting them ready for school — he knows different kinds of hairstyles.

Full marks to him for my girls’ stylish hairdos!Gurkirat looked after the kids with my mother and his parents both the times I was on MasterChef.

My girls love him. One reason for that is he is very lenient, while I am stricter.

You intend to write a cookbook. Will it include recipes for children too?

I would love to do a cookbook just for kids. There are so many parents who sit there scratching their heads every evening, thinking about what we should make them for dinner. I think lunch is easy, but parents usually struggle with dinner. Creative ideas are needed to make mealtimes fun. There can be a chapter on ‘how to make dal more interesting.’

As I say, it goes beyond cooking. Involve your children in cooking and talk to them about it.

Show them how uncooked dal looks and how it changes colour when it’s cooked. Discuss flavour, food textures, and techniques of cooking without making it sound labourious, and they will start looking forward to it.

How do you keep your kids Meher and Piri connected to their roots?

My daughters belong to two different beautiful cultures. It’s very important to celebrate the nuances of both. We celebrate Rakhi, Diwali, Holi, and Christmas. I even make them ‘halwa-puri-choley’ during Navratri, so that they understand the connection of food with Indian culture.

I want to impart the same values our parents gave us to them, the same confidence about our identity. I tell them it’s ok to be different, look different, or eat something that looks and smells different from what others around us eat. We also take them to the local gurudwara whenever we can. They see me doing sewa at gurudwaras and cooking at langar. I always find myself cooking rajma, dal, halwa, or rolling out rotis at langar.

When we were kids, my brother and I used to go to Bangla Sahib Gurudwara, handing out food or cooking or washing utensils. Meher understands more about all this as she is growing up, and Piri will also figure it out if we are consistent with our gurudwara outings. Taking them there once a year won’t help build that real connection.

How is ‘Ghar’, your supper club, shaping up?

‘Ghar’ is a great avenue to present my food because it’s tough to open a restaurant in Newcastle.

Hospitality is demanding work with evening hours that don’t work for me, thanks to mummy duty. ‘Ghar’ is at my home, and it’s about giving people the experience of well-made Indian home food. Many people who have come to my ‘Ghar’ haven’t experienced that kind of authentic Indian fare before. Here, people dine with strangers and by the end of it, they are chatting, laughing, even exchanging numbers.

It’s also a cultural thing — what we learnt in langars — to sit together and eat.

Indian food is traditionally not fine dining. It’s a bit rustic and organic, and it’s meant to be shared. It is very rewarding to see people appreciate that kind of intimate experience. I serve foods from different states — Punjabi dal makhani, coastal Kerala thali, Rajasthani thali. The vibe is very desi and very warm, like an Indian joint family sitting together and enjoying home-cooked food.

Has motherhood also influenced your cooking in some ways?

It has surely made me faster because I am always short of time.

Thankfully, speed has always been on my side, and it also helped me rustle up dishes quickly in MasterChef. I always cooked fast, and now I cook faster to feed my little girls. While I give myself two full days to prep for a once-a-week meal for my supper club, my day-to-day cooking is just putting healthy, decent fare on the plate for my family.

What is your pre-sleep routine with kids?

We are an easy-going family. There isn’t a super strict routine, but we do have a schedule and some discipline.

All of us eat dinner together at 6.30 pm or 7 pm, and then Gurkirat and I play or talk to the kids and read them books. Sometimes, we solve puzzles together. Sometimes, it’s movie night. But sleeping time is non-negotiable, and I am strict about it.

Are your children aware of your celebrity status?

When we are out, if someone recognises me and asks if I am Depinder from MasterChef, before I can say anything, Meher asks if they also saw the cooking show. She gets surprised that others watched it too.

Both are too young to understand the concept of recognition and fame, and we don’t talk about these things at home. Plus, we lead a regular life, so things are the way they used to be before MasterChef happened.

What is that one annoying Indian parent thing you do with your kids?

When my kids are jumping from a table or generally making mischief — and I warn them against it — if they fall or get hurt, I do exactly what my parents used to do: tell them ‘I told you so.’ My husband doesn’t like this ‘Indianism’ of mine at all. But I feel frustrated, like most mothers do, and I can’t help doing it. I also started using a nazarbattu (evil eye bracelet) sent by my friend from India for my kids. I used to laugh at these things and swore never to do it.

But I guess you react differently to certain things when you are a parent and end up doing some silly-cute things that could be annoying too.