Chef In You is a team of 2. The Wife (D) and the Husband (K). The complete process behind the scenes (and in front) starts right from scratch – researching ingredients, buying organic foods, cooking a palatable meal, taste testing, presenting, making it come alive (photography), writing about the experience, making the ‘bites’ into ‘bytes’ with smooth transition and most importantly (in K’s opinion) eating – where these chores are divided between D and K each doing their thing in order to bring it to your table. Needless to say (yet can’t insist enough!), each and every recipe is tried and tested in our kitchen.

Chef In You? What’s with the name?

We feel Cooking is an art – something that can be done by anyone. Some have flare for it, while others attain it with practice and patience. It the end, it is achievable by all and to cook something new or exotic, one need not go to a culinary school or become a Chef. In our humble opinion, with proper guidance and correct step by step instructions, which is what this blog is all about, we feel that we can bring out the Chef In You. Hence the name.

Chef In You- How did it happen?

ChefInYou is a garden.Like any kitchen garden, the site did not grow in a day. There is a small story behind this. Umm…A little flashback here….

“D” had been blogging for a while at http://culinarybazaar.blogspot.com. Soon readers started taking an upturn and customization started becoming a real pain in the *** . She also couldn’t tolerate her geeky husband K’s nagging ( now wait..a..minute..!! isn’t that the wives job by the way?) to move to a separate domain. So they planned, designed the layout and started putting something together. But then they found that their life itself was quite a handful. So her dream of her own domain remained just that – a dream, for a long time.

Time passed by… days turning into weeks and weeks into months much to the chagrin of D’s blogging buddies – you know who you are So D and K once again decided to work towards the dream but this time, they ‘smartly’ (cough!)thought they would make someone else make their dream come true. Hire a gardener to grow their garden, so to speak. But the outsource route was a bigger pain in the *** than the customization. Things fell apart faster than they started -  lack of communication, incomplete functionality and the layout becoming frightful by the day- in short a complete disaster!

That’s when D and K decided enough is enough and took everything into their own hands. They started everything anew and decided to grow their garden themselves. So this garden is what you see in front of you as Chefinyou. Everything you see – the concept, the design, the code and the content (the food, i.e) of this website – is 100% organically homegrown by the duo.

Whats different about this blog?

Like any apron clad cook, D started out with a recipe here and a recipe there to enhance her repertoire. That was not as simple as it sounds

- a supposedly golden crust would turn out black,

-a clear soup would become a gravy (or should I quote “RRay” and say “stoup”? ) and

- a so called delicious dish would most often grace the kitchen sink.

It happened often enough and D’s frustration knew no bounds since there was no easy way to know where and what went wrong! Hence D felt it would help someone like her, to know, the transition of the dish from the start to finish. Every recipe you see here – be it simple or difficult, is naked with respect to the process that it undergoes and which we believe will help you in your experiments. Our final picture of a recipe will surely not be a far cry to yours when you make it in your kitchen – you know how the dish is supposed to look at every step with the help of the pictures and hopefully it would help to bring out the Chef in you .

What recipes can we expect from here?

This blog is an Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian site. Sounds very fancy shmancy – but it just means that all recipes will be based on a diet consisting of Vegetables, Grains, Dairy including Eggs. So all you enthusiastic foodies searching our site for “chicken soup”,”chicken curry”, “rabbit recipes”, “rabit stew”,”fish”,”Beef Bourguignon”,”snapper” , so on and forth – we have to say, “sorry to disappoint you”. Our tag line in the header, we assumed, spoke for us! Guess,w e assume too much sometimes! Quick look at what to expect -

• Healthy Vegetarian Recipes
• Vegan Recipes
• Baked Goodies
• Eggless Baking
• Gluten Free Recipes
• Wholegrain Recipes
• Quick Under 15 minute recipes

….and few more categories in between (low fat, kid friendly, Holiday/Festival recipes – you know the usual predictable stuff!!!!).

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s)

1. So do you mean to say that all my recipes will come out perfectly if I follow your instructions?

The blog DOES NOT guarantee that you will get all the recipes right. But it would definitely help you find out where you went wrong which I personally think is half the battle won!

Then of course you always have my e-mail in case you have a doubt with the recipes -  or if all you want to do is to vent out about the outcome!!

2. You don’t seem to mention the amount of salt in many of your recipes. I love my food hot – it doesn’t seem that spicy either! What’s with your taste buds?

Most of the recipes have our taste buds in mind. Our level of salt or spice in a recipe will obviously be less/more to many others. Hence I would appreciate it if you could use this blog as a guideline to get inspired,enlightened and curious – just the way many others did for me Use your discretion and your preferences when it comes to seasonings used in the recipes here

3. Do you do Product Promotions?

The idea of this blog is NOT to promote products unrelated to food, or promoting places/foods which I have personally not used. Whatever product I talk about has been used personally by me and which I vouch for from my experience.

4. What about Photography? What techniques or tools do you use to take pictures?

The pictures used in Chef In You has been taken by me ( hence copyrighted) and my aim is to present pictures which are as close and real to food as possible. I use a Cannon Rebel XT to take my pictures.

- I do NOT use heavy processing or photo shop elements to morph my food pictures and 100% of the pictures (unless otherwise mentioned) are kept as real as possible.
- I do not own any studio or photo props (shucks! That really sucks!) and the pictures are taken in natural light most of the time with only plates and paper napkins as additional props. Occasionally I may use artificial bright lighting in case of improper natural light.

5. There are quite a ‘She did that’, ‘He said that’ at Chef In You. So are you opinionated?

Not Really. Well not all the time. Rants at Chef In You are 100% mine and done to occasionally blow of steam or to seek assurance of specific opinions from you readers without any ulterior motives. I do not do that to hurt or ridicule anyone – its mostly a way to lessen my anguish about instances when others do the same to me.

6.What about the recipes? Where do you get them along with all that food related information?

Some recipes are the ones “borrowed” from family, friends and few friendly strangers. Some others have been adapted from Experts, Chefs and other media like Books, TV, Internet etc while few others are the ones when “Food Fairy” suddenly zips and puts ideas on my head! So are the food related information. They are shared in the hope that such knowledge would prove to be as useful to you as it was to me. Since no one is perfect, I might be fallible with few opinions and I would appreciate it if you could point it out politely and without being judgmental.

7.Commenting Policy at Chef In You

Feedback/comments are one of the most appreciated and highly welcomed aspects, I look forward to.  I do not insist that all your comments be only praises and appreciation of the post or me ( although I of course do not mind it at all ) but I do mind if your criticism  is not a constructive one and does not follow ethics of decency or politeness. In that case, I will surely choose to ignore and delete your comment or answer back in a similar fashion depending on my mindset at that particular moment.

8. Do you do Recipe Requests?

Of course! I believe that one learns more by sharing and making recipes you want helps a lot in honing my own knowledge set. Do drop in a line with your recipe requests and I will do them as and when humanly possible by me . Please keep in mind that this is a Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian site ( that means I make recipes which consists of a diet of vegetables,grains,dairy products as well as eggs. …). No meat or sea food based recipe pls. Although I would love to convert a meat based one to without

Do you have questions for me? Shoot it out and I will answer it as soon as possible. Hope your stay at Chefinyou is delightful to all your senses. Your positive feedback is always welcome.