Whoever said margarine is only good as a bread spread? Meet the city chef who set a world record by making a 6.5-foot-tall Trimurti with the butter substitute
It took chef Devwrat Jategaonkar 10 days and three failed attempts to create the massive Trimurti sculpture
Two months ago, if you happened to be near the Arrivals section at the domestic airport in Santacruz, you would have spotted a massive, pristine sculpture of the Trimurti - a trinity of Brahma (creator), Vishnu (preserver) and Shiva (destroyer) staring at you from within a glass cabin. Almost 6.5 feet high and 8.5 feet wide, the life-size sculpture, on view for a month, was made of nothing but 1,506kg of margarine, a non-dairy substitute for butter. The work of chef Devwrat Jategaonkar, it earned him a place in the Guinness Book Of World Records recently.
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"The main criteria for the record was to create it with margarine, without the support of beams or wires. That was the biggest challenge," recalls the 40-year-old Mumbai chef, who has worked in the kitchens of cruise liners and city five-stars. He currently features on Marathi cookery show, Aamhi Saare Khavayye, and also helms the kitchen of Travel Food Services, which backed this endeavour.
Jategaonkar proudly displays his certificate from the Guiness World Records team. Pic/Shadab Khan
The chef's tryst with margarine began in 2012, when he created a Cinderella sculpture for an international culinary competition in Germany. He beat 1,800 chefs from across the world to bag a silver medal. "However, it was a Western concept. I was keen to show Indian heritage using this medium. So, I zeroed in on the Trimurti. The measurements are according to the rock-cut sculpture at Elephanta Caves. I visited them thrice to observe the details," shares the chef.
Working 14 hours a day, Jategaonkar took 10 days to create the mammoth structure. "At home, I had created a replica with 60kg of margarine, but working with over 1,000kg was a different ballgame," shares the chef, who had to witness the collapse of the structure thrice before he finally perfected it.
"It was a difficult time. There was a problem with the temperature in the cabin, which is why the structure kept melting. We brought it down to 18°C, and it worked. There was also a lot of pressure because we were being watched by travellers," reveals Jategaonkar.
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