Helping Out In The Kitchen Turned This Retiree Into An Instagram Influencer & MasterChef Contestant

He started out in the kitchen photographing and helping his wife. Now he has 14,000 Instagram followers.

Senguttuvan Subburathina, 72, turned chef after retirement to help his wife with daily kitchen chores and fuel his passion for cooking. He has since then been the senior-most contender in 2021 SunTV MasterChef Tamil, making his way to the top 24 out of over 1500 contestants and becoming a food influencer on Instagram with over 14K followers.

A former business manager at Godrej with 35 years of experience in the corporate sector, Subburathina, like many others we feature in Silver Talkies, proves that retirement is not about giving up but living a new life, a new passion and exploring oneself as a new person.

What brought him to the kitchen?

“I started serious cooking about five years back. I am not a professional chef and I would call myself an amateur home chef. I retired about 12 years back and subsequently, I started pursuing my passions, mainly photography. I started venturing out taking pictures of wildlife - animals and predominantly butterflies. I started acquiring special lenses, travelled to various locations and focused on photography. And then, over time, besides wildlife photography, I started doing food photography as well.” according to Subburathina, that’s what eventually drove him to cook.

“I started posting my food photos on a platform by Google that allowed you to stock up and share photos. However, it shut down sometime and I shifted to Facebook and started posting my photographs there. I had gained some social media following by then. I used to take photos of the dishes cooked by my wife and shared them on Facebook. Then, some of my Facebook friends insisted that I join a foodie group and I started posting the photos of my wife’s dishes there and gained quite a bit of appreciation. That’s how slowly my interest in cooking began to develop and in an attempt to give a helping hand to my wife, I got into cooking.”

In his work life of 35 years, Subburathina travelled regularly and was hardly ever home to help his wife. That’s why post-retirement, he decided to make up for it. Over the last four to five years, he has been cooking regularly and thoroughly enjoys it.

All about his Tamil MasterChef experience

“With day to day cooking, I began to develop an interest in a variety of cuisines like Italian, Mexican and more and started trying my hands on them too. With time I opened my cooking page on Instagram and started getting love from my Insta followers. I would cook my dishes, take photos and post them on my Insta page. That’s how the casting agency for Tamil MasterChef picked me up,” he says.

The auditions were an extensive process. Subburathina had to appear for the auditions in two phases - one in Chennai and the final round in Bangalore. In the final round, he had to take part in live cooking and cooked millet soup that got him to the main episode.

“It was an unforgettable moment to be selected as one among the top 24 contestants out of 1500 contestants who were auditioned for the Tamil MasterChef. It was an intriguing experience for me to be in front of 15 cameras shooting the scene. That was happening to me for the first time. That too with leading Tamil actor Vijay Sethupathi hosting the show. The TV show did get me new friends and all the co-contestants were very friendly and my Instafamily were happy that I was able to make it,” he says.

Instagram and his grandchildren are his sources of encouragement

“Best moments for me as a chef are the appreciations that I get from my family and Instafamily daily. I have 14000 Instagram followers. While I do not claim myself to be an influencer, it feels great to see the wave of boosting up that comes from my followers. Also, the requests from my grandchildren to make unique dishes for them make me try new dishes and my passion continues. Throughout the lockdown, I have been the sole pizza and burger maker for my grandkids and I loved making them,” he says.

Subburathina loves using the word seenager. He believes that age is just a number and one must keep pursuing a passion and not be idle in the older years.

He also shares with us two of his favorite recipes which are easy to make, tasty and healthy for older adults.

Caramel Pudding

Ingredients: 4 eggs, 1/2 litre milk, sugar & vanilla essence.

Method:

In a pan add 6 tsp of sugar and one tbs of water.

Let it melt and keep stirring. When the colour turns brown, remove from heat and pour it into a ramekin and rotate to enable it to spread uniformly (I used glass bowls). Ensure that the caramel is not overcooked to dark brown. It will turn bitter.

Beat the 4 eggs well, adding 1/3 cup of sugar. Add 1/2 litre of hot milk slowly and keep stirring. Boil it, stirring continuously so that the content thickens and coats the ladle if it is lifted from the milk. Pour the content into ramekins. Cover ramekins with foil.

Procedure 1:

Keep the ramekins in a cooker filled with water and over a raised ring (make sure that water does not touch the container/ramekins). Cover with a lid and cook ( don’t use weights) for 20-25 mins until the pudding is ready.

Procedure 2:

Place the ramekins covered with foil in a water bath and keep them in the oven and cook till the pudding is formed.

Once done, allow the pudding to cool. Refrigerate for 3 hours and de-mould (release the edges of the pudding from the mould with a sharp knife before de-moulding). Enjoy!

You can do plating with a sugar caramel cage.

Amaranth Soup

It is a simple, desi soup that can be made in a jiffy with just simple ingredients.

Ingredients:

Amaranth 11/2 cup (wash well and collect the leaves, cut and keep )

Cooked Dal - 2 TS

Garlic - 3-4 cloves

Ginger - 1 inch

Cumin / Jeera - 1 -TS

Crushed Black Pepper Powder - 1/2 TS

Onion -1

Salt to taste.

Method:

Put all the above into the pressure cooker, add a cup of water and cook for 2 whistles. After pressure is released, blend the contents, draining water. Sieve and discard the lumps. Add back drained water and adjust pepper & salt to taste. It is ready to serve.

(Option: Instead of cooked dal, you can add powdered dal while cooking. You may use Toor, Green gram or Chana Dal )

All photographs courtesy: @sengut2006/Instagram