For many of us, one of the earliest experiences of immersive cooking was a gentleman at a roadside stall chopping vegetables at startling speed, throwing them into a large wok on high flame, adding boiled noodles and sauces — green, red, soy — in quick succession. Chef Ajay Chopra was among those wide-eyed witnesses — a young boy growing up in Alwar, Rajasthan, before his family moved to Sonipat, Haryana, when he was nine. The noodles at the Chinese cart, across Alwar, Sonipat and, later, Delhi continued to be his soul food. And decades later, it still tickles something in him. So naturally, he said, “I am going to make you a Delhi-style desi chowmein.” Now a household name, courtesy MasterChef and a YouTube channel with over a million followers, reaching here, however, wasn’t easy. He was studying PCMB (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology) in Class 12, when he was intrigued by a friend’s career choice of hotel management.…