Chef cap on! Students whip up culinary magic at Shyam Lal College
Just a few ingredients, when added skillfully, can make a tasty dish. With that thought, students from colleges across Delhi-NCR created platters of lip-smacking flavours at the recently held competition, University Chef 2023, organised by Shyam Lal College.
Visuals from a reality TV cooking show soon turned real as the 18 teams rushed to source their ingredients and plate the final dishes before the timer went up — while managing to churn out delicacies like sarson ka saag, makke ki roti, pasta and Kashmiri wazwan, to name a few. Out of the competing platters, what won the judges’ hearts were the rustic flavours of Bihari cuisine prepared by Shivani Kumari and Khushi
Kalra, first-year students at Institute of Hotel Management, Pusa. “For the final round (three-course meal), we cooked litti chokha and bachka (similar to a pakora), and sealed the deal with sewaiyon ki kheer as dessert,” shares Kumari, adding, “In the street food round, we made tamatarki-chaat, and the magic box round gave us ingredients such as paneer and corn, so we cooked shahi paneer in a taco made of makke ka atta.”
This celebration of culinary arts witnessed enthusiasm just like the pre-Covid times. Sidrat Mehraj, a first- year student of BA (Prog) at Zakir Husain Delhi College, shares, “Be it the tussle to get the frying pan first or the ticking timer that gets our heart racing, such events enhance our knowledge and cooking skills.”
We chose to represent our culture through Kashmiri cuisine for all three rounds — street food, mystery box and threecourse meal. SIDRAT MEHRAJ, Student, Zakir Husain Delhi College