Shaun Kenworthy tackles a gang of eager contestants during one of the heats in the city

My first brush with little ones and cooking was in London many years ago when I was a pastry chef. I had been asked to do an interactive workshop with a dozen or so tiny little ones at the Savoy hotel and I decided on chocolate. The stuff was everywhere on everyone, including myself in the end from head to toe and it was utterly fantastic!

The next bits and pieces was a one-off thing done in Delhi with a bunch of DPS kids, then again with Oxford Bookstore with kids aged 5 to 15 and some interesting homemade fresh snacky stuff, including deep-fried chocolate bars! And a couple of other things, similar to the thing I’d done in London. Then I started writing a kids column for a magazine and eventually, with much bigger but sometimes equally childish with our students at IIHM (International Institute of Hotel Management) and IAM (Institute of Advanced Management).

Next, the idea to have a competition for upcoming Class Twelvers came to mind where Class XII students across the country could participate and show their culinary skills. In the first year (2011), we managed to pull off the impossible with IIHM director Suborno Bose having the initial idea, which in all honesty given the time frame I thought ludicrous, with us planning and executing the whole thing from start to finish in only three months! Which somehow we did!

In that first year we had 300 schools participating, all-India and a final that took place with four finalists from the east, west, north and south that we flew to Bangkok to grapple head-to-head, in the kitchens of Kasem Bundit University and our first IIHM Young Chefs India schools winner, judged by me and Calcutta lad Chef Gaggan Anand of the famous restaurant Gaggan in Bangkok. Eventually and after two days of sightseeing thrown in for good measure, Samreen Patel from Pune was the winner of the trophy and a cheque of Rs 1 lakh and the title of IIHM Young Chef India Schools 2011. Hooray!

In 2012, the game became all the more bolder, bigger and broader. Now it was 3,000 schools competing in eight zones — Calcutta, Delhi, Bangalore, Pune, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Goa and Guwahati and to cut a long story short, we took eight finalists, one from each region, to London and the University of West London. Where we had almost four days of wet, windy and bloody miserably cold weather, in which I spent the best part of two days dragging them around London to see the sights and the following day, the competition was on.

As the clock struck 11, the panel of judges arrived and flagged the competition off to an almost rabid start. David Foskett (celebrated chef, writer, educationist and hospitality consultant), celebrity chef Atul Kochhar (the first Indian chef to get the Michelin Star for his restaurant Benares in London), another Calcutta lad Chef Andy Varma of the famous Vama and Chakra restaurants in London, Chef Dipna Anand of Southall’s Brilliant Restaurant. Oh yes, and myself of course.

Eventually, after a hard day’s competition and a not-so-easy judging session, we had a winner. Aditi Chand from Ahmedabad, a pukka Marwari vegetarian who actually cooked the most delicious Chicken Chettinad and brought back the big cheque of Rs 5 lakh and become our Young Chef 2012, with Calcutta’s Zainab Begum being the first runner-up with a cheque of Rs 1 lakh.

Communities secretary Eric Pickles was the chief guest and he handed over the Winners Trophy. In his speech, he had to make a mention of the fact that “these efforts would produce more Indian chefs not just in India but in UK. Especially with our national dish these days being Chicken Tikka Masala”.

In the meanwhile, Junior MasterChef Australia had taken over India’s culinary-minded, young and old, and the country was glued to it. By the time we started discussing how we would approach this year, the same age group of kids were suddenly much more culinary savvy and dying to get into the kitchen!

This year we’re not only targeting schools but also individuals who will be moving up into Class XII and can apply online. The prelims have just started in all zones but it’s still not too late to apply. The format will be pretty much the same, ‘Cook a curry and fly to London’.

All you need to do is log onto www.iihmyoungchef.com to register, cook an Indian dish at home and bring it along to your chosen location on your chosen date and our team will judge your dish and a little of your knowledge. After that, winners of the heats will be invited to the regional finals in Calcutta, Delhi, Pune and Bangalore and two individuals from each region will come with us in September, once again to fight it out to be the winner.

But if you are one of the lucky few, you’ll have to start doing some homework if you want to win, especially if the previous two years are anything to go by. I’m going to keep all rules etc for the finals under wraps until we meet in London.

Finally, this year’s heats out of the way, we’ll open India’s first young chef’s culinary academy in Salt Lake and run all manner of programmes for children aged five and above. It’s going to be great fun, so watch this space!