For several months, many Class XI and XII students from seven Indian cities have been burning the oil. Not the midnight oil, because that is best saved for exam time. But cooking oil, where everything from a home-made chicken curry to a gourmet bake have been experimented with!

With 45 days to go for the September 18 finals of the Young Chef India Schools 2015, in association with t2, things are narrowing down to the seven finalists, one each from the International Institute of Hotel Management (IIHM) campus cities of Calcutta, Delhi, Jaipur, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. They will compete for the Young Chef title at the University of West London. “The east had the maximum turnout like every year with almost 6,000 students competing in the heats, followed by Delhi. We had good numbers in every city,” said Suborno Bose, the boss of IIHM.

What have been some of region-specific culinary trends from these young boys and girls? “We saw a lot of state-specific dishes, which a child is familiar with in his/her growing years. For example, we saw tons of Dal Bati Churma in Jaipur, which is typical. In a city like Delhi, there was Butter Chicken... but interestingly, in Calcutta, we didn’t see too much fish... maybe a Prawn Malai Curry or a Bekti Paturi,” observed judge and mentor Shaun Kenworthy, who has made a stop to most of these cities in the last few months. 

“The most challenging part was that different states have different holidays so we had to start as early as February this year in some cities,” added Shaun.

The last two editions of the Young Chef title have been claimed by Calcutta girls — Garima Poddar (2014, Calcutta Girls’ High School) and Simran Kapur (2013, Modern High School for Girls). The wait is on to see which city takes the trophy home this time.

MARK YOUR DATES
August 7-8: Semi-finals in Calcutta at the Sector V campus of IIHM
August 9-12: Semi-finals and regional finals in the other six cities
August 12: Regional finals in Calcutta
September 18: Finals at the University of West London with one finalist from each of the seven regions

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Text: Karo Christine Kumar