My cooking… now one may fall short of words in describing it. My first encounter with the saucepan and gas flames was at ten years old. Tea was the first thing that I learnt to cook. I also tried my hands in omelette making and few snacks like sandwiches, as an 11 years old and proud to declare they were quite a success. And that was that. I learnt nothing else relative to cooking till my mid twenties.
I will like to share one more experience when my grandma came visiting. My parents were out of home due to some family emergency and telephoned that they would be late. And then the inevitable happened, instead of ordering food I decided to cook. The food on menu was ‘egg curry’ and it would be anybody’s guess that the end product was disaster.
The egg curry that I made was all watery, sugary, slimy stuff with broken half boiled eggs floating at the top. And the sight was enough to make everyone throw up. My grandma became the object of my experiment. She ate the product with a twitched up face.
Those were the times when there were no school of culinary arts in Varanasi as there are now. Cooking then was a complete household affair and it’s the women folk who ruled the kitchen.
Fastforwarding to the modern times, now one can find good culinary schools in every small city and towns where the students can learn everything by complete hands on training. Culinary course in Jabalpur, for instance are designed in such a manner that they cater to the needs of gentry as well as the genteel class.
These courses are available in the form of short term as well as long term courses. Hence, the enrollees have options galore over the type of course they want to pursue. The available courses in Jaipur, Gurgaon, Bangalore, Bhatinda, Amritsar and several other cities in India are according to international standards and norms.
One such culinary school worthy of mention is Academy of Culinary Arts in Bangalore where one can learn everything related to cooking art by chefs who are a master in their trade.
If such culinary schools existed in my time, at least my grandma wouldn’t have to tolerate my egg curry. Sigh !!