New Delhi: Chefs from across the country were pitted against each other and encouraged to add artistic flourishes to daily fare in 'Culinary Art India 2016- Battle of Chefs' that concluded here recently.
A five-day festival, organised by India Culinary Forum in association with Hospitality First and ITPO saw participation of 300 chefs from across the country and abroad, exhibiting their culinary skills.
The food extravaganza saw competitions under 16 categories over four days including authentic Indian Regional, Artistic Pastry Showpiece, Fruit and Vegetable Carving, Petit Fours and Pralines, Three Course Set Dinner Menu, Three Tier Wedding Cake, Plated Appetizers, Dress The Cake, Plated Desserts and Mocktail.
137 chefs were awarded in different categories. The chefs were judged by a jury comprising of celebrity chefs from all across the globe participating as honorary guests. The jury was presided by Malayasian Chef Shanli Ong Beng Yew.
Yew believes that Indian cuisine is globally famous and does not require any further advertisement.
"I think that Indian cuisine is already globalised. It's imperative that all stakeholders within the culinary fraternity make a concerted effort to promote a nation's cuisine to the global audience and also to compete in as many competitions regionally and globally," Yew said.
Expressing his love for Indian food, Yew said that Indian cuisine comprises of exotic flavours and the kaleidoscope of spices are found here, making it unique and standing for itself.
"Indian food has always been flavourful and perceived exotic to the rest of the world. It's the kaleidoscope of spices found in India that made India different from the rest. Indian food should be promoted in a larger scale to the world community and should always remove the perception that Indian Food is equal to 'spicy food'," he said.
Yew said that competition would help in career development and advancement.
"Competition is always the arena for training, exposure and skill development. Hence it is important that every Chef should go through the "baptism" in some point of their career development & advancement," Yew said.
The 11th edition of the festival scheduled from March 15 was aimed to create awareness about the profession and felicitate the achievers in the line of their work.
"The objective of CAI is to offer fellow chefs a professional platform to showcase, exhibit, hone culinary skills and raise the overall Indian Culinary Art at par with international standards," Chef Davinder Kumar, President, Indian Culinary Forum said.
The 16 categories of the competition comprised 11 showcase and 4 live cooking sessions also. The panel of 15 members judged the participants.
"This is the first time that I have participated in such a culinary extravaganza. I've prepared Dastarkhwan-e-awadh, my specialty in the 10 years of my career as a chef. There are a lot of new things to learn," 30-year-old chef Md Imamuddin, a participant from West Bengal said.
Another participant, who has been participating since 2012 and has also bagged gold medals and the Outstanding Chef of the year 2015 had prepared 'Chocolate Kurukshetra' with rich compound chocolate without moulding.
"I contributed 4 to 5 hours every day for the last 1 month to prepare this. I wish to one of those celebrity Chefs through this competition, more than the money what matters to me is creating my own identity," Chef Mohd Asif said.
The winners were awarded on at an eloquent gathering in Raddison Blu, Noida recently.
