Food Fest - Tradition with a twist

When I was asked if I'd like to judge the food fest event at MOP Vaishnav College, I immediately said okay. Later the dean, Dr Usha Ravi, wrote a detailed email and I was stunned to see that were 200 confirmed participants.

As I entered the college campus this morning, I just went back in time. Sigh college days! We were 4 of us on the panel - Chef Kaushik (Eatitude Consulting, The Mad Chef), Meera Maran of Terraco, Muna - runner up in the Tamizhagathin Samayal Champion contest and yours truly! As we lined up in the guest room, the dean told us they had additional registrations and now the number stood at 250! Massive!

We wondered how we were going to judge and had to quickly come up with a strategy! We were handed the scoring sheets with a list of parameters. We stepped out on to the ground and all we could see were nervous and expectant faces.

We moved through the first few participants and then decided to split the task. Each of us did about 60 odd dishes. Some were amazingly creative while some were very ordinary. There were sweets, savories, full thali (in some cases - one Kerala Sadhya, one Rajasthani Thali and one Punjabi Thali) and healthy recipes. Few in particular that I really loved were the vadai and noodles wrapped in cabbage,  dosa burger and a drink made of banana stem and mint! Yumm!

There were participants from most of the city colleges - Ethiraj, Stella Maris, WCC, Queen Marys, IHM and Anna Adarsh and of course, the host college - MOP Vaishnav.

If there's one thing anyone should do before letting others taste your food, is to first taste it yourself. There were quite a few dishes on display that the participants had no idea how it tasted and we certainly didn't want to be the guinea pig :) (if you know what I mean)!

But, I must say, this has been an incredible experience in more ways than one. To be able to discuss food with someone like Chef Kaushik and Meera Maran and to be part of an event of this scale is truly a delightful experience, especially on a birthday. This was one superbly organized event by the Food Science Department - loads of volunteers and the professors did an amazing job. The principal and dean were around and personally supervised the event!

Some pictures from the food fest: