JASWANT SINGH GANDAM / RAMAN NEHRA
India Post News Service
PHAGWARA: Faculty of Hospitality at GNA University organized three days’ culinary Master Class on advanced cooking techniques and modern plating for the aspiring chefs.
Chef Sanjay Thakur, the Resource Person, a passionate chef from the Himalayas Himachal Pradesh (India), and Flight Chef with Etihad Airways shared his extensive experience to train students with food pairing, menu planning, and modern cooking techniques.
Chef Sanjay demonstrated the latest cooking trends used in high end and Michelin star restaurants as sous vide method, confit, use of whippers for foaming. Chef Sanjay completed the STEP trainee program with the Oberoi group and moved to Melbourne Australia to pursue Hospitality management with Holmes colleges and joined the Langham hotel in Melbourne.
Chef Dr. Varinder Singh Rana, Deputy Dean, Faculty of Hospitality, delivered a welcome address and shared about the importance of sustainability of ingredients.
During the three days of the workshop, Chef Thakur focused on some of the common ways that food texture can be manipulated in exciting ways and took the students through the necessary hands-on process and popular techniques in “molecular” cuisine, primarily altering appearance and feel of foods.
The art of transforming natural ingredients, which are often used in the food industry fused with common elements to enhance existing cuisine disciplines, and concepts amazed the participants of the workshop. Natural ingredients like seaweed, poultry, meat and other plant extracts & food additives were used in the best possible way. The resulting food preparations were spectacular, unexpected, and took the cuisine experience to another level without too much effort.
The workshop trained the students the fundamentals to kick start a gastronomy journey which can open the doors to countless possibilities in classic and new world cooking. The workshop was fun, exciting viz-a-viz an excellent learning experience for all the participants.
The first day of the workshop was dedicated to pre-preparation and learning about tools and equipment used on fruit juices & food extracts for popular molecular techniques like spherification & gelification using sodium alginate, calcium lactate, xanthan gum & agar.
During the second day and third day of the workshop, the chef trained the students in making purees, coulis, tulips using fruits, vegetables, and even sea food and poultry. The bread was the attraction for the day, which was served topped with a modern version of the pindi chole. Chef answered the queries put up by students. Overall, it was an informative and fruitful session for both the students and the faculty members.
S. Gurdeep Singh Sihra, the Pro-Chancellor, GNA University, appreciated the efforts of the faculty of hospitality and motivated them to arrange such fruitful workshops for the students.
