It always gives me great pleasure to share my knowledge with the new generation and this time the opportunity came in the form of a cooking competition. I was privileged to be invited as a judge in this inter-collegiate flameless cooking competition held on 5th February 2019. Students from more than 12 colleges from Western suburbs in Mumbai participated with great enthusiasm eager to display their passion for cooking and creativity. Nirmala Memorial Foundation college of Commerce and Science is a popular college affiliated to University of Mumbai in the Western suburbs providing high quality education to its students. It was an excellent opportunity provided by the management to motivate young talents and provide them with an exposure of cooking in a constrained environment. It was a great initiative taken by Gujarati cultural association of the college for students of junior and degree college students to enable them to discover their passion and culinary skills and eventually explore the various opportunities to shape their culinary career in future. My co-judge chef Shushant Parab, the executive sous chef of Hotel Shahara star was extremely knowledgeable and amicable personality and with his guidance and cooperation we could do justice to the young competitors.
The judgement was given based on various parameters including innovativeness, taste, organizational skills, teamwork, creativity etc.

The students used various ingredients like bread, biscuit crumbs, milk, vegetables etc. to prepare ingredients ranging from chaats, Shakes, ice creams, salads ,sandwiches and even cakes. The final dishes were delicious as well as creative. Some of the dishes worth mentioning were:-
Barbie doll Cake
Slices of bread soaked in sweetened whipped cream sandwiched whipped cream ,fruits, fennel seed candies and mint flavored sprinklers.

Bread chumchum
Bread based sweets soaked in sugar syrup and flavored with coconut. Absolutely delicious. The texture was melt into mouth and yum.

Mini sandwiches with sabja seeds
Tasty pin-wheeel sandwiches prepared with the filling of vegetables and rolled on chia seeds which gave a crunch to the sandwiches.

Freak shake
A pretty looking milkshake with ice cream powdered chocolate and a hint of coffee.

Maggi bhel
Sounds weird. But surprisingly it tasted great. Prepared with a combination of Maggi noodles( straight from the packet), roasted peanuts and various spices.

Chocolate canapes
Edible mini baskets were topped with chocolate truffles prepared with cocoa powder, condensed milk, digestive biscuits ad chocolates forming crunchy chocolaty balls.

Sprout canape chaat
The edible canapes were filled with sprouts and various vegetables and spices. It tasted great and looked healthy.

Chocolate lava cake
The idea seemed great. The mini cake was prepared with bread, condensed milk, cottage cheese, biscuits etc. filled with flowy chocolate Hershey’s syrup at the centre but a lava cake needed to be served hot, so the dish failed to impress .

Corn cones
Roasted papads stuffed with spiced corn kernels.

Overall it was a memorable day ,wonderfully spend among the young students and colleagues and food.
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