The students of ISBR recently participated in ‘Food Carnival’, a cooking competition organised by the Human Resources (HR) club of the college.
They had a fun day cooking up meals in a jiffy and the challenge for the students was to prepare dishes without using fire.
“Our presentation of the dishes was what gave us an edge over the others. We had planned in advance what we should do and how to go about it,” said Neha Lalan, a first-year PGDM student who along with her team members Muhurtha Bekal and Neha Prasad walked away as the winner. The team prepared cheesy bites, carrot crunch, corn sandwich and chocolate mousse. “We enjoyed preparing the dessert the most. It was challenging but we had enough time to prepare it,” said Neha Lalan.
The trio enjoys cooking and said it was a good experience. “I have been cooking for a long time now and enjoy it quite a bit. So I think it was only natural that we won,” added Muhurtha. Pointing out that the competition gave the students a break from academics, Neha Prasad said, “It was a change from the routine. It was fun!”
Pappashree Baburaj, a first-year PGDM student who prepared cucumber churmuri, hot dogs and jaljeera felt that her team could have done better. “We made a couple of blunders which could have been avoided. For instance, we served our dishes in paper plates and cups. Since we are all hostelites, we did not have access to crockery. That’s where we lost out,” she said. “But we will keep this in mind in the other competitions that we take part in,” she added.
Students themselves had to fetch the ingredients and bring in appropriate cutlery and crockery. Ashwini Sharma, an MBA student along with her team tried her hand at Arabian-style food.
“I think we could have chosen better dishes and used better ingredients. There were a lot of restrictions as we had to make the dishes without fire,” she said.
Vishnu Vardhan, who was part of the organising committee, said, “There were ten teams which took part, with three members in each team. Some students wanted to know why the HR club was holding a cooking competition. We told them that the HR team in any organisation is responsible for conducting activities in an organisation. At a smaller scale, we wanted to do the same in college.”
He added, “These days, quizzes are redundant. Hence, we thought this would be something new.”