Beer chocolates and mud crab claws

My Week

"Hall number 11..." Corporate Chef Manjit Gill of ITC calls to give me the venue. I translate this to mean the CII-Indian hospitality fair at Pragati Maidan. Last week, Chef Gill had invited me to judge a "Culinary Challenge" but I'd imagined this to mean half-baked attempts by F&B students. As I enter Hall 11, I am taken aback. The focus here is on a huge "show kitchen" where bonafide chefs from about 14-15 hotels are competing. Everyone looks dead serious and the gaggle of onlookers is kept in check by an officious guard. "Madam andar nahin ja sakte," he says. "Judge hain," I snap proudly and step in while someone ushers me towards the teams and gives me a clipboard with the "examiner's sheet". A look, and I am terrorised. There are 14 parameters to be marked on including "proper usage of equipments" and "correct usage". Months of preparations have gone into each team's efforts and another senior chef tells me that at least 100 people from her hotel have been involved in planning the menu for their team and training the participants. I am completely weighed down! My co-judges are two food writers and three senior chefs and I immediately latch on to the most knowledgeable-looking of the chefs to augment my technical know-how. The participants are even more nervous. There are points for hygiene and as I go looking for stains on uniforms, I spot some contestants hastily pulling on gloves. They've got it wrong though. The senior chef by my side chides them "" latex gloves shouldn't be worn while doing hot cooking!

Wednesday
I make a semi-final appearance today. Eight teams have made it and everyone seems more in command, including us. My favourite is Saurabh from the Claridges who is making some divine beer chocolate and the ITC team is chugging along with mud crab claws. I spot my favourites early but am loath to reveal them. (On Monday, a sharp fellow-judge reacts to my choices with a snide "Oh, really!") Food writers are a notoriously competitive lot and everyone is once again playing snob-snob "" a not-so-important consultant-judge is met with stony silence when she dares ask "what is this?" (soy soup) repeatedly.

Thursday
Alas, will miss the finals. But am not unhappy. Am off to see Baba Anand, an artist, who is going to cook us khao suey for a column. Ramola Bachchan is visiting him in the morning, so I am to show up only by late afternoon. Photographer in tow, I ring the bell once, then twice, then many more times... Is he hiding Bachchan? we wonder. Finally, he emerges, "...Sorry, was in the loo!" I ensure he is as honest when it comes to the recipe. There is a secret ingredient he doesn't want to share. He is persuaded otherwise.

Also...
Friday is the first day of the Navratras and I have been intending to fast today. But Sula owner Rajeev Samant is in town, available only today, and I must catch him for lunch. I make my excuses to the deity and plan to go totally satvik. Accordingly, I choose a vegetarian gnocchi but when Samant chooses a glass of Vigionier for me, I am in a fix. Finally, I lift my glass and say, cheers!