The Hindu Business Line : Don the chef's hat

Many a die-hard gourmet is not always a great cook herself. And even if she cooks well, she might score high when she tries specialities of her home, but an attempt at a foreign delicacy might turn out a total disaster. Agree?

As for cookbooks, many are useful, some are appealing, but only a very few actually tell you where you go wrong. Ingredient lists give measures by grams, cups. Often, even if you use the proportions of ingredients mentioned in the book, it doesn't always turn out the way it should.

Cooking shows and user-generated YouTube cooking videos guide you to a certain extent, yes, but there is nothing like learning it from the chef himself, and cooking along with him.

Courtyard by Marriott in Chennai has come up with a unique Cook & Dine concept at Rhapsody, their fine-dining restaurant that serves home-style Italian cuisine - where you'll get to learn the art of making traditional Italian delicacies and pastries under the guidance of Master Chef Suresh Thampy.

All you need to do is gather some ten men/women with similar cooking interests, decide what you want to learn, either Indian or Italian, pizzas or pastas, and quickly write to Marriott.

And Chef Thampy will invite you to his secret kitchen to cook along with him, without you having to spend a penny. The icing on the cake is that Marriott offers a 15 per cent discount on a lunch buffet at Paprika Caf‚. If pastries delight you more, Chef Thampy will take you into his baking kitchen too.

Marriott plans to organise these classes on Sunday afternoons when Rhapsody is closed for lunch.

Recently, when Chef Thampy held a session for about 90 women from the Rajasthan Cosmopolitan Club, he mailed 10 recipes to the group prior to the cooking session, and taught them the knack of preparing authentic Italian dishes. His signature dishes included Beet and Artichoke salad with red wine vine grate; citrus salad with orange and cinnamon dressing, Sun dried tomato arrancinni and fried Mozzarella with basil pesto and some mouth-watering pizzas.

Are you ready to prepare these delicacies to restaurant standards?

Buon Appetito!

Life Desk