Housewife wins the International Indian Chef of the Year 2014 competition
Manjula Arumugan, a housewife from Harrow, scooped the International Indian Chef of the Year 2014 title on Friday 28th November 2014 with an expertly prepared, exemplary three course dinner. Alongside the top prize £1000, she also scooped the prize for the best vegetarian dish for her crispy sweet corn fritters. The prize is dedicated to the memory of Lord Fraser of Carmyllie QC who was the chair of the judging panel until his death in 2013.
The £250 Bertha Forrester Prize for the best dish was won by professional chef Mushfiqur Rahman for his Rajasthani lamb laal maas. This annual competition, founded by Edinburgh entrepreneur Tommy Miah to promote innovation and quality in Indian cuisine, was a success from its launch at the House of Commons in 1991 with the number of entries soaring from 400 in 1991 to a maximum around 5,000.
The competition is unique, with free entry open worldwide to men and women, amateur or professional, regardless of nationality or ethnic origin and has provided a pathway to success for ambitious cooks since it was founded. Expert cooks prepared to prove the excellence of their ideas and practical skills and compete with half a dozen others by cooking their ideal meal under scrutiny of expert judges can earn a world title. The challenge is to devise an ideal four-dish meal- two meat, fish or poultry, and two vegetarian. The oldest finalist so far was a 69-year-old Australian businessman, the youngest a 20-year-old Chinese woman from Malaysia. Others came from America, Bangladesh, India, France, Germany and UK – including a Japanese housewife
living in Scotland.
Most entrants and winners have been professional restaurant chefs but the list includes an English cook who prepared in-flight meals for first-class airline passengers. The Roll of Honour also includes the head chef of the UK’s oldest Indian restaurant, two housewives,
a college lecturer and a Bangladeshi man whose deportation was delayed to allow him to compete.
For restaurant chefs even getting to the final leads to a massive increase in turnover and nearly all winners found it win a stepping stone to bigger and better business. One early victor now heads a million pound restaurant business; another has built up a chain of highly regarded restaurants, while several have progressed from employee to owner status. Winners not working in the restaurant trade have also gained material benefits.
For one of the two housewives who won, success led to a cookery book and a TV series. The other was head-hunted for a catering lectureship. For one English cook, success meant promotion from cooking meals for first-class airline passengers to executive rank in the company producing them.
Finalists, selected on the basis of their submitted menu, have 2 1/2 hours in a training college kitchen to cook and present their meal to table. Cooking is closely monitored by a distinguished panel of judges, who taste all the dishes before awarding the title. The judging panel, which has included food trade experts, writers, and consumers such as Sir Tom Farmer and Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, this year included year 2000 winner Shamim Syed of the Durbar Restaurant; Redhotcurry.com founder Lopa Patel MBE; film maker Sushmita Mitra; Cathy Carpenter of HomeStart, the Family and Youth Resouce Centre; barrister and former member of parliament Keith Best and former CEO of Biman Bangladesh Airlines, Kevin Steele, among others.
For further details visit www.indianchefoftheyear.com
