LPU Hotel Management School organized Japanese Cookery Workshop

Jalandhar: Usually it is considered that Japanese foods are non-vegetarian in both contents and preparation; however, it is not always there as many of the Japanese dishes are based on vegetables, rice, sauces and normally used oils and condiments in the vegetarian dishes. Endeavouring for the same, the School of Hotel Management and Tourism of Lovely Professional University (LPU) conducted one-day exotic workshop on Japanese Cookery, first of its kind in the region of Punjab. For this, celebrity Chef de Cuisine Sumit Chowdhury of the Azure Hospitality Chain was specially invited to conduct the workshop. Chef Chaudhary forwarded hands-on experience to the participants for 20 Japanese Recipes in the day-long workshop. More than 50 participants from different cities and educational institutions across India were skilled about preparation of Japanese cuisines & flavours, table manners, condiments, variety of flour, rice, noodles etc.
In fact, the workshop was an effort to help the participants to understand and relish the old and authentic style of Japanese cuisines in reality. Participants acquired special artisan skills passed down for generations, as Japan has a long and traditional history of culturing vegetables. There are an almost infinite style of pickles each unique to their specific region. Many vegetables are pickled in a medium, such as the byproducts of sake, shoyu and old miso. As such, most of the recipes taught to the participants were based on vegetables, rice, noodles, beans, cheese, sauces, pickles, oils, salt, sugar and more. These recipes included Vegetables Rainbow Roll, Japanese Pickled Roll, Miso Soup, Aagedahi Tofu, Asparagus Tempura & Cream Cheese, Matsutake Sui Mono, Vegetable Tempura, Grilled Asparagus, Mizuna salad, Vegetable katsu Don, Vegetables Casserole with Tobanjan sauce, Grilled Vegetables, Miso shoyu Ramen, Burnt Garlic Fried Rice, Sticky Rice Cake Wrapper in Azuki beans, Dora Yaki and more. Worth telling, Japanese fermented foods like soy sauce, sake, and miso draw from the same ingredient family-rice, salt, soybeans, and a natural, live fungus “koji”.
Chef Chaudhary shared: “I am very happy to be at one of the largest universities of India, LPU, and on sharing my oriental cooking experiences with students, teachers and elite cooking enthusiast persons from across the country. I want to inform that the indefinable loving taste of Japanese preparation is a mystery to many because many a time it is savoury but not necessarily salty or meaty.” Forwarding a message to the hotel management programme’s students, Chef Chaudhary said: “Hotel management domain is very hard working so keep on focusing your career in it. Never held in mind the enjoyment of a celebrity in the initial phases; however, it comes of course by keeping head down and going on and on.” Illustrative, many LPU hotel management students are employed with international hotel industry in USA and more countries with salary package up to Rs 26 lakh.
Workshop participants, Prof Anupam Alok from Bhopal, Vibhuti from New Delhi, and Prof Maninderjeet Kaur from Gurdaspur unanimously admitted that the workshop was excellent one and it was the nicest learning of life for them: “The way the instructor unlocked the magic of Japanese Miso fermentation and taught us about ingredients and cooking processes in all simplicity and easy to understand is superb.” LPU Human Resource Development Center (HRDC) also collaborated with the School of Hotel Management for the workshop.