Grand Trunk Road Restaurant - Activities Week 2019
Head Chef Dayashankar Sharma from the award winning Grand Trunk Road restaurant visited our school on 17 July 2019 to run a free cookery session with a group of 16 year 9 students during the school’s Activities week.
Grand Trunk Road, Winners of Best Indian restaurant in London in 2019 have been twice awarded Michelin plates over the last two consecutive years and are hopeful to receive a Michelin star in the future. This follows their (Chef Sharma, Rajesh and Sonja Suri’s) successful achievement of this accolade at the Tamarind restaurant (as the first Indian restaurant in the world to achieve a Michelin star), prior to the opening of their new project, Grand Trunk Road in South Woodford in 2016.
The session started with the students conducting online research about the restaurant. This then led to an interactive question and answer session where Chef Sharma was kind enough to inspire our students with anecdotes about his childhood; how his mother inspired his love of cookery; his love of foods from other countries – from China to Italy and his desire to encourage all young people to be competent cooks as a life skill– regardless of whether this is for a career or not.
The students then split into small groups to simultaneously replicate the chef’s demonstration of the following dishes:
- Butter Chicken Masala
- Butter Masala Paneer
- Rawalpindi Ka Kebab (Chicken Kebabs)
- Jeera Aloo (Cumin Potatoes)
- Pilau rice
Students had regular opportunities to ask questions to Chef Sharma while they were cooking. This ensured that they were constantly engaged throughout the session and given continuous opportunities to learn about each of the authentic ingredients (kindly provided by Chef Sharma) which they were using.
Leandro, one of our future GCSE Food Preparation and Nutrition students asked Chef Sharma what steps he would need to take in order to become a professional Chef. He also stated that he was really inspired by the Chef’s visit and personally asked Mr Sharma whether he might be able to do work experience with him in the future to which Chef was agreeable.
Knife Skills
Chef Sharma was kind enough to demonstrate the safe holding and usage of knives during cookery, reinforcing the key skills taught to them within their lessons.
Quality of the ingredients is the key to success!
Chef Sharma talked about the importance of using top quality food suppliers whether it be meat or fish. He said the key to a successful career in the food industry is using authentic ingredients and being consistent in your efforts to be the best in what you do.
We would like to thank Grand Trunk Road for the amazing opportunity which they afforded to our students. Mr Sharma and Owner/Restauranteur Mr Rajesh Suri kindly volunteered hours of their time to ensure that this event ran smoothly. This included of making a pre visit to our school to review our facilities and also creating a 4 course menu (with rice)which was palatable for 13-14 year olds. Our students were also lucky enough to receive detailed recipe cards from Chef Sharma for each of the dishes they prepared as an extra memento of the day.
Big thanks also goes out to Mrs Lefley, Ms Butt, Ms Coan,Ms Stenton, Mrs Coppel, Mr MacDonald and Mr J Davisson for assisting with the organisation of this event.