All posts of Shaheen

Jam Making

I made jam. A gorgeous, deep ruby red raspberry jam. The kind of ruby red you get only when you make it at home. I am not a big jam eater, so I never really venture into this territory. I do have a few books on canning and jam making, in the hope that one […]
12 years ago

TRAVEL: Eating in Lisbon

As soon as I completed the Intermediate Cuisine course at Le Cordon Bleu, Arjun and I left Paris for Lisbon. We wanted to spend a week on holiday, something that was overdue considering the city around us had shut down for the summer for the past 6 weeks. I’d wanted to visit Lisbon for a […]
12 years ago

Corn Pancakes

Last week, I was overjoyed at the sight of fresh corn on the cob at the markets in Paris. I promptly stocked up on both white and yellow corn and ate them in the way anyone from Bombay would – roasted over open flames, an improvisation over burning hot charcoals, and rubbed copiously with half […]
12 years ago

Week 6: Life As A Culinary Student

The regions we covered at Cordon Bleu this week were Champagne, Auvergne and Côte d’Azur. Or, to be more precise, we just touched upon these regions, because for most of them, we study only a traditional three course menu, which is not doing justice to them. So, it would be ideal is to supplement the […]
12 years ago

Citrus Scented Baklava with Walnuts, Pistachios and Almonds

I have a Baklava recipe that I’ve been meaning to share for a while. It’s a terrific recipe, this one. And my friend, Jennie, who taught me how to make it insists that I chop the nuts by hand only and not skimp on the spices that might seem like a bit too much when […]
12 years ago

Week 5: Life As A Culinary Student

I absolutely hate having a practical class that involves cooking fish on a Monday. Why so? That’s because the market is closed on Monday, so the fish is typically ordered in over the weekend and is sitting in the walk-in refrigerator in its own liquid until Monday morning. A restaurant would scale the fish, clean […]
12 years ago

Week 4: Life As A Culinary Student

Week 4 of Le Cordon Bleu was fun with staggered classes and loads of events city-wide leading up to Bastille Day on Sunday. One of the things I was really excited about cooking was lobster. This was the first time I made lobster the size of a chopping board. As soon as we got to […]
12 years ago

How To Go To Le Cordon Bleu On A Scholarship

Dear Aspiring Culinary Student(s), I’ve been getting a bunch of emails about cooking school and culinary scholarships lately so I’m going to try my best to answer all your queries about going to culinary school, and even better, going to culinary school on scholarship. Should you have more questions, please leave them in the comments […]
12 years ago

Week 3: Life As A Culinary Student

First thing on Monday morning, we had our class photo. I was really excited for this, but it was quite disheartening to see that most of the class didn’t show up. We are a batch of 38 students at the Intermediate level, but you can see just 17 of us in there. Oh well. ** […]
12 years ago