Recipe for grit, entrepreneurship

KOCHI: As hotels and cafes closed their doors during the lockdown, home bakers and food enthusiasts cashed in on the opportunity to conduct cooking classes, thereby birthing hundreds of new home chefs. Simultaneously, food bloggers whose careers seemed to be on the line instantly improvised their content and sailed smoothly this year. 

Home bakers
Sarah Zia, the owner of ‘Fluff in a Cup’, conducted online classes throughout the year. “People from various sectors attended these online classes to learn baking out of passion. The number of orders was no less either - I strongly believe that people ate a lot of cakes in 2020 to feel good,” she said.

Candida Rodrigues of ‘Sugar Bowl’ did not have enough time to conduct online workshops owing to the number of orders she received. “I received more orders from celebrities compared to previous years,” she said. Bhavana Baby Maliakkal, founder of The Sugar Sifter mentioned that the Covid situation has not affected any baker.

The year also saw the rise of niche comfort foods. Dishes like kizhi porotta, nidhi porotta, pull-me-apart cakes, homemade shawarmas, bucket chicken and fish nirvana trended for months. Home chef Damien Jude Reynolds who began ‘Project Portugal’ in 2020, hit the jackpot. “Kochiites have started experimenting with global cuisine,” he said.

Another entrant Manasa Benny George curated her ‘Once upon a Thyme’ during the lockdown period. She offers gourmet meal boxes serving dishes including Coorg pork curry, bao buns, Boston bake and all-day English Brekkie on Sundays. “The year greatly favoured all the home chefs and home bakers. Also, homemade was preferred over restaurant-food,” she said. 

Food Bloggers
Food writer Teenu Terrence described the lockdown as a ‘return to her roots’ period. “We understood the importance of sustainability and how much we were taking the food supply chain for granted. I think a lot of my content this year focused on self-sustainability and home cooking,” said Teenu. “We were clueless on how to proceed as all the restaurants in the city were shut for quite a while. But then we focused on content production based on cloud kitchens and take away counters,” said Karthik Murali, co-founder of Eat Kochi Eat page.