GOWRI MANICKAVASAGAM
Badshah Masala, the spice brand with the iconic “Swad Sugand Ka Raja” jingle has organized the first-ever Bemisaal Badshah, a cooking competition to discover the best chefs & cooking talent of the spice-rich Indian cuisine in Ahmedabad on August 29.
There were eight teams consisting of family members mother-daughter, mother-in-law-daughter-in-law, including a mother-son duo.
Two renowned chefs from Gujarat – Chef Aanal Kotak (instagram.com/aanalkotak) and Chef Surbhi Vasa (facebook.com/chefsurbhi) – were the juries in the final round.
After the two-hour long tough contest, Dharti Unadkat and Avni Doshi were adjudged as the winners. They were given the first prize of Rs 50,000 and also the title of Ahmedabad’s first Bemisaal Badshah.
Anjali Shah and Pratima Sanghvi bagged the first runner-up prize of Rs 25,000 and Sweta Singh and Aditi Ragahv came as second runner-up and was given Rs 10,000 cash prize.
Speaking with navjeevanexpress.com, Badshah Masala Managing Director Hemant Jhaveri said, “We have invited the contestants online through our social media handles. 183 teams have applied between July 29 and August 10. Around 89 people from Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar have submitted their Paneer Butter Masala to the selection committee members at pre-designated venues. From the entries 10 teams were shortlisted for the final contest but only eight teams have taken part in it owing to health grounds. The final round saw the finalists prepare an entire meal of their choice from the wide variety of Indian cuisine.”
“Bemisaal Badshah has been devised as a format that will be held city-wise all over the country to discover the best of the best chefs. The project has been launched with the first event in Ahmedabad. Eventually, the event will discover the best talent of each region and then the winners will battle it out to be India’s Bemisaal Badshah in a grander event with even bigger prizes,” Jhaveri added.
Talking about the selection criteria, Jhaveri said the first round of the competition required submission of 100g of the best Paneer Butter Masala the teams could whip up. Professional chefs tasted the submissions from among the multitude of entries and selected the best 10 to move ahead to the final round. The entries were judged on the basis of taste, consistency/texture of gravy, overall quality of the dish, aroma, colour, and presentation.
Answering a query on the purpose of holding this contest, Jhaveri said, “We at Badshah Masala believe good ingredients are what makes great chefs, and great chefs are what makes cuisines great. Our Indian cuisine is already great, and the flavours and spices known to the Indian palate are rapidly spreading throughout the world. We need as much talent as possible in the culinary arts to take our traditions to the next level. Indian food must achieve its true potential as one of the leading cuisines in the world. There is so much diversity in Indian cuisine! Badshah Masala is proud to be part of this grand legacy of Indian spices and Indian cuisine. Indian cuisine is several millennia old. Badshah joined this journey in 1958 but it has steadily built a legacy of its own as “Swad Sugandh Ka Raja”. I wish the cooks great success and want them to know that Badshah Masala is always ready to support great talent like theirs, on whose shoulders rests the responsibility of carrying forward our proud traditions and the heritage of the Indian ‘taste’.”
