It is Imperative For a Student to Touch, Feel & Smell the Ingredient: Chef Mohib Farooqui,Associate Director, Culinary Arts, ISH

BY CHOOSING to pursue his passion for food as a profession, Chef Mohib Farooqui began an incredible journey that has taken him across continents and cultures. An alumnus of Le Cordon Bleu Sydney where he received the “DUX’ award for highest academic achievement, Chef Farooqui has over ten years of culinary experience in India and abroad. Currently serving as an Associate Director, Culinary Arts at Indian School of Hospitality, Chef Farooqui aims to bring the best out of each student. BW Hotelier recently interacted with him to know about his unique initiatives for the students at ISH.

How do you plan to incorporate your culinary learnings at ISH?

International exposure allows me to incorporate my varied learnings into the culinary curriculum.  Also by doing different workshops and themed culinary events which expose our students to different concepts and cuisines on a fortnightly basis. Our Emphasis on learning at ISH extends beyond the structured curriculum to reinforce the learning through varied workshops and events. We strongly believe in learning by doing!

What are the new techniques in learning you are bringing at ISH?

Although I strongly believe that basic fundamental techniques and skills are of utmost importance before a student starts learning new modern techniques, but since we do a lot of lunch and dinner events in our fine dining restaurant at ISH, students get exposed to new avant-garde concepts too.

Our Fine Dining training kitchen at ISH is equipped with an Ant—Griddle by polyscience, Thermal Immersion circulators for sous vide, Dehydrator, Paco Jet for Pacotizing ice creams and sorbets as well as a Liquid nitrogen dewar to modify texture and other cryo techniques.

What is essential for a student in terms of culinary training?

It is essential for a student to have practical know-how of a hotel/restaurant kitchen set up before he/she enters the industry for either internship or employment. Hence our culinary complex at ISH is designed to mock a full 5-star hotel kitchen set up with all the ancillary sections as our learning centres where students are rotated around on fortnightly basis.

What are the gaps that you notice in Indian culinary education which you want to bridge upon?

It is imperative for a student to touch, feel, smell an ingredient to understand it well. We are making sure to get the best of the products and ingredients for our students to learn how to handle them. For example, just recently we have switched to A2 Milk at our campus which is 4 times the price of regular whole milk as well as organic coffee beans. We are also working with small farmers and the earth collective market in Delhi to get our culinary students to understand the importance of sustainability and clean good produce.