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A delectable pizza, pasta that’s almost perfect, half-baked cake and sometimes just plain Maggi — these are just some outcomes of youngsters cooking during those special ‘group-cooking’ sessions with their friends. While some dishes turn out to be absolutely delightful, there have been times when their experiments in the kitchen have resulted in total disasters. Students who have cooked with their buddies share their experiences…

“Once, my friend and I tried to make pizza at my aunt’s place. We kept the pizza base in the oven without knowing the proper settings. When we opened the oven, the pizza base was completely burnt. I think it was a case of ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’,” laughs Harshitha Sontha, a BCom student from Bhagwan Mahavir Jain College. But they did manage to take proper instructions later and make a pizza that turned out to be scrumptious.
Another time, Harshitha and her friends tried baking cake, but it turned out so hard that they couldn’t even cut it. “We have also experimented in the kitchen. Once we made Maggi with extra chillies — it was yummy and we also make varieties of bhel puri,” she says.
The best part about cooking with your friends is that you don’t have to be a professional chef and are entitled to make mistakes while dishing up food. Student of Mount Carmel College Rithika Karumbaiah too has had her share of cooking disasters, but thoroughly enjoyable ones. “We made pasta which was really good. We tried making mocktails, which ended up like mixed juice. We made dessert which never set, but we ate up the whole thing. While all the girls were busy cooking, the boys just wanted to eat,” says Rithika, who feels that a cooking session with your pals helps you to get to know them better.
Tasty pasta and cookie dough is what Sanjana Kumar and her friends ate at their group-cooking session. “We decided to make pasta and cookies. At the end of it, we were so tired that after finishing the pasta, we just ate the cookie dough. We were lazy to bake them,” she laughs.
Not everyone has had catastrophic cooking experiences. For engineering student Shilpa R. and her friends, group-cooking has always been blunder-less. “When my parents were out of town, all my friends landed up at my place and we made pani puri, soup and pav bhaji. It was really tasty,” she says. Their gang even cooked for a friend on her birthday. “We made roti and curry, pulao and trifle pudding. Each of us helped out with whatever we were good at,” says Shilpa, who always cooks Maggi and French fries with her best friend.
So go ahead, and discover the chef in you!

Ikyatha Yerasala
The Asian Age