On 25th september, MUSA announced the “Top” chef event which was one of the few virtual events in Monash. Students from all schools were encouraged to participate in the 4 day event. I had the privilege  of being able to interview Ridma who was one of the participants and the winner for not one but two dish categories. Ridma is an engineering student which frankly surprised me because the stereotype is engineering students don’t have time for anything that doesn’t get them closer to an HD, so seeing him taking the time to participate in this event was interesting. Especially when I asked him what cooking meant for him. He said “when I first joined uni, cooking was just a necessary skill but then I started cooking dinners for my friends and it stuck to me I guess and it became a love language. And the food, i just love food in general, i don’t spend money on anything notable so i get to experiment with cooking a lot!”

Non vegetarian

Ridma made the Aglio Olio Spaghetti with prawns. For this dish, Ridma recalled his Sri-Lankan heritage for the spice factor, but also wanted to create something easy and simple as he is a student. Combine those two elements and you get a perfect home cooked meal for one.

Vegetarian

For this section, Ridma made spicy garlic and mushroom tomato pasta. What he lacked in meat, he made up for it with punchy ingredients. I asked him about his biasness to pasta. He answered “The thing with pasta is that you can put all sorts of ingredients in it and it will still come out good and it’s so versatile and that’s why I love to cook with it.” personally i love pasta too, not because i’m broke though. Definitely not..

When asked about his thoughts about Top Chef, Ridma said that he really liked the whole event as it gave an opportunity to destress before exam season hit and he would love to participate again next year. Thank you Ridma for having time to chat with me and I hope to see you win again next year too!

Interviewed & Written by Fasihul Alam