Diwali Vegetarian Indian Cooking Workshop – LIVE ONLINE, Interactive with Nantha Kumar

Diwali Vegetarian Indian Cooking Workshop – LIVE ONLINE, Interactive with Nantha Kumar

Sunday, October 31, 2021

1:30 pm – 3:30 pm  HST (7:30 – 9:30 pm EST) 

$39

20% Discount for Golden Circle & Platinum members

Join Nantha for a culinary trip with the South Indian diaspora to sample dishes that you will love to prepare for Diwali!  A proponent of inexpensive and relatively simple street food-style dishes, Nantha’s food is a mix of Malay Indian and Nonya (Peranakan) cuisine, the latter coming from Chinese migrants to the Malay Peninsula. 

Together we will make:

• Sambar (dhal-like vegetarian curry)
• Stir-fried long beans
• Cucumber/beet raita
• Turmeric Basmati rice
• Black glutinous rice pudding in coconut milk

Join in from your home kitchen to prepare your own authentic Indian food! By the time you finish this cooking workshop, you will have lovingly prepared a meal for four people just in time for Diwali! Learn to make a delicious, vegetarian Indian meal, whose flavors will make your mouth and mood happy! With humor and grace, Nantha brings you heirloom recipes and simple cooking techniques from his family home. 

To make the most of your workshop time, Nantha asks you to chop and measure your ingredients in advance. Please allow yourself a good hour of prep time BEFORE the workshop, having everything ready to go in your kitchen when you sign in! 

INGREDIENTS LIST:

Nantha includes this list for your shopping convenience and suggests that you choose local and/or organic foods whenever available!

• 3 onions chopped (2 large, 1 small)
• 2 cups of diced vegetables: half-inch cubes of potatoes, carrots, and eggplants
• 1 cup diced tomatoes.
• 1 pound oriental long beans, or French beans
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 1 cup shredded beets
• 4 tbsp lime juice
• 4 tbsp finely chopped fresh coriander 
• 4 tbsp finely chopped fresh mint
• 1 cup shredded cucumber, water squeezed out
• cumin powder
• coriander powder
• Indian chili powder or cayenne pepper
• turmeric
• salt
• brown mustard seed
• 5 – 10 dry whole chili peppers
• Fresh curry leaves
• 1-2 fresh bird’s eye chili pepper (optional)
• 1\4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 pound red lentils
• 1/4 brown sugar
• 1/4 unsweetened desiccated coconut
• 1 ½ cups coconut milk
• 2 cups Basmati rice
• 1 cup black glutinous rice- reduce to 1/2 cup and to soak it overnight in cold water

HOW TO PREPARE

Recipes will be provided when you sign up!

Come with your curiosity, a cutting board and your favorite knife and wooden spatula, and let the fun begin. You will need…  

• 2 large pots
• 1 frying pan with a cover
• cast iron or non-stick frying pan with cover
• 2 rice cookers or 2 heavy pots with lids
• 2 mixing bowls
• grater

Nantha Kumar

Montreal-based private and event chef 

Restaurant owner: Nantha’s Kitchen

“Diwali is Deepavali to us – our Christmas basically,” enthuses Nantha, who describes himself as an “accidental chef” and “Tamil boy”.  

By chance, he started his career as a journalist during the ’90s. He began by cooking occasional dinners, mostly for his journalist friends. He now owns Nantha’s Kitchen in Montreal!

“I started cooking at a very early age despite the fact that boys were not allowed into the kitchen back home. I grew up in Malaysia as the eldest child and spent my first seven years on a rubber plantation. We had servants, who did a lot of the housework, but my mother and grandmother did most of the cooking. At age seven, I was shipped off to Alor Star, the closest town with an English primary school. There, I first started making instant noodles (and still do), spicing it up, adding veggies and an egg to it. Later I graduated into making fried rice. As a teenager, I started hanging out at a Char Koew Teow stall in downtown Alor Star. This is where I got into frying noodles. Then came making curries, and the rest is history.” 

photo credit Rico Michel