BENGALURU: "Cooking is my girlfriend,” says Sandesh Adugemane, who has spent most of his life in the kitchen of his father’s restaurant in Gangavati, a town in the state. Now, the chef, who works in Hyderabad and is here in the city for an event, says that his ability to cook blindfolded for hours, has brought him fame.
“I first cooked blindfolded at 18. Since I’ve been in the kitchen since I was about three – I was able to identify ingredients such as turmeric, chilli, tamarind by then – cooking is something that comes to me naturally, and I was confident enough to cook without being able to see,” says Sandesh.
He had to drop out of college in his second year due to personal problems. He started working in the hotel and that’s when the idea to do something different came to him. “Even though word spread that I was cooking blindfolded, my father didn’t support me. People would come from different states to watch me, but my dad didn’t think what I was doing was worthwhile,” he says, adding that the longest he has cooked blindfolded was six hours. He has appeared in over 100 local cooking shows, he says.
It took him over a year to perfect his technique.
“The first dish I made blindfolded was gobi manchurian. A well-wisher happened to take a video and circulated it,” says Sandesh, who can make Indian and Chinese dishes blindfolded, but is trying to perfect continental cuisine.
About the mishaps when he just started cooking blindfolded, Sandesh says, “I can’t count the number of time I spilt hot oil onto myself. One time, because of being blindfolded and working in the kitchen for hours, my eyes had swollen up so big that I couldn’t open them for two days. My mother was worried and tried to get me to stop, but I was determined.”
In the future, Sandesh hopes to open his own restaurant, one where he can practise exactly what he likes.