Chef Damu looks annoyed. “Now it's become fancy to say ‘I don't know cooking'.” He adds: “I went to speak at a girls' college, and they all so proudly said they can't cook. I don't want them to think it's fancy.”
His solution has been to collar the dine-and-dash generation via their phones. Enter the Chef Damu Special application. “I created it for the youngsters — the people who are going to college, living alone, eating at restaurants,” he says. “They have no time to look through recipe books or watch cookery shows on television — but 24 hours, they're attached to their mobiles.”
Chef Damodharan, known to the city as ‘Chef Damu' is a popular TV chef and the author of 17 cookbooks. His latest venture has been to release a set of 35 recipes created specifically for the mobile phone. Already available on android phones, the application will soon be launched for iPhones and on Nokia mobiles. “The idea is not to market it and make money. I want everyone to go into the kitchen and eat good food,” he says, demonstrating how it works on his phone.
Colourful and simple, the application leads you into six categories of recipes — sweets, starters, mains, side dishes, gravies and rice. Each recipe is accompanied by a picture so users know what the end result should look like. “Each recipe consists of just four to six steps, and will take just 15 minutes. The ingredients are all easily available, and probably already in your kitchen,” says Damu.
So all you need to do to make dinner is go into the kitchen and get on the phone. Now, that's fancy!
