Cooking with style runs in the family

Press, 24 April 1987, Page 12

Cooking with style runs in the family

MAVIS AIREY

asked someof Fiji'sbest chefs a n dthe

during a visit to the-Coral coast nosteaoy ait you < Fiji Visitors' Bureau. Today, Anand Rao of Pacific Harvou .

Anand Rao caught the cooking bug from his father. "My father is a chef and he cooked at home too. I watched him and decided I would like to cook too.” His brother caught the. same bug and there are now three Rao chefs in various Fiji hotels. A great enthusiast, he showed me photographs of his pieces de resistancexi marlin sculpted from margarine in honour of a successful fisherman, and a boat cunningly contrived from sponge cake for a distinguished visitor. “When I work, I really put my heart into it,” he says. Anand Rao is at present executive chef at Pacific Harbour resort, having spent a few weeks at the catering school in Fiji. He worked his way up through half a dozen of Fiji’s better hotels and took third place in the Chef of the Year contest. “I have worked under 20 executive chefs from overseas, and I still get ideas from my father," he boasts. Although his present job involves administration, with only 20 staff he still gets opportunities to cook, and is particularly keen on presentation. The hotel restaurants offer Chinese, Indian, European, Fijian, Polynesian, Italian, Mexican, and Mongolian food — although you have to be there on the right night to catch them, he says: Wednesday is a Mongolian barbecue; Thursday a lovo, the Fijian version of a hangi; Friday is Chinese, and so on. “I like to cook all sorts of dishes — that’s why the menu’s like

this,” he explains. At home, his wife does most of the cooking, but when he feels in the right mood, he likes to cook Chinese. This is one of his favourite recipes: Chicken and prawns with noodles For each portion, you need:

100 grams chicken 80 grams fresh prawns 50 grams Chinese noodles 10 grams garlic 5 grams fresh ginger 2 grams salt 3 ml salad oil 10 grams onions, chopped 3 ml mushroom sauce

20 grams Chinese cabbage, shredded 10 grams monosodium glutamate Clean the prawns, or use tinned ones. Slice chicken. Saute in oil until soft Add crushed garlic, ginger, monosodium glutamate, salt onions, mushroom sauce, and noodles. Cook for five minutes and add Chinese cabbage. Serve very hot