Cooking With Monisha

Chef Monisha Bharadwaj is an award winning author, food historian and a food writer based in London, UK. Monisha is a qualified chef from the Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology and Applied Nutrition, Mumbai. She started Cooking With Monisha, situated in West London, in 2004. Today it is a successful school that attracts not only the home cook but also chefs who wish to learn Chef Monisha’s brand of simple authentic Indian cooking. Monisha has also created and taught her popular courses at the Ashburton Cookery School in Devon, The Bertinet Kitchen in Bath, Seasoned Cookery School, south Derbyshire and at Divertimenti in Knightsbridge. She is often invited to judge food events and has been a judge at the Guild of Fine Food’s ‘Great Taste Awards’ for the past several years. Monisha also holds a BA in Indian History and in 2013, she was invited to be Guest Lecturer at SOAS, University of London, to give a series of talks on ‘The History of India through its Food’. In 2017, she worked with Kew Gardens giving talks on healing Indian ingredients, and with the British Council on ‘How The British Fell in Love With Curry – a historical perspective from 1200-2017’. In 2018, Monisha was invited by the Wellcome Collection, London, to talk about Ayurvedic nutrition as part of their exhibition, ‘Ayurveda Man’ and opened the South Asian Spice Box residency at Borough Market, London, with a cookery demonstration of south Indian food. In 2019, she was invited to be a Guest Speaker on Indian food on a Cookery Legends cruise around the British Isles. She was awarded ‘Cookery Writer of the Year’ in 2003 by the Guild of Food Writers and her many books have been shortlisted for and won several prestigious international awards. In 2020, her book ‘Indian in 7- recipes using 7 ingredients or fewer’ won the Gourmand World Cookbook Award 2020 for the Best Indian Cookbook in the World. Growing up in India, Monisha was brought up on an Ayurvedic inspired diet, where food brought happiness and physical well being. Today, she brings her experience of and passion for ancient Ayurvedic wisdom to all the classes she teaches.