Alum Vies for Cooking Prize

While growing up in the Chicago area, Alia Dalal eagerly explored the city’s myriad ethnic family-owned restaurants with her Pakistani father and German-American mother.

“I don’t think you could say I’ve always been interested in food,” says Dalal (CAS’08). “But I’ve always been a good eater.”

These days, Dalal has more than an interest in food—she’s in the running for the top prize in a contest launched this year by Cooking Light magazine.

In June, the contestants, all self-taught and professionally trained, had to submit a three-minute video of themselves preparing a healthy, original recipe. The magazine editors, who assessed contestants’ culinary skills, entertainment value, and originality, narrowed the field to eight semifinalists and posted their videos online for public voting, which ended on September 8. The next day, Dalal, a student in the chef’s training program at the Natural Gourmet Institute, in New York, learned that she’d been chosen one of four finalists.

Her reaction? “Shocked! It’s funny to see your name on a finalist list,” she says, “but it’s even funnier to see your picture. I actually didn’t tell anyone for a few days because it felt kind of surreal.”


The finalists will compete in a cook-off on October 23 at the annual Taste of Atlanta food festival. The victor will claim the title Cooking Light Healthy Cook of the Year, have the opportunity to become a contributor to the magazine and website, and win $7,000 for a kitchen makeover and $3,000 for a year’s supply of groceries.

In her video, Dalal prepares Afghani-style squash with curried kale and apples. The recipe was inspired by kadu, an Afghani dish of sweet cooked pumpkin. “This contest ends in October, so I wanted to do something seasonal,” she says. “When you go to farmers markets in the late fall or the winter, there are basically three things there: squash, kale, and apples. So I was thinking, let me take these three things that are available seasonally in the fall and put them all together in one dish.”

She fine-tuned the recipe and shot the video with a friend in her tiny Brooklyn kitchen. “It literally has one square foot of counter space,” Dalal says. “I have to take off the dish rack anytime I want to cook.”

She will cook the same dish for a panel of judges in Atlanta. But first, she’ll do a practice run. “I’m envisioning some sort of Rocky-esque training montage, where I’m dicing veggies, lifting pots, and sharpening my knife,” she says. “But I’ll probably just rope a few friends into watching me make it; 24-year-olds are surprisingly obliging when you offer them free food.”

Dalal, who works full-time in public relations at the School of Visual Arts, in Manhattan, says she’s excited about the competition. “No matter how it goes, I’m honored to have made it this far,” she says, “especially since I’m still in school and only decided to pursue food and cooking less than a year ago.”

Still, she has some jitters. It’s not that she lacks performing experience. She sang with BU’s Hindi a cappella group Suno for four years, made a few appearances on the campus television show BU Tonight, and also wrote for the show.

What she’s most anxious about is cooking in the spotlight. “Knives, fire, electrical appliances—there’s definitely plenty of room for something to go wrong,” Dalal says, “and perhaps that’s why people find cooking-related entertainment so exciting.”


Cynthia K. Buccini can be reached at cbuccini@bu.edu; follow her on Twitter at @ckbuccini.