Sherin Sebastian worked in the IT industry for a decade but her passion always lay in cooking. It was while expecting her second child that she decided to quit her job and follow what had till then just been “a thought in the back of my mind”.
Initially, taking orders for decorated cakes from friends and family, she started her YouTube channel and social media pages called FoodTokWithSherin, in January this year. She manages this while also running three franchisees of a salon chain.
From bread gulab jamun and apple cinnamon rolls to ammachi’s chicken roast and chilli chicken, the recipes on her channel aim to cater to different tastes.
On cooking during the lockdown, Sherin says, “It has mostly been about experimenting with whatever is at home. There were constraints with getting ingredients and of course, everyone wants something different in the family. But, I was able to make dishes that I had always wanted to try out but never had the time to make. My mother had passed on some traditional recipes, including one for chicken roast, which is an integral part of Syrian Christian food. The original recipe is a longer process but I have made it simpler. In fact, that is one recipe a lot of people have tried out.”
As for her toughest critic, it is her 13-year-old son who can be counted on to provide honest feedback. While her daughter at 10 is a little young for that, she likes helping Sherin around the kitchen. “We were supposed to do a collaboration for Mother’s Day where mother and daughter would cook together in the kitchen. I had spoken to a few food bloggers about it. But because of the lockdown, we had to do it in our own kitchens and she came up with the idea of doing a white chocolate version of my no-bake chocolate cake.”
