Fort Mill woman teaches ‘one yummy class after another’ showcasing Indian cuisine
Santhoshi Radhakrishnan took a sneak peak at her groom in another room. The nervous 21-year-old was dressed in a traditional Indian sari and jewelry, aspiring to look pretty, and she noticed her dad was sitting next to her future husband. That made her a bit nervous.
She couldn’t get a clear glimpse of her future husband. This would be the first time the two had ever met.
“It was a little bit scary,” she said with a laugh.
Radhakrishnan, now 38, and her now-husband Suresh Sundarababu had an arranged marriage in 2006 – with the help of a matchmaker — before the two moved to Charlotte because Sundarababu’s job was located here. Before they celebrated their first anniversary, the pair had a baby and had made Fort Mill their home in 2014.
She said her marriage was the will of God.
“I just heard this: If you’re going to miss this person in your life, you’re going to miss something precious,” she said. “And I believe it’s a sign from God. You can say to your subconscious, your inner self, your higher self, there are so many names but there’s something much bigger that’s always guiding us.”
Radhakrishnan had another baby and kept busy with the children until her younger son went to preschool. She felt something was missing. So she took a Chinese cooking class at Central Piedmont Community College. And then a light went off.
She could teach her own class, she said.
Cooking is Indian chef’s passion
“I love cooking,” Radhakrishnan said. “That is my passion, that is my purpose in life.”
She then put her passion to work and started to teach cooking classes in 2015 from her home. And she took on other endeavors. Radhakrishnan made a tomato chutney and sold it at local farmer’s markets and then began making meal kits.
She made the kits in a rented, shared commercial kitchen and taught the classes at her home.
Because Northern Indian food is popular in the U.S. and she is from Southern India, Radhakrishnan learned how to make the popular dishes on YouTube. She made a post on Next Door advertising her class. Then the students came.
Students sign on — but one thing was missing
Chris Zimmerman was one of her first students seven years ago. She said she was nervous the first class but Zimmerman helped her feel at ease.
“They (students) really made me feel calm and relaxed,” she said.
Radhakrishnan was also a student in her own class — she did not have the recipes prepared for the meals the class made and she didn’t realize she needed measuring spoons. She had always cooked by sight.
That first class, Zimmerman and Radhakrishnan made vegetable korma and jeera rice.
And after she took the class, Zimmerman bought Radhakrishnan a set of measuring teaspoons and tablespoons.
“I’m still learning,” she said. “Everyday, there’s something new to learn — gradually, I started to test my recipes over and over again, and then I would make adjustments.”
Her chemical engineering degree came in handy when adjusting the spice level, she said.
Radhakrishnan made the meal kits again after Covid hit in 2020 but stopped because it was hard to find help making them, she said. She opened her commercial space — Santhoshi’s Kitchen — in Tega Cay in September of 2023 so she could teach more classes.
Classes help increase skill level
Since that time, Zimmerman has taken about 15 classes and says she takes friends and out-of-town guests to learn Indian dishes. She was also the first student to buy a cooking lesson when Radhakrishnan opened her kitchen in 2023. She said she believes many Americans aren’t knowledgeable about Indian cuisine.
“You could go someplace and everybody knows what a curry is,” she said. “But I didn’t know that you could have a mild curry. I thought all Curry was hot. So I was delighted to find that a lot of the Indian food is very flavorful, but it doesn’t necessarily it doesn’t really mean it’s super hot.”
Zimmerman said taking the classes has helped increase her skill levels.
“And I’ve done several things, which I think of as Indian fusion where I take American dishes and Indian dishes and sort of meld them together into something that would be really tasty and delicious,” she said.
Zimmerman said she enjoys masala dosa, which is a crepe stuffed with potato and onions, vegetable korma, which is vegetables braised with spices and yogurt, and chickpea curry.
Zimmerman said she will continue taking the classes.
“And I’ve never seen anything there that I didn’t think was fabulous,” she said. “We’ve done just one yummy class after another.”
The cost of the group class is $85 per person. Her private classes are $100 per person and she offers a 15 percent discount for the private classes for groups up to 10 or more — for birthday parties, team-building activities, among others.
To sign up for a class, visit santhoshi-kitchen.com.
This story was originally published March 11, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
