Raise a toast to hi-tech kitchen

BANGALORE: Silos for grain storage, stainless steel channels and pipes where sambar sloshes to the lower floor, rice on trolleys tipped into some more waiting pipes, a massive cold room for storage which is like a huge fridge, a bucket elevator system on the ground floor, complete with 100 little pails that scoop uncooked rice and dal to the silos on the fourth floor.Kitchens couldn't get more hi-tech than this. But then, this is no ordinary kitchen.
This is the Akshaya Patra's new "gravity force" kitchen in Vasanthapura, off Kanakapura Road. This is what's at the heart of the massive mid-day meal scheme, which feeds 80,000 government school children in south Bangalore and 5,000-odd prisoners at Parappana Agrahara.
It's a top-down approach. That's how the gravitational system works in this kitchen. Storage is on the terrace; chopping, preparing masalas, stores and the cold room on the third floor; a viewers’ gallery on the second, cooking on the first, and packing and loading on to trucks on the ground floor.
Three silos - which can carry 10,000, 5,000 and 2,500 kg, containing government rice, market rice and dal, respectively - dominate the terrace. They are towers looking like huge bottles turned upside down.
On the third floor, 40 men and women - gloved and capped - peel and chop vegetables. They work in shifts starting at 2 am, four to six hours at a stretch. There is also a cutting machine to assist them.
On the cooking-operations floor are five gleaming stainless steel cauldrons. Each of them can cook 1,200 litres of sambar and a steel ladle can stir it. The sambar flows via channels down to the packing area, directly into open waiting dabbas and onto a conveyor belt. The rice is cooked in eight cauldrons, each of 120 kg capacity.
At one go, the kitchen rustles up 6,000 litres of sambar and 960 kg of rice. When the job is done, a steering wheel helps overturn the rice from the vessels into trolleys. The rice is then poured down a pipe into the packing area into some more dabbas and onto a second conveyor belt. These are then loaded on to trucks. "The meal is ready by 9.30 am," says Venuvadhana, operations head of the kitchen.
A control panel coordinates all procedures. Manpower is limited to 170. The entire operation is run on steam. Eco-fuel made of paddy husk, dry leaves, groundnut shell is used for the process.
Soon, a flyover will come up within the campus and it will directly connect the kitchen to transport groceries easily. The kitchen, open since June this year, will be fully operational in another month.
geetha.rao@timesgroup.com