Indian Cuisine on Menu for July 31 Program at Penn College Library

An Indian cooking demonstration, featuring the owner of a Bloomsburg restaurant, will be held at noon Wednesday, July 31, in the Pennsylvania College of Technology Library.

Chef Mushtaq Elahi, owner of Sakuntala, 236 Iron St., Bloomsburg, will prepare authentic side and main-course dishes for sampling. Elahi plans a few summer items that are easy to prepare and ideal for when the temperature soars into the 90s. On the menu, he said, are chat masala, a chickpea preparation that neither requires a lot of spices nor a lot of skills; raita, a cucumber-and-sour-cream sauce; and mango lassi, a cool, refreshing yogurt drink with mango juice.

A native of Bangladesh, Elahi received a master's degree in Mass Communications from Dhaka University, Bangladesh (1973), a master's in Drama from the University of Kansas (1978) and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the City University of New York (1988).

He taught at Dhaka University, New York Institute of Technology and City University of New York for 10 years. He also worked as a presentation research specialist for more than 14 years at Salomon Brothers, an international investment firm on Wall Street, after a year at Morgan Stanley in New York.

He and his wife moved to Bloomsburg in 1999 to open Sakuntala, a culmination of their passion for cooking and good food. (The restaurant is named after a classical Sanskrit play written in the Third Century. The play was staged at Bucknell University in April with the chef in a leading role.)

In addition to sponsoring the event, the Penn College Library located in the Learning Resources Center has an assortment of cookbooks featuring Indian and other cuisines. The program is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be available.

For more information about the library, visiton the Web, or call (570) 327-4523.