Meal fit for Olympic heroes: When Punjab CM Amarinder Singh cooked for, served Neeraj Chopra and Co

Just over a month after the Indian contingent wrapped up its most successful Olympics campaign — winning seven medals at Tokyo 2020, including one gold — Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh hosted some Indian athletes over dinner. Captain Amarinder not only cooked meals for athletes like gold medallist Neeraj Chopra and Indian men’s hockey team captain Manpreet Singh, but was also seen serving them personally.

At a dinner held at the chief minister’s farmhouse in Mohali, besides Neeraj, Manpreet Singh, Harmanpreet Singh, Mandeep Singh, Hardik Singh, Rupinder Pal Singh, Shamsher Singh, Dilpreet Singh, Gurjant Singh, Varun Kumar and Simranjit Singh, Krishan Pathak (all of whom were part of the bronze medal-winning men’s hockey team at Tokyo 2020), Gurjit Kaur and Reena Khokhar (members of the pathbreaking Indian women’s hockey team which finished fourth at Tokyo), and discus thrower Kamalpreet Kaur were present.

The menu itself was a lavish fare, with mutton khara pishori, laung elaichi chicken, aloo korma, dal masri, murg korma, dugani biryani and zarda rice (sweet dish), being made.

It is learnt that preparations for the sumptuous fare started at 11 am and wrapped up by 5 pm. Captain Amarinder himself lent a hand in cooking the meals besides also supervising the other arrangements.

When the guests arrived, he also took the lead in serving the athletes personally out of the patilas (large vessels) in which he had cooked the choicest dishes.

“I started at 11 in the morning. Most of it was done by around 5 pm, and then it was time for some final touches. But I loved every minute of it,” the Chief Minister told journalists. “They (the sportspersons) worked so hard to win us glory, what I have done for them is nothing in comparison.”

The Chief Minister had earlier announced Rs 2.51 crore for members of the men’s hockey team who were from the state of Punjab, while members of the women’s hockey team and Kamalpreet were also awarded Rs 50 lakh each.