A NORTHWICH businesswoman who has had to find new ways of working during lockdown is celebrating after winning a national award.

Habiba Chowdhury, who runs My Curry Club, a multi-award winning cookery school, took the decision to go virtual two days before Prime Minister Boris Johnson told everyone to stay at home.

After successfully delivering her luxury home-based classes across Cheshire, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield, Habiba, who lives in Rudheath, invested in a permanent base at Cranage Trade Park in June last year. The concept of the school is to introduce a world of new flavours to those who might only be familiar with the classic house hold names in the world of curry - such as balti, korma and madras.

After a couple of near misses awards-wise, including when being 'Highly Commended' by the Food Awards as a finalist in Cookery School of the Year, in July, she was named Sole Trader of the Year by the Small Awards - a celebration of the best of small businesses.

Habiba said: "It had been an honour to be nominated for previous awards, but it was great to win this one.

"It was in the Sole to Sole category, which is the the for the best self employed small business owner. The awards took place virtually, but that didn't take anything away from the achievement of being recognised.

"My focus is always on my customers and my students and what I teach them are the skills to develop an instinctive style of cooking.

"When I started, my aim was to change the way people think about Indian food and bring older flavours to a new audience."

When Habiba made the difficult decision to temporarily close the cookery school in March, she did so in the interests of safety and immediately set about bringing her unique classes to an even wider customer base, using the power of Zoom.

She went on: "The general consensus from customers is that they've never been more grateful.

"During lockdown, people were obviously spending more time in their homes and having the opportunity to learn new ways of cooking was really important.

"I did consider starting my own take away service, but in the end, I decided that it was far better for me to teach people rather than me actually doing the cooking for them.

"One thing I teach is how child friendly Indian food can be, and with an ability to cook it in batches, it can also be incredibly stress free."

The popularity of the Zoom classes exceeded Habiba's expectations in terms of the number of people who wanted to sign up and at one point, she was teaching three or four classes a day.

She added: "I was initially apprehensive, because obviously cooking virtually has its disadvantages, but it is all worked out so well and has enabled me to operate on a more national basis."

Since re-opening the school on July 4, Habiba has noticed an increase in the number of couples interested in learning new skills together.

She said: "People obviouslty want to get out of the house, but they are obviously using the same cooking space.

"I have also recently brought in a vegan and vegetarian chef as that is an ever-growing market.

"There are such an array of ingredients available in Indian food, that taking certain things out doesn't ever mean a loss of flavour."

Habiba is confident for the future prospects of her strong, female led team, and has no plans of slowing down, a cookbook and expansion for the school in the pipeline.

She added: "I can only promise that you will be seeing a lot more of Habiba's Curry Club and the positive changes it makes to people's lives at home."