Describe your favourite food at a traditional festival or a special event in your country IELTS Cue Card
IELTS CUE CARD TOPIC
Describe your favourite food at a traditional festival
or a special event in your country
You should say:
- What it is
- At which festival/event you eat it
- How it is made
- And explain why you like it
Sample 1
I am a food enthusiast, so whenever I go to a festival or special event, I love eating different food items. One such instance is worth mentioning when I got to eat my favourite food item.
So, I went to our city’s traditional celebration of the Lohri function. So, at that function, there were a lot of stalls that displayed various mouthwatering Indian cuisine delicacies.
So I chose to eat the Rajma Chawal, which in English is called Kidney beans with rice. The making process of that food item is quite simple. There are two items which are made.
The first is the rice, and the second is the kidney beans. So, the process of making the rice is straightforward. You boil the rice for 15-20 minutes in a pressure cooker, and then the rice becomes ready to make the kidney beans. First, you need to soak them in the water overnight, and once that soaking is done, you boil them and add spices.
There, you get a lot of onions, cheese, ginger, and garlic. You put them in the flame for 2-3 hours, and the kidney beans become ready. I like it because the rice with kidney beans form a reasonable combination, and my country’s people crave it. Even foreigners, when they try it for the first time, fall in love with it.
It was a good experience. After a long time, I ate kidney beans with rice because my family was away for two months on a trip to our native village. So I was alone, and I wasn’t cooking, so getting my favourite food item at a special event, a traditional festival, was a memorable experience for me. The excellent time spent at that festival and my favourite delicacy will always remain etched in my memories.
Sample 2
Being a food enthusiast, I most often visit various food-related festivals. So, in my hometown, a traditional food festival is organized whenever there is a festival of Baisakhi on 13th April. I also attended that festival last year, but it was different because I have been in Canada for 4-5 years.
So, I do not tend to eat traditional Indian food much. So that festival was a perfect opportunity for me to eat Indian food. I ate a mustard mash with maize bread called makki ki roti and sarson ka saag in Punjabi. So, making it is a lengthy process. To cook the mustard mash, you need to boil the mustard leaves. Then it would help if you put a lot of spices into that.
First, you boil the mustard leaves, and once they are cooked, then you put a lot of spices into that, and then you put onions, ginger, and garlic at this, and then put it on the flame for four, five hours, and this is how mustard mash becomes ready.
For this maize bread, you first need to have the maize flour, then put the maize bread in the oven. Making one maize bread takes about 10 minutes, and then the food is served. We also pick a lot of clarified butter in the mustard mash and maize bread. So I liked it very much because when I was in Canada, I ate a lot of fast food, like pizza and fries.
So, I ate a lot of fast food in Canada and couldn’t get good quality Indian food, like mustard mash and maize bread. So, at the traditional festival, I got an opportunity. I tried it, and instead of eating one plate, I ate two. So, the taste I got that day would always remain etched in my memories.
Follow-ups
Here are some examples of follow-up questions that the examiner might ask during your speaking part 3 related to the cue card: “Describe your favourite food at a traditional festival or a special event in your country IELTS Cue Card”.
1. Is it valuable for people to look at their phones during a meal?
Looking at phones while having a meal is essential because it suggests that your focus is on your wants and desires rather than interacting with others. Moreover, when you are sitting with someone, you have to interact with other people, or even if you do not want to interact, you need to remain silent so that others can focus on the meal.
2. Why do people like to have a big meal at traditional festivals or significant events?
Whenever people go to traditional festivals or significant events, they try to do something beyond the conventional domain because these days, most people remain busy with their busy schedules and do not have time to interact with family and friends.
So whenever they go to traditional festivals or significant events, they feel good, and to celebrate the feeling of goodness, they tend to do things they do not do in routine. So, in routine, they eat a balanced diet. So, they try to eat different food items at traditional festivals or significant events. Moreover, they eat more than what they usually eat.
3. Do most people prefer vegetables from the supermarket or grown at home?
These days, most people prefer vegetables grown at home because, due to the immense use of pesticides and insecticides, there is a lot of toxicity in the vegetables from the supermarket.
In contrast, homegrown vegetables are organic and help maintain good health. That’s why people are more inclined to use vegetables grown at home.
4. Are there any difficulties when people grow plants in cities?
Yes, there are many difficulties when people grow plants in cities. First and foremost, because of high-rise buildings, sometimes direct sunlight is unavailable to the plants.
And secondly, the quality of soil has declined drastically because of the overuse of chemicals and plastics. Thirdly, there’s a space constraint because cities have a lot of dwelling units, so there’s less space to grow plants.
5. What plants can people grow in cities?
As there’s a shortage of space in cities, there are only a few plants that people can grow, and the best of them are holy basil and coriander. Then you can grow mint, and apart from that, you can grow decorative plants, too. These days, gardening is considered a good hobby and many people from all walks of life indulge in it.
6. Do people in your country grow plants at home?
Yes, people in my country grow plants at home, especially those people who are close to nature.