Indian Takeaway (19 page)

There is a famous old place in Bangalore called the Bangalore Club. Let not the simplicity of the name fool you. This is colonial elegance at its very finest. It is said that this club is the finest example of how the Raj lived and endured India. It is luxury personified. A massive main building with high-vaulted ceilings. Huge windows and open doorways facilitate a cooling breeze through the many rooms, nooks and crannies. The perfectly manicured lawns, the dazzlingly white picket fences. The two-mile journey from Bharat’s apartment to the club seems more like a sixty-year journey into the past. Were it not for the distinct lack of white faces, it might as well be the days of the Raj. The old white colonialists have been replaced by the new brown colonialists of Bangalore’s upwardly mobile
middle and upper classes. I am checking in for a couple of days; seems foolish not to.

It feels like the sweetest of ironies to reintroduce a bit of Britain into the club. Nothing could be more reminiscent of the Raj than BC, as it has affectionately become known. And walking in the grounds I feel transported back to the nineteenth century, fully expecting some Major Sahib wallah to march over to me with pith helmet and cane to start a sentence of rebuke with the words: ‘Look here … ’

There are two dining spaces in the club. The curtly named ‘Dining Room’ is indeed a magnificent room within which to dine. Near the entrance gate (as if to separate it off for not being in keeping with the ethos of BC), and no doubt a sop to the younger, post-Independent generation of Indians, is a room altogether funkier, groovier, more contemporary. Tiger Bay feels very much out of kilter with the manicured lawns and dress code sensibility of the main building. While the main space boasts the anachronistically titled ‘Men’s Bar’, Tiger Bay has a massive plasma screen for showing sporting events (BC was, after all, founded on sport.) There is a banging sound system, a seductively dark bar and a chocolatier no more than a stone’s throw from a man who would refuse you entrance and indeed rescind you membership should you deign to appear in Indian garb: no collar, no admittance; closed shoes only, no sandals. Rules that exist from when white men ruled. Ironic that the Indians of today have kept the rules laid down by their colonial masters. How modern is modern India?

In the main vestibule of the club is a glass-topped display cabinet within which sits an open ledger. The displayed page reads as follows:

It would appear that the late Sir Winston Churchill still owes the Bangalore Club some money.

‘Tod in the hole?’ Bharat is shouting down the phone at me.

‘No,’ I say calmly. ‘Toad. In the hole.’

‘Toad? You guys don’t eat frogs. That’s the French. Disgusting, man … ’

‘No, Bharat. It’s just a name. It’s sausages and batter.’

There is a crackly pause.

‘Frogs’ legs sound nicer than sausage and batter, man.’ And he means it.

‘Trust me,’ I plead. ‘Come at seven o’clock. OK?’

‘OK,’ he replies in his default tone, namely surly.

‘Are you bringing anyone. How many should I cook for?’ It seems like a relevant question.

‘Sausage and batter, man. Who can I bring?’ And with that he is gone.

True to his word, Bharat shows up on his lonesome. Together we enter the kitchen at the Tiger Bay. I am more than a little nervous and feeling considerably guilty about being in one of the Bangalore Club’s kitchens at what must be peak cooking time; in the UK I would never venture into a commercial kitchen between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. But this is India and people eat late. Very late.

As I walk in I am greeted by half a dozen apathetic-looking chefs, each skinnier than the last and all bedecked in the finest chef’s whites and matching tall hats. It’s as though someone has ordered ‘cliché chefs’ from an agency that provides stereotypical chefs.

There’s only one thing worse than a hectic restaurant kitchen and that is a quiet restaurant kitchen. The perceived upside of a quiet kitchen – the fact that there is no pressure and no frantic chefs working around me – pales into insignificance when compared to the hefty downside, namely that there is lots of pressure from the dozen eyes belonging to the non-frantic chefs who have nothing better to do than stand around and watch me.

‘Hello,’ I mumble, almost inaudibly.

I make up for my half-hearted hello with a semi shouted, ‘Namasté,’ which causes one of the chefs to start.

I was really hoping that the kitchen would be busy and that I would be allowed to find a quiet corner to cook my toad in the hole, before disappearing to my room and drinking myself into a stupor with a bottle of some single malt or other. That is clearly not going to happen.

Bharat introduces me to the head chef. ‘This is my cousin’s husband. He’s from England.’

‘Scotland,’ I feel compelled to correct him.

‘Whatever. He is going to cook some food here. Help him. OK?’ Bharat gives one of his intense brown-eyed stares.

His intense brown-eyed stares are replicated by the six chefs as they watched me mix flour, eggs and salt. Quite how entertaining is the preparation of a Yorkshire pudding batter is a moot point, but watch they do, seemingly transfixed. (Although I have since realised that the difference between an Indian look of transfixion registers very closely to the look of mind-numbing boredom.) I feel compelled to show my limited knife skills to their most well attuned, whilst being fully aware of the potential credibility-losing embarrassment of a ‘blood’ incident.

Sausages are not impossible to get hold of in Bangalore, but neither are they very easy to find. There are a handful of specialist delicatessens in the city and they do stock limited numbers of items like sausages, bacon and artichoke hearts. But these shops are not easy to track down.

‘I have heard of a shop that sells all this kind of stuff, man. Sausages and all that fancy stuff.’

I knew Bharat would know.

‘Where is it?’ I asked hopefully.

‘Don’t know. I have heard of it. Never been there. Anjani will know.’

At this point Bharat called Anjani and Anjani too had heard of such a shop but didn’t know where it was.

‘Geetie will know,’ said Anjani.

And in a couple of minutes Geetie was on the other end of a mobile phone. She too had heard of such a place but she didn’t know where it was, either. I am not sure how many people were implicated in this sausage-finding project but I decided that it would be far easier to forgo the sausage and work out an acceptable substitute.

That is why I have decided to use some strips of mutton. Ordinarily I would specify the exact cut of meat and wax lyrical about their provenance, perhaps even throwing in the name of the farmer and the type of anorak he enjoys wearing. I’m afraid I can offer no such details about these rather wan pieces of defrosted meat that lay hopelessly in front of me. I know meat is by its very nature lifeless, but these rather apologetic-looking cuts of sheep appear to have never enjoyed anything much of life; not so much as a gentle carefree gambol. But such sentimentality has no place in this kitchen. I feel the on-looking eyes and am compelled to look like I know what I am doing.

Bharat pops back into the kitchen accompanied by a handsome young man who looks dressed for a night’s clubbing. This it transpires is the owner of the restaurant, Tommy. I’m guessing he has an Indian name like Chetan or Rohit or Rahul. But he calls himself Tommy.

‘Hey, Tommy, this is my cousin’s husband from England … ’

‘Scotland,’ I correct Bharat without even looking up from my semi-frozen meat.

‘Listen, man,’ Bharat says to me, ‘no one knows where Scotland is.’

‘Hello, Tommy. I’m Hardeep from England.’

We shake hands.

‘Are you staying for dinner?’ I ask, I thought politely.

Tommy looks shifty. He looks at Bharat. He looks back at me. ‘I have to go to my aunt’s house for dinner. Save me a little … ’

With that he is gone.

‘Tommy doesn’t like English food …’ Bharat says, tactfully.

There will be no English food if I don’t get on. Bharat slopes off no doubt in search of some single malt. I’m on my own; surrounded by chefs. I require flour for the batter mix. There
are of course four types of flour on the shelf and I don’t know the Hindi word for ‘plain’. I have to guess. I beat the eggs and the salt and add the sifted flour. Gradually I drip in a mixture of milk and water to bring the eggs and flour together.

It’s very strange being back in a commercial kitchen, my first foray since Arzooman and Kovalam. I suppose what is most daunting is the expectation level of those around me. Cooking at home allows for homely food, but this is a professional kitchen, filled with – unoccupied – professional chefs who have taken to exchanging whispered words, which are followed by knowing nods. I am absolutely sure that I am doing something very, very wrong. Could it be that I have chosen self-raising flour rather than plain? And if I have, why aren’t they telling me?

I return my attention to my batter. Yorkshire pudding batter never looks like it’s going to be any good; that’s the joy of the process. This beige sludge becomes a delicious crispy yet soft meal.

Under normal circumstances I would have placed a baking tray in the oven smeared in lard or dripping or duck fat. I would set the oven to its highest and allow the fat to smoke. I would then toss in my browned sausages and decant my batter mix, replacing the entire ensemble back into the oven for a little over half an hour. But this is India; there is no concept of animal fat in cooking. I am forced to choose between ghee, clarified butter and a dodgy-looking olive oil. None are anywhere near ideal. I decide to blend them and cross my fingers. I heat the oil and ghee mixture on the hob and fry off my mutton steaks. Maybe they are neck fillets, given how they seem to be browning. I pour over the batter mix and place it all in a hot oven.

Have you ever, while cooking, waited to see if the flour you have chosen is the right type? Neither have I. Thirty-five
minutes should fly by when surrounded by the cacophony and bustle of a working restaurant kitchen. But it is possibly the slowest thirty-five minutes of my cooking life. I imagine my Yorkshires cooking into hard little bullets of batter, ruined by gram flour. I have similar nightmares about monster puddings that spill out of their casings and slowly fill the entire oven with their burgeoning weight. I try to ascertain from one of the sous chefs whether the flour I chose had indeed been plain. I hold the flour dispenser in my hand as I question him.

‘Is this plain flour?’

‘Yes, sir. This is flour,’ he replies, rather meekly.

‘Yes but,’ I continue, ‘is it plain fl our?’

‘It is flour, sir. It is flour.’ He looks at me as if I require hospitalisation.

‘What is the Hindi for plain flour?’ I ask rhetorically.

‘It is flour, sir. Flour.’ He is beginning to irritate me.

I watch and wait. I wait and watch. (What I should have done is simply open the oven and had a look. I have no idea why that most basic of thoughts never occurred to me.) I would find out in the next twenty minutes whether my choice of fl our has been correct. In the meanwhile I have other food to prepare.

Many argue that toad in the hole’s essential ingredient is the gravy. I would not agree but would happily concede that it is a far poorer dish dry than when swimming in the dark, meaty juices of a strong gravy. But again, this is India. I can perhaps cobble together a red onion and red wine sauce, but it would have none of the deep flavour of a
jus
or a gravy. And it is at this point I have a slight crisis in trying to work out how a
jus
differs from a gravy, and which I should attempt to make. I pull myself together and decide that I am to make the world’s first ever gravy
jus
. I chop some onions.