Indian Takeaway (30 page)

The first meal I ever ate in Scotland was fish and chips. It was from the Philadelphia chippy in Kelvinbridge, wrapped in the
Sunday Post
.

In the Spring of 1973 we packed up our entire lives, my parents, my two brothers and I, and we stuffed it all into our mint-green Vauxhall. We drove the eight hours up the motorway and, bleary-eyed, we arrived in the street-lit darkness of Glasgow. Before we even went to my uncle’s flat we feasted on fish and chips. I can still taste the salt and vinegar. There seems to be something poetic about the fact that the first meal I ever ate in my adopted country should be the meal I serve in this place, a place that wishes to be part of a different country.

I am indebted to my father for making the choice to move to Scotland, since I think being Scottish has improved my life immeasurably. I am funnier, wittier and better looking for it, and am far more likely to invent things and educate the world
about the philosophy of economics. That is what it is to be Scottish.

My journey through India has brought me into contact with more markets than I would ever see in a year in Britain. And here I am, another destination on my quest, another market. This roadside market offers a couple of varieties of fish, mainly pomfret, a round flat fish, and a few Kashmiri trout which look similar to the British version. I go for the pomfret option; a delicious fish that isn’t easy to get hold of back home. It seems churlish to pass up the opportunity to cook it today. In the Punjab it is cooked in a tandoor, the silver flesh cut and rubbed with spices. It is also filleted and curried. It is often found in Thai cooking, deep fried whole and served with a sweet and sour and chilli sauce. I intend to batter and deep fry it and served it with potatoes. Time is of the essence since night falls abruptly at around 6 p.m. and not much happens thereafter; in fact nothing at all happens after nightfall. This, in some part, is a result of previous military curfews. Although no such curfew is in operation now, people have fallen into the habit of staying in of an evening.

I have limited choices for my batter. In a perfect world I might have opted for a tempura-style coating, light and airy, the corn flour mixed with soda water to add an effervescence to the batter. Or perhaps a beer batter, malty and slightly sour. Neither is an option in Srinagar. The most interesting option would be gram flour, flour made from chick peas.

My mother was amazing. The drabbest store cupboard staples could be reinvented into a new and delicious snack. In the kitchen she rarely disappointed such was her resourcefulness. She worked this alchemy on the budget of a working-class immigrant. And how did she do this? With gram flour. Oh yes. Welcome to the world of the pakora.

Growing up there was one snack that was the staple of our household. Should we be hungry mid-afternoon: pakoras. Should we be visited by unannounced guests from Romford on the way to the Highlands: pakoras. Should my dad, gregarious party lover that he is, invite half a dozen work colleagues round for dinner: pakoras. Pakoras were the panacea to food emergencies in our house. Maybe that’s why my mum got so very good at making them.

The recipe is beautiful in its simplicity. Gram flour is seasoned with salt, pepper and chilli powder. Water is then added to form a thick batter. Into this batter you can throw all manner of things. As carbohydrate-loving Punjabis, my mum opted for sliced potatoes. The raw flat discs cook in the steam created within the gram flour covering. This is something that people don’t always appreciate about battering and deep frying food. Much as the outside is fried, the inner delight is actually steamed, protected from the harsh oil by the batter jacket. Once they were ready we would devour them with the essential accompaniment to the pakora experience: ketchup. My dad would plead with my mum to make mint chutney, a plea she never failed to bend to. But those were in the days before my dad developed an allergy to vinegar and tamarind. He’s never felt the same about pakoras since.

We would have diced potato, pea and onion pakoras. Fish pakora was a favourite with my dad. Paneer pakora is particularly delicious. Or
patra
pakora,
patra
being a spinachy type of leaf that comes tinned and ready to use. Chicken pakora is served to this day in Indian restaurants across Scotland. There have been haggis pakoras, pizza pakoras, and it being Glasgow, Mars Bar pakoras. My favourite however was when my mum had fried all the vegetables and there was a soupcon of the gram flour batter left, coating the bottom of the bowl. Never one to waste,
my mum would take a slice of bread, halve it and clean the bowl out with it, removing every last drop of the spicy gram flour mix. This piece of bread would be fried and invariably eaten by my mum since we boys would have consumed most of the pakoras by the time she sat down to eat. By its very definition there was never more than one or two pieces of the bread pakora to enjoy; maybe that’s why I loved it so much. Absence made my culinary heart grow fonder. Or maybe it was because I loved to eat with my mum.

I manage to get hold of gram flour easily enough at the roadside market and also pick up a couple of bottles of soda water. There isn’t going to be space to prepare everything at Khalil’s place, and given it is only a five-minute
shikara
ride from
Merry Dawn
I decide to go back and prep everything there. The pomfret turns out to be easy enough to fillet, each fillet offering three pieces. I reckoned I would only need four fish in total. I mix the gram flour and the seasoning and add the soda water. Obviously the Indian way would be to use plain water but I want to see how the gram flour reacts with the soda water. It seems fine. I peel some potatoes and rush out to my
shikara
. It’s getting late into the afternoon and I know I am up against it.

We arrive at Khalil’s. He is wearing that look of ‘I’m not sure that I want to go ahead with this’. I counter with my look of ‘Here’s a thousand rupees, we had an agreement’. He begrudgingly lets me onboard. His oil pan is not massive so I will have to cook a couple of fillets at a time, and gauging the heat of the oil will be challenging since Khalil only ever fries the same mashed potato ball snack. I ask him if he will consider changing the oil. This really annoys him. He starts muttering in Kashmiri and throws his hands about the place. I decide to lubricate the situation with money. Again. I have learned
much about diplomacy thanks to my western upbringing. It seems however that the more money I offer him, the surlier he becomes. He hands me a tin of oil. It appears that I will have to change the oil myself. Fine, I think.

First things first I need to dispense with the old oil, oil that looks like it is ready to celebrate an anniversary, so long has it been used to fry with. I pick up the
karahi
, the steel-handled frying pan, and look around the tiny space for somewhere to discard it. I feel like Harold Lloyd, shuffling about on the spot, turning one way then the other looking for something that clearly doesn’t exist, being watched by a man and his friend who clearly think I am one pakora short of a mid-afternoon snack. Obviously Khalil isn’t getting it. I ask him what to do with the oil. He motions to tip it out into the lake. I am obviously not going to pollute an already over-polluted lake. I am seriously flummoxed. I can’t just tip it into the lake; that would be wrong. But then how am I going to change the oil? I feel like I have been caught in one of those riddles; the farmer has a chicken, a fox and a sack of grain type riddles. I have to work out how I am going to change the oil. The potatoes are the answer. They are in what looks like a watertight plastic bag. All I need to do is remove the potatoes, pour the old oil into the bag, the new oil into the
karahi
and then pour the old oil into the empty oil drum. Easy. Yeah right.

It is actually relatively straightforward to remove the potatoes from the plastic bag, but I somehow have to hold the bag and tip the oil in. Khalil is clearly not up for helping although he can’t help but demonstrate a begrudging interest in my machinations. Eventually I manage to hold the bag and tip the oil and I allow it to pour slowly, leaving a residue of burnt shards behind. I carefully put the
karahi
down and very delicately tie the handles of the bag together. So far so good. Next I need to
wipe the karahi of its detritus. Instinctively I hand the bag of old oil to
Khalil
. Instinctively he takes it. Instinctively I smile at him. Instinctively he throws the bag and the oil into the lake. Not only have I polluted Dal Lake with oil, I had also managed to add a plastic bag to the numerous contents that line its floor. But I don’t have time to discuss it with him. I clean the
karahi
, turn the flame on underneath to dry it and pour in fresh oil. Meanwhile I slice the potatoes and then chip them. Once the oil hits the required temperature I slip in the first two battered fillets of pomfret. Never overcrowd a deep fat fryer: the addition of anything to hot oil reduces the temperature of the oil; the more you add the lower the temperature becomes and that is how you end up with greasy or undercooked food. Cook less and cook more often. God I’m boring, aren’t I?

My first two fillets turn out perfectly. I decide to fry my chips. Now, I am a firm believer in the twice-fried method of chip-making. Fry the chips at a lower heat first, ensuring the inside is cooked. Then return them to a higher heat to crisp the outside and impart that lovely golden-brown texture. I even know some who will bake their chips first, feeling that this gives them a fluffier inner consistency. I have no such luxury. I simply hope and pray that I have judged the thickness of my chips correctly to harmonise with the uncontrollable temperature of the oil. I haven’t. The chips cook far too quickly, the outside browning while the inside remains hard and uncooked. (It has to be said that Indian potatoes seem to take much longer to cook than your regular Maris Piper.)

I make an executive decision to dispense with the chips. I am now serving fried fish with Khalil’s ketchup. And do you know what? It isn’t bad at all, even if I say so myself. Khalil even eats a piece, although I can tell he can’t quite work out why I have gone to all that bother.

It’s difficult to describe how I feel at this point in my journey. I have travelled almost the entire length of the country yet it has taken me until this point to feel truly proud of the food I’ve cooked. Admittedly the chips are an unmitigated disaster, but the fish is good. More than that, the fish is the perfect fusion of an Indian and a British recipe, combining my first meal in Glasgow, a meal I have eaten regularly ever since, with my mum’s Punjabi food, food I grew up eating every week at home: these are the two halves of my life that make the whole.

I think it is the first meal I’ve cooked for myself rather than others. To be honest I don’t really care what the boatmen think of my deep-fried fish. (I know it would go down a storm on Byres Road.) I think I also very much feel a sense of disconnection with the boatmen of Dal Lake. I don’t consider them to be Indian because they don’t consider
themselves
to be particularly Indian. They are Kashmiris. I can relate to their plight as a people exercising their right of self-determination. And I have to confess that by this point I am clear that whatever I am, I am most certainly not Indian. Yet I am more than just British. I realise, at this moment in time, that I am a complex blend of both, a blend that changes depending on who I am with, where I am and how I feel on any given day.

For the bulk of my life, ever since that day as a five year old in Bishopbriggs, when I was singled out and not allowed to play with the rest of the kids, my life has been defined by how I am perceived by others, by my appearance. I have been, I am and I will always be a brown-skinned man, with a turban and a rather pronounced belly. I cannot change that, although perhaps a few weekly sessions at the gym might help with the belly. I am who I am, as far as people perceive me. What I feel inside however is another matter altogether. Inside I feel
British. British and proud. Yet I am completely at one with my Indianness. It’s not about trying to define myself exactly. I am not 70 per cent Indian and 30 per cent British. Those percentages change constantly. They ebb and flow, like the Dal Lake around the
shikaras
. But at this very moment, watching the darkening sky, my nostrils full of the smell of deep-fried fish, whatever that balance of Indian and Britishness is within me, it feels right. And it is this feeling I carry with me onward to my final destination: Ferozepure and my grandfather’s house.