Indian Takeaway (6 page)

A banana leaf sat before me, nearly three feet wide and eighteen inches in depth. It had already been adorned with mango pickle, mango chutney, salt and a banana. It was like the start of a surrealist food gag. Then the onslaught arrived. Wave after wave of rice, daal, vegetables, more rice, papads, daal, yoghurt, coconut rice, more papads … I don’t know about you, but I can eat loads. Really. Within an hour and a half I was languishing under my own body weight in lentils, yoghurt and vegetables. Languishing, but not yet happily full, not yet content in the stomach department. Finally dessert arrived. Only three of these, each sweeter and richer than the other. I was replete. Good and proper.

I stole myself off to my room. I had planning to do. I had to decide on a meal to cook for the executive chef, Arzooman, and his crack team of sous chefs. I lulled myself off to sleep that night with thoughts of beautifully roasted chunks of lamb in an anchovy and garlic sauce and found myself dreaming about creamy, buttery mash and perfectly seasoned broccoli with a tangy hollandaise sauce.

The following evening I wandered through that same dining room, nodding familiarly to the maître d’, the head waiter and the sommelier. This time I continued past my table and beyond the door that separates the world of the guest from the world of the kitchen. I had been told that I had the run of the kitchen; it was a massive hotel and having read through all the various menus for all the various restaurants and clubs I had appraised myself fairly well of the ingredients available. I couldn’t help but feel nervous. I had no excuses, nowhere to hide. Arzooman
knows what good food tastes like. And the thought of being back in a commercial kitchen was both thrilling and terrifying, hampered as I was with English as a first language. That and the fact that I knew all the staff would look at me like some freak of nature.

‘Why does the slightly overweight Sikh man from Britain want to come and cook British food in our kitchen?’ I could almost hear them asking.

I didn’t have a ready answer.

For a moment I’m genuinely not sure why I am here and what I am doing. What do I seek to achieve by cooking for these people? Are they any more likely to understand British life after a plate of my food? Did Glaswegians feel any more knowledgeable about the history and culture of India after a chicken bhuna and a peshawari nan, with a side order of aloo gobi? And it’s not like the food I am cooking will be anywhere near the standard of the food Arzooman cooks. I steel myself, reminding myself that it’s only food. What have I got to lose apart from my credibility, my reputation and my way on a journey that has only just begun. That calms me right down. I head down to the kitchen.

I’m handed a purple apron that clashes terribly with my pink kurta top. My attempt to articulate this fashion faux pas is greeted with stony silence by one of Arzooman’s sous chefs. It’s going to be a long night. And suddenly I realise that Arzooman has dedicated his entire continental kitchen to me: a kitchen completely open to the public gaze, a kitchen where my every mistake can be publicly witnessed. Marvellous.

I remind myself that if this evening goes badly and I manage to cock the whole thing up, lose a finger and poison a commis chef, then I am entitled to plead the defence of valiant failure, repack my wheely case and return to Britain. I explain my quest
to Arzooman. He understands that I want to travel the country of my forefathers, that I wish to explore my heritage and free my mind of the preconditioned opinions I had of India as I was growing up. He is also very acutely aware of the tension that exists in my dual identity, but seems perfectly comfortable with my sense of Britishness and Indianness. Perhaps that is because he has travelled much of the world; he trained in Chicago and Switzerland. He knows something of being an outsider. The only thing he doesn’t get is my desire to cook British food.

‘It’s bloody hilarious, man!’ he says after I poke and prod my way through his superficial politeness.

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘Listen, man,’ he explains. ‘These guys, Indians, are obsessed with food, but only Indian food. I cook hundreds of meals here every week and they are mostly eaten by foreigners. Indians rarely come and eat here. Which is fine because we are an international hotel.’

I take a moment and look around the restaurant. It is early, he is right. There are very few Indians eating; and those who are here seem to have ordered from the Indian menu. I’m in trouble. Deep trouble.

This is my first dish in what promises to be a long and winding road through India. The Indians are not well acquainted with British food, less so Scots food. But I have decided that my opening foray into the education of the Indian palate should be something straight out of the heart of my childhood; a plate of food that by its ingredients and history alone tells the story of where I come from, the story of Scotland. I need to be bold, uncompromising, resolute. I must embrace my quest and deliver to Arzooman and his chefs a dish that epitomises all I am, all I hope to be. I will give them stovies.

You’ve probably never heard of stovies. They are utterly delicious – delicious and quintessentially Scottish. It is a peasant dish, said to have come from the gentry handing leftover meat from Sunday lunch to their workers. The workers would then combine this meat with potatoes and onions, frying the mixture in dripping, thereby creating ‘stovies’. This would last them the week, until the next Sunday. Much like my mum and her two pot method. Every Sunday night my mother would cook one pot of meat or chicken and one pot of daal or vegetable. By Wednesday of that week both pots would be almost empty. So on a Thursday evening both pots were combined giving us innovations such as lamb and cauliflower or chicken and daal. This was the two-pot method.

The stovies I grew up eating were mince stovies. Another common thread between the Punjab and Scotland is the combination of mince and potatoes. The Punjabis have keema, curried mince with quartered potatoes, the fl oury potatoes mashing down into the rich, spicy, minced lamb which would then be enveloped in a hot buttery chapatti. The Scots love their mince and tatties. We got stovies at school, once a week on a Tuesday. It was my favourite meal of the week; it was also my elder brother Raj’s favourite meal of the week, because it was the only lunch that was bereft of vegetables.

So I feel stovies somehow speak from both sides of my heritage. And if I am to find myself on this culinary adventure around India I must be bold, uncompromising and resolute. I must be…

But suddenly I am meek, compromising and irresolute. I can’t cook a plate of stovies in a five-star hotel for an internationally trained chef and his team. It would be mental. How could I possibly convey to them the myriad reasons for what is effectively a plate of carbohydrate-heavy brown sludge
that tastes of comfort? I can’t do it. So instead I choose to cook something really poncy and European.

I pitch the idea of an Indian pesto to the not-altogether-convinced Arzooman. I explain that while it seems part of my culinary journey is bringing Britain and Europe to India, I am also trying to take a little of India back to Britain and Europe. I choose not to even mention stovies. Instead I suggest a pesto with coconut, coriander and paneer.

‘Coconut, coriander and paneer?’ The stress is all on the question mark. His face is deeply quizzical.

He thinks for a moment.

‘Not paneer, man. It’s too… grainy. Not smooth enough for a pesto.’

‘Oh,’ I respond, trying my hardest to look simultaneously unflustered and knowledgeable. ‘Yeah. Paneer. Too grainy.’

The usual cheese used in a pesto is either pecorino or parmesan. Arzooman doesn’t use pecorino, parmesan is limited and expensive, and I don’t want to use such a precious kitchen resource. And as I stand face to face with Arzooman I suspect that I may be close to tears. His eyes light up.

‘You can use strained yoghurt, man.’ With that he rushes into the kitchen.

Strained yoghurt instead of cheese? I try hard not to look confused. Confused and ill. This yoghurt strained through muslin sounds similar to something my mum used to make when I was a boy: paneer. My mum would boil milk and then split it, with the addition of distilled vinegar. There’s nothing quite as repulsive as the smell of split milk. Actually there is: split milk solids tied up in muslin. That’s what my mum would do. Once the milk was split, she would pour the entire mixture into the largest piece of muslin I have ever seen, the solids being caught in the muslin and the water draining away. She
would then tie the muslin to the tap in the sink and allow every last drop of liquid to escape. Later the paneer would then be chilled and cut into cubes or grated, with its mince-like consistency. Paneer. I often think of this bulging mass of cloth dripping smelly cheese-water over the kitchen sink. And she wondered why we were less than keen to eat it? The fact that the stink of the preparation bore no similarity to the delicious taste of paneer was lost on us children. We simply refused to eat it. And she would shout at us to eat it until we cried. As children we cried over split milk. As opposed to spilt milk.

Thoughts of my mum lead me uncomfortably to thoughts of my dad. I’m fairly sure that if he were with me in this kitchen he would suggest I put down my cooking implements and return to my room for a wee lie down and a gentle thought-regathering session. But alas, my dad is on the other side of the world, the Indian man in Britain while I, the British man in India, am attempting to bluff my way through.

Arzooman is back clutching a small, golf-ball sized white package. ‘Strained yoghurt, man. Use the good stuff.’ He nonchalantly throws the cling-film-wrapped soft yoghurt ball over to me.

I catch it with both hands. ‘Great!’ I say, again trying that simultaneous look of unflustered and knowledgeable. ‘This’ll be great.’

The chicken breasts are slit and a cavity fashioned within them. The breasts are skinless. Ordinarily I would have preferred skins to have remained intact; the skins have so much flavour and they take much more colour than the naked flesh, but ho hum, skinless it is. At the continental cooking counter, visible to the entire poolside restaurant crowd that has slowly started to filter in, I am furiously chopping coriander and grating fresh coconut. Time to blend my Indian pesto. It seems only right
and proper that I use coconut, so ubiquitous in Kerala that it featured seven times in seven different dinner dishes from the Sadhya feast the day before. The coriander is fine; my only concern is this strained yoghurt thing. It is like ricotta but less rich and more tart. I would have to balance it somehow.

The pesto is whizzed and turns out to be quite delicious. I try hard to hide my surprise from Arzooman. He tries less hard to hide his from me. I delicately stuff my breasts and close off the holes with toothpicks. The last thing I want is pesto spillage; that’s ugly and unnecessary. My plan is for the breasts to fry and then roast so that the ricotta, the coriander and the coconut will meld and merge and set slightly within the cavity. Generally that’s another good reason for resting the chicken, apart from the fact that rested meat is tastier for allowing the juices to settle back into the flesh.

Meanwhile I have my stock reducing. I pop the skinless chicken breasts into the frying pan, adjusting the timing for absence of skin. As they fry away, I add my wine to the chicken stock. Arzooman has gone away to talk to someone about a banquet for 500 and I ask the humourless sous chef he has given me where the oven is. I’ve turned the chicken and need to finish it off. He points at a microwave and grabs my breasts, so to speak. I have images of exploding pesto bombs and manage to wrestle them back from his over-zealous hands. Arzooman returns and chastises the sous before sending him off with them to the oven.

The breasts spend a few minutes luxuriating in the heat of the oven. I spend the time watching my stock, willing it to reduce. Because that really works: pot watching. Stovies would have been so much easier. They would have had no expectations of stovies. I could have added a handful of chopped green chillies, a soupçon of ginger and a smattering of garlic, and convinced
them that it was traditional Scottish fare. When it comes to a stuffed and pan-fried chicken breast with a white wine sauce, there is nowhere to hide.

Plating up time. In a proper kitchen there is a certain presentational pressure. Food has to look good. I gently place my perfectly cooked chicken breast, even if I say so myself, on the centre of the plate. The white wine and chicken stock reduction has been enriched with wonderfully sumptuous Indian butter which surrounds and elevates the chicken. I serve the chicken up to Arzooman and his chefs, not confident to send it out to paying customers. I watch them tuck in with grunts. Since it is nigh-on impossible to distinguish between grunts of approval and grunts of derision I err on the side of optimism: they are grunts of approval. As they eat my chicken stuffed with Indian pesto I ponder what their reaction might have been to a plate of mashed potatoes and mince.

That night I lay in bed worrying about whether this whole trip was a good idea. I had managed to pan-fry a chicken breast and reduce a white wine sauce in a state of the art commercial kitchen with an entire team of chefs on hand and the finest ingredients one could fly into India. These guys ate and cooked, cooked and ate European food every day. And what I had cooked could never really be described as British; it was the bastard child of French and Italian cuisine with a misplaced Indian influence. This was no sort of challenge. I felt indulged by Arzooman, a nice man and a talented chef. I had thought my dish would impress him, I had hoped my quest would inspire him. But he really didn’t get the idea of me bringing my food to India. Maybe this trip was much less about what I was taking to India and much more about the impact India would have on me. That night I can’t say that I didn’t consider packing my bags and going home, the words of my father ringing in my
ears: ‘Son, if British food was all that good, then there would be no Indian restaurants in Britain.’

The fact that there are more Indian restaurants than almost any other in the UK did not mean anything as I faced the next stage of my journey. I was leaving the cosseted comfort of Kovalam and heading for the antithesis of five-star India.