Loftus David - Made in India : recipes from an Indian family kitchen

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For my mum, Nita Sodha

An Indian kitchen can be anywhere in the world.

Ive never lived in India, but I grew up in England eating the same food my ancestors have eaten for hundreds of years and which I still cook in my kitchen, every day.

My familys home cooking is unrecognizable from a lot of the food that is served up in most curry houses across the UK; ours is all at once simple, delicious, and fresh. Real Indian home cooking is largely an unknown cuisine, and its my love for what we Indians really eat at home that has led me to share these recipes with you now.

My grandparents kitchen started in Gujarat, where this story begins. Gujarat is the area north of Mumbai and south of Pakistan, with Rajasthan to the east and the Arabian Sea to the west. The Arabian Sea is where my grandfather, Mathuradas Lakhani, happened to be looking when his curiosity to find out what lay across it got the better of him. Along with his wife, his father and his brother, he set sail for Kenya to begin a life there, taking with him all the family recipes.

Africa back then was a land of opportunity for anyone with a good idea. He had many, and, along with his father and brother, he set up Kenyas first printing press, a Coca-Cola bottling factory and, later, when he moved to Uganda, a grain mill. With his new-found prosperity he employed a cook, and so my mother grew up not cooking, but being cooked for, until she arrived in England.

My familys arrival in England was sudden and part of a well-documented episode in British history. Idi Amin, tyrant, dictator, and then-president of Uganda, woke up one day in 1972 and gave all Asians living there 90 days notice to leave the country before he would start to kill them. Along with thousands of others, my family left everything: their homes, businesses, money, and friends. They arrived in Lincolnshire with one suitcase between all five of them and 50 with which to start a new life.

While the backdrop to their lives changed in every way the country itself, the language, the people, the culture, the weather, and local ingredients their food did not. My grandparents went to work, and my mother reassembled our Indian kitchen in Lincolnshire and carried on cooking the family recipes.

She met my father, had me and my sister, and continued to cook, day in, day out, to feed her growing family, arranging whatever she could afford into various pots and pans to magical effect, conjuring up tastes and smells of the past and linking us, in an instant, to our ancestral home.

At the same time, she started to use local ingredients. Indian cooking can be adapted to any place by encompassing whatever ingredients are available. As we lived in Lincolnshire, a county that abounds in local produce, she was able to use gorgeous beets, rhubarb, and squash in her cooking, as well as fish from the nearby docks in Grimsby and local meat.

Whichever vegetables or meat she used, every day there would be fresh hot chapatismade in minutes, gobbled in seconds. She would cook dishes so fragrant with cloves, cinnamon, and cumin that theyd make your mouth water and your belly rumble, and her sweetly spiced desserts filled the house with smells that would make you weak at the knees. All these dishes were cooked with love, instinct, and her trusty wooden spoon the same spoon that she bought just days after arriving in the UK with barely a penny to her name.

My mothers spoon cast a spell over me from a young age, and it is to her that I owe my love of cooking. Using all the culinary knowledge that she passed on to me, Ive created this collection of recipes so that you can make the same delicious, fresh-tasting food in your own home.

Some of the dishes in this book are ancient family recipes which have never been recorded or written down until now. They were passed down from woman to woman in our family, with easy-to-remember anecdotes for when cooking alone, with sayings such as the mango should be as hard as a cricket ball and the dough as soft as your ear lobe, or when the spoon sticks up in the mixture, its ready. Many measurements were in handfuls, bowls, and unique boxes and cans.

Other recipes are my mothers, all of which apply Gujarati know-how and techniques to local ingredients. A couple of her recipes are Ugandan.

And a few are mine and have come into my kitchen (and heart) by way of friends, my travels far and wide across India, and my experimentation in the kitchen using Indian flavors.

Not everything in this book is a curry (a term I use loosely for dishes with sauce), and there are no set rules. Many dishes are frugal and thrifty, turning humble vegetables, pantry staples, and even leftovers into something delicious.

I hope this book will allow you to experience what we consider to be real home-cooked Indian food, and will also give you a greater understanding of different ingredients and techniques so that you can come up with your own recipes using your own instinct, with just a few key spices and whatever happens to be in your fridge.

On my last birthday, Mum passed her treasured wooden spoon over to me as a present. With it was a note that simply read, Happy cooking. I hope, like that spoon, this book fills your kitchen with the same happiness as it has done ours.

Indian food has a reputation for being intimidating and complicated, but this is a myth. The majority of Indian home cooking is fresh, simple, and quick, and Im on a mission to show you just how easy it is.

This book is written for everyone, from first-timers to seasoned cooks, and for those who love Indian food but dont know where to start.

Most of the recipes can be cooked quickly, in around 30 minutes, and you should be able to pick up the majority of ingredients in your local supermarket on the way home from work without having to go on a wild-goose chase (there are no wild-goose recipes in this book).

In order to help you, Ive laid out a section that introduces you to .

My most important piece of advice to you, however, is this: taste everything.