Will Bowlby - Kricket: An Indian-inspired Cookbook

As far back as I can remember, I have always been passionate about food. My earliest memory is of my mothers chicken in a pot, a herby, unctuous dish that kick-started my five-year-old taste buds and began my love affair with all things to do with food. My maternal grandmother was a huge influence on me; she had lived in post-war East Africa for over a quarter of a century and was a terrific cook. She had a number of very close Indian and Goan friends and had learned skills from them over the years; her curry lunches (for up to 60 people) were legendary, and introduced me at a very early age to the delicate layering and spicing of meat and fish.

So I started young, and by the age of ten I was hooked; Jamie Oliver had just come on the scene and he was so inspiring. His can-do approach to food was so cool and made me think: yes, thats what I want to do. I want to be a chef!

While still at school, I set up my own one-man catering company, Will2Cook, providing food for private dinner parties and events, which helped fund my gap year and my time at university. After three wonderful years at Newcastle University, I joined renowned chef Rowley Leigh at his flagship restaurant Le Caf Anglais in London. He lived up to his promise to throw me in at the deep end. I started on simple dishes, such as creamed spinach, and over the next two years, worked my way up through all the disciplines, until I was eventually made chef de partie.

I was then approached by a colleague working in India. The owners of Khyber, the oldest and most respected Indian restaurant in Mumbai, were looking for a young English chef to work on the concept of a modern European restaurant they were planning to open in the heart of the city. Following a couple of chaotic trials in London (which gave me a good indication of what was to follow!), I was offered a job in a country I had never visited and knew even less about. On a cold, rainy day in October 2012 I found myself, at the age of 24 with only one business contact, at Heathrow airport boarding a flight to Mumbai to face the biggest challenge of my life so far.

For nearly two years I lived alone in a flat in south Mumbai. I was responsible for a kitchen staff of 20, many of whom spoke no English. The dishes I was asked to create were based on the idea of European recipes that would appeal to the Indian palate. I wasnt to know then that the Indian palate is a many-layered and complicated concept, influenced by religion, ethnicity and cultural preferences. We worked extremely hard as a team, often in challenging and difficult circumstances, and it paid off when we won The Times of Indiaaward for the Best New European Restaurant. I spent the next few months on the menus at Khyber and, in my spare time, had Indian cooking lessons with the private chef of a famous Mumbai art dealer in his kitchen, who suggested I might one day combine the different techniques I had learned to create a fusion restaurant.

It was here that my fledgling business plan began to take shape. I was so inspired and excited by the different regional cuisines, and started to think about how I could apply my new knowledge that to the fast-food craze taking place in the UK, where I sensed there was a gap in the market between the traditional high street curry house and the high-end expensive Indian restaurants.