Grace Regan - SpiceBox: 100 Fresh, Vegan Curry House Favourites

To Auntie Dolly for inspiring a dream, to Mum and Dad for helping to make it happen.

Id like to begin this book by addressing an important issue up front. As a white British woman who cooks curry for a living, I am well aware that I tread sensitive ground. It is crucial for me to acknowledge that there is a fine line between paying respect to the culinary history of India and cultural appropriation. As you read on, I hope it becomes clear that everything I do comes from a place of deep love and respect for India. I will never profess to be an expert on the incredibly rich, diverse and complex cuisine of India; I prefer to think of myself as an enthusiastic student. The recipes in this book are not authentic they draw inspiration from the incredible British-Indian curry houses I grew up eating in, as well as the home cooking I have been fortunate enough to eat when visiting my Auntie Dollys house and India. I owe everything I know to the true masters of this topic Indian home cooks, who have been so generous in taking the time to teach me their craft and share their knowledge with me.

India has always played a significant role in my life. This is mainly thanks to my great aunt Dolly, who is from Chennai (formerly known as Madras) in South India. At 90, Dolly is still as much the charismatic force to be reckoned with as she was when I was a young child. She is a huge inspiration to me, full of wisdom, humour and, of course, culinary prowess (although shed never admit to the latter).

Auntie Dolly married my mothers uncle Pea and, as a result, Mum has spent a lot of time travelling around India. Her own mother is buried in Delhi she died during a trip visiting her brother in the city. Growing up, Id listen to Mum waxing lyrical about the country she loved so much, counting down the years until I too could visit.

Before I had the chance to visit India myself, I was exposed to the wonders of its cuisine once Auntie Dolly and Uncle Pea had moved back to the UK. I will never forget the cloud of aromas that engulfed me as soon as I walked through the door of their house a pot of simmering dhal wafting notes of turmeric, a pan of buttery pilau rice fragrant with saffron and a plate of samosas already laid out on the table for us to snack on.

I was 18 the first time I went to India and, as soon as I stepped off the plane, I knew Id inherited my mothers love of the country since then, Ive returned every year. Over the years, as my interest in cooking grew, so did my ambition to learn from any home cook whod have me. Many of my holidays in India were and still are! spent standing next to the gas stove of a generous host, scribbling down notes as I watched them throw spices into bubbling oil, trying to convert pinches and handfuls into teaspoons and grams. Great home cooks never write down recipes. Over the years, Ive also tried to coax recipes out of Dolly (who, again, writes nothing down), some of which youll find in this book.

It is therefore no surprise that I have ended up cooking curry for a living.

I first came up with the idea for SpiceBox around six years ago while on a trip to South India with Mum. I was thinking about my imminent return to London and how much Id miss eating dhals, dosas and thorans every day. I wondered why even though there were loads of incredible Indian takeaways and curry houses near me in East London I struggled to find the sort of fresh, veg-led food I had been eating in India, without making an excursion to Wembley or Southall. I thought how amazing it would be to find a local curry house in London serving food that tasted like the dishes home cooks such as Auntie Dolly made.

Dont get me wrong, I LOVE eating at British-Indian curry houses when youre in the mood, nothing hits the spot like a deep pink tikka masala, a sweet and sour dhansak or a fried ball of onion bhaji after all these are all versions of Indian dishes that were adapted to suit a Western palate. But, I thought, wouldnt it be cool to merge the best of British Indian food with the fresher flavours of Indian home cooking and so the idea for SpiceBox was born.

My curry-house dreams were put on hold as soon as I returned to the UK. I was building a tech start-up at the time and, shortly after my holiday, found out that I had been accepted onto an accelerator programme in Silicon Valley. This was too good an opportunity to turn down and so I packed my bags and moved to California.

In California I became vegan. I had been vegetarian for years and had tried to go vegan a number of times but Id always found it so difficult and quite frankly depressing in London. But in California, in the summer of 2015, there was no excuse. The vegan food scene was exploding, and on weekends I would travel with my business partner Sagar to Berkley, Oakland, LA and, of course, San Francisco to seek out every cool new vegan restaurant or street food truck. The more vegan food I ate, and the more reading I did around veganism, the more invested in it I became. To me, it was such an easy, enjoyable way to do my bit for the planet and my health.

As my interest in vegan food was growing, my engagement with the tech world, my business and Silicon Valley was dwindling. I had fallen out of love with what I was doing and it was slowly eating away at my soul. After a lot of sleepless nights and mini breakdowns, I finally decided to pull the plug on what I was working on. The question of what to do next was a no-brainer.

The idea of SpiceBox was still swimming around in the back of my mind, and I began to draw connections between this and my new-found love of vegetables. Indian food was the perfect way to introduce people to a plant-based diet after all, various religious and cultural groups have been eating vegan dishes for thousands of years in India. Even the most ardent

And so, I moved back to London to put this curry-house dream into action. Within a week of returning to the UK, I started developing the SpiceBox menu from my home kitchen. Id cook by day and cycle containers of warm curry to friends houses by night, for them to try and give feedback on. Once I had landed on a menu, I got a small table built to fit in my doorway and turned my home into an Indian takeaway. For two months, I stayed home six nights a week, waiting by the phone for an order. I was lucky if I got five orders a night. But slowly, word of mouth began to spread. To my relief, people liked my cooking and started to tell their friends about SpiceBox. Before long, the Evening Standard had caught wind and featured one of my curries in their list of Londons best vegetarian dishes.

I was now ready to take the next step and, after lots of emails and taste tests, landed a stall at Druid Street market in Bermondsey. Here I met a lovely trader called Tom who introduced me to Kerb, a street food collective that runs markets across London. They were looking for a new vegan trader.

And so began two and a half years of being a street food trader, trading at markets and festivals up and down the country. I had never worked as hard as I did then and probably never will again. Going from cooking curry in my home kitchen to feeding thousands at music festivals was a serious baptism of fire but it taught me quickly how to run a food business and cook at scale. I went from not knowing how to put up a small tent, to erecting a 3-metre-square gazebo and building a temporary kitchen every day, only to pack it down again two hours later once lunch service was over. I became the proud owner of a VW Transporter van and a dab hand with cable ties; I learnt how to replace blown fuses, build signage and cook 600 portions of dhal at 5am in an electric pan (we ran out of food at the first festival we did!).