50 Great Curries of India

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50 Great Curries of India

50 Great Curries of India

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Price: £8.495
£8.495 FREE Shipping

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Chutney Mary’s success is down to hard work, consistency of ownership and Mathrani’s impressive business acumen but perhaps most importantly the Punjabi sister’s encyclopaedic knowledge of Indian food.

Chefs need direction,” explains Camellia. “You can’t cook the same food you’d cook at a Bengali family home in a London restaurant. The presentation needs to change, the amount of oil needs to be reduced and you can’t cook the meat right through.” Well, that was a funny coincidence – I was digging around looking for a “reliable” recipe to make a decent Prawn Pathia – and lo and behold, ND popped up in the search results, so thats me sorted. I’d just dug through a couple of links which were pants – the above looks great, has just been printed and will be eaten tonight! The food was both original and well-executed. “At the time it was unheard of for Indian restaurants not to use freezers,” says Camellia. “We banned them in our kitchen. The chefs would come in every day and start from scratch. This made a huge difference to the quality. We also used a much better class of produce than any other Indian restaurant.” The centre of gravity had also shifted eastwards, with the majority of Chutney Mary’s competitors choosing to base themselves within or at least near to the West End. Masala World served more than 500,000 customers in 2005, and Mathrani expects this to rise more than one million in a couple of years with the expansion of Masala Zone.

This is down to down to their privileged upbringing in Indian in the 50s and 60s – Namita says they are midnight’s children, a reference to Salman Rushdie famed book about India’s transition from British colonialism to independence. Camellia Panjabi is the author of the world's best-selling book on curry, 50 Great Curries of India (Kyle Cathie 2006). It has sold over 800,000 copies and has been described as 'the definitive guide to Indian cooking'. This research forms the underpinning of every restaurant at MW Eat, including the casual Masala Zone, where strict systems are in place so that the chain runs with just two Indian chefs. There’s also a fanatical focus on ingredients. At Amaya, sabut grilled gobi is done with baby cauliflowers procured from a single field in France, for instance. In 1982 she set up the Bombay Brasserie in London, serving straightforward Indian dishes, such as aloo tuk (potatoes with yogurt and tamarind), and paneer goli kebabs (cottage cheese and potato balls with pomegranate and fig chutney). In 1992 the restaurant served its millionth customer. But how did she develop such an obsession with food? "My mother loves food, but it was my grandmother who really taught me to cook. The whole family would talk of food and ingredients - what we were eating that day - constantly."

Camellia, who had been involved from the start, came on board full-time in 2001 when the group opened its first Masala Zone in Soho, followed by a second in Islington. The 2005 Tatler Restaurant Awards recognised the trio's ground-breaking work by selecting them for the Restaurateur of the Year award, the first time it has gone to purveyors of non-European cuisine. Additionally, Amaya won both the London restaurant and new restaurant of the year awards in the 2005 Tio Pepe ITV London Restaurant Awards. The one dish that is believed to be Indian and drunk all over India is Masala Chai, which we have recently imported into this country as a delicacy. But there was no tea in India, it was introduced by the British after a dispute with the Chinese authorities,” she said, highlighting the two-way culinary exchanges. I first tasted pineapple curry atVeeraswamy, on Regent Street,London’s oldest surviving Indian restaurant. Camellia’s family owns Veeraswamy, and while this recipe differs from the restaurant’s, Camellia says there are similarities. Fruit curries are popular in Assam and along the westcoast of India. Camellia says she got this version from a Brahmin chef at the Taj hotel in Mangalore.

Chutney Mary’s second phase

Camellia is legendary for both her intuitive understanding of her customers as well as brave decisions to go with new ideas in the face of opposition. She was the first to introduce street food in restaurants and persuaded chefs to cook regional dishes at Tanjore that opened at the Bombay Taj in 1973. “It was the first restaurant to serve pan-Indian food. Most restaurants were doing only Punjabi till then,” recalls chef Hemant Oberoi, who began his career at that time. “While there were disagreements between her and us, as chefs, we respected her insight and research,” he says.



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