2.    WHAT MAKES A GOOD COOK GREAT?

WHAT IS IT that makes a good cook great? What enables some cooks to take an ordinary, everyday dish and lift it to another dimension? The answer, as to most seemingly difficult questions, is a simple one — the best and the freshest ingredients available, and a passion for food. Many people believe that poor-quality meat and stale vegetables can be disguised by putting them in a curry. This is completely inaccurate. A good Indian dish is a balance of spicy flavors around fresh, tasty vegetables and good-quality meat or fish. No amount of sugar and spice can disguise tasteless, stale or out-of-season ingredients.

I’m not sure what kindled my own passion for food, but whatever it was, it saw me standing on a stool so that I could reach the stove at the tender age of 7 to make my first chapati — under the watchful eye of my mother, of course.

My family moved from India to England in the late 1950s when I was just 5, and food always played an important part in our lives. It was difficult to buy many of the exotic ingredients that are so readily available today, so my parents grew whatever they could in their garden. Meat was somewhat scarce and expensive in the years after the Second World War and, even though it was eaten only once or twice a week, it was common for those early migrants to buy cheaper, tougher cuts of meat and chicken, and they developed inventive and clever methods of cooking them.

With my emerging interest in food and cooking I loved to watch my father cook the weekly meat curry. He would throw pieces of mutton, cheaper cuts of pork or portions of chicken into a large aluminum pot together with a quantity of chopped onions and some salt. The pot was placed on a gentle heat and cooked slowly for up to three hours until the onions had melted and the meat was beautifully tender. He would then add generous amounts of ghee (clarified butter), ripe tomatoes, garlic, ginger, turmeric and freshly ground spices (which my mother had painstakingly ground to a fine powder with a pestle and mortar) until the colorless simmering mass was a fragrant, rich, golden red.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, in would go the spring onions plucked straight from the garden. Fresh green fenugreek leaves, again picked just before using, were roughly chopped and stirred in. Occasionally, if they were growing in the garden, my father would add sliced turnips or carrots or even spinach leaves, harvested at the last minute of course, and simmer them with the meat during the last hour or so of cooking. Finally, a generous sprinkling of freshly picked cilantro would complete the culinary exercise. The aromas made your mouth water.

The fresh, aromatic vibrancy of those last few ingredients added so much to the character, flavor and appearance of these dishes that they were transformed from being just good to being absolutely sublime.

My growing passion was further kindled when my mother decided to take me back to India for the first time since I had left the country some 12 years earlier. Expecting to be bored with and alienated by a country I had little memory of and possibly little in common with, I instead landed in a place that so fascinated me I tingled with excitement. The land that my parents farmed before they left for England had been well looked after and traditionally (organically) farmed by our extended family. The fields were full of corn, sugarcane, spinach, mustard greens, chilies, radishes, turnips, carrots, squash, eggplants, spring onions, garlic and herbs and edible, exotic plants that I had never seen or heard of before. The people were different too: solid, pragmatic, salt-of-the-earth type individuals who were clearly in harmony with their environment and all its inhabitants.

Mealtimes were an absolute delight. My young cousins and I would rise early in the morning to make the short journey to the fields to pick the vegetables — eggplants, zucchini, tender green chickpeas, turnips or carrots, chilies — and herbs for making breakfast, the meal consisting of a vegetable bhaji or dhal, buttery parathas, yogurt that had been made overnight, homemade green mango or lime achar (pickle) and lassi (buttermilk — a light, fresh-tasting liquid that remains after yogurt is churned to make butter, done early each morning). Chai, flavored with cardamom, made with fresh buffalo milk obtained that morning and sweetened with rich, sweet, raw cane sugar (jaggery), followed shortly after.

When lunch- and dinnertime came around, the vegetables and herbs collected earlier were “stale.” “Feed them to the cattle,” my aunt would say, “and go pick some more.” A few hours old, and they were no longer considered fresh enough for human consumption. Leftover yogurt from the day before was no longer eaten with meals as a side dish, but soured and thickened with chickpea flour (besan), flavored with green fenugreek, whole spices, cilantro and lots of fresh green chilies and made into a delicious curry. Any milk left over from the previous day was not fresh enough to drink and was either made into dessert using rice, sago or vermicelli, or curdled and made into paneer for cooking with ginger, garlic, tomatoes, chilies and peas to make mattar paneer. Vegetables were so fresh that you didn’t need to add water to make a sauce; their juices were copious enough.

Yet there was still more to come; I was fortunate enough to be in India at the time of year that sugarcane is harvested and milled to squeeze out the juice. What a wonderful experience. I would eagerly arise at the chilly crack of dawn and make my way down to the mill, jug in hand. I had only a little memory of drinking freshly squeezed sugarcane juice (ras) and what a heavenly delight it was when I tasted it again for the first time. The cool, fresh sweetness of it was extraordinary.

These experiences were a revelation to me of how good food should be, but there is one particular incident that somehow transcended all of this and crystallized for me the sheer essence of fresh food. I loved to walk barefoot through the cool channels of water as they irrigated the fields, taking in this pure, bountiful countryside that they call the Punjab. During one such excursion, I leaned over and pulled a carrot out of the ground, shook it around in the water to wash off the soil and bit into it. The depth of flavor, the freshness of the aroma, the sweet, juicy “carroty” taste were so pure and intense, it made me stop in my tracks and savor its stunning uniqueness. I had never tasted such true flavor before. It was as though my tastebuds came truly alive only at that moment. This experience made such an impression on me that I have recounted it many times. It was only a carrot, but I had never tasted anything like it, and the experience has shaped my relationship with food to this day.

The days were filled with delightful, mouthwatering episodes at every turn, beginning early with a long, cool, delicious glass of ras and ending quite late with fresh cobs of corn roasted in the embers of a dying fire followed by a glass of warm milk sweetened with raw cane sugar. I thought this must be paradise. I took great delight in learning to make new and complex dishes from my grandmother and aunts who were wonderful and creative cooks.

I became enthralled and enchanted by this mystical land, its people and the rich and sustainable lives they lived. They used no chemicals or foreign substances on the land. They looked after their animals, feeding them wholesome crops, linseeds and herbs. They used and reused everything. The remnants of harvested corn and milled sugarcane were fed to the cattle or used as compost. Cattle and buffalo manure was used on the land or made into patties, dried and used as fuel for cooking and heating. Even the ashes that remained after the patties were burned were used for scouring pots and pans. There was no packaging, no waste and no landfill. Practices the West thought of as primitive then are now, with our awareness of climate change, seen to be environmentally friendly and ecologically sound.

I reluctantly returned to England after several months, but the essence of this magical country lives inside me to this day.

TIPS ON BUYING AND USING FRESH INGREDIENTS

If you want to cook great Indian food, it is important that you obtain fresh, top-quality ingredients, preferably organically produced. Just as you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, you cannot create a culinary masterpiece from stale, tasteless produce.

▪   Buy seasonal fruit and vegetables. It is possible nowadays to buy just about every type of fruit and vegetable at any time of year, but at what cost to your tastebuds and your wallet? Out-of-season fruit is generally tasteless and vegetables are bland and sometimes even bitter. Produce that is in season will taste a lot better and cost significantly less.

▪   Buy local produce. Local markets and farmers’ markets are good places to buy seasonal, fresh produce. You will be helping to save the planet too as the food has not traveled so far.

▪   Buy the more exotic ingredients from Indian grocers. You will find the quality is top-notch and the prices are lower.

▪   When buying fruit and vegetables, pick them up, examine them and smell them. If they are fresh, they should be plump with smooth skins, feel heavy for their size and have a distinct aroma. Bunches of herbs should not be tired and wilting.

▪   Buy organically grown produce when you can or grow some of your own. The appearance, feel and scent of really fresh produce, especially fresh herbs, are truly wonderful.

A little goes a long way to adding that touch of magic to your dishes. Try some of the following:

▪   Homegrown cilantro (also referred to as coriander), for example, is so much more vibrant and aromatic than anything you can buy. Just a little sprinkled on the dish transforms it into something special, and you can grow it in a tiny area of your garden or even in a pot. During the warmer months, just sprinkle some coriander seeds from your pantry onto the garden or onto some potting mix in a pot, sprinkle some soil or potting mix on top, water and keep moist. It’s that easy. Fresh cilantro is a delicate herb. Use it toward the end of cooking and as a garnish.

▪   Next time you have some garlic cloves or onions that are beginning to sprout, plant them in the garden. They will grow healthy green shoots in no time. Use the green tops, roughly chopped, next time you make a curry or savory snack, and you will add an extra dimension of flavor, color and aroma to the dish. Both of these ingredients need to be cooked so use them at the beginning of making a dish. (Note: much of the garlic available nowadays is imported and treated with a gas that effectively kills it, so it will not sprout. Buy organic garlic bulbs if you wish it to sprout and it will grow beautifully.)

▪   Throw some fenugreek seeds (again the same fenugreek seeds you use for cooking) onto a small area in the garden or into a pot and within a couple of weeks you will have fresh, green fenugreek leaves. Add a handful, chopped, to curries, bhajis, pakoras or really just about any savory dish to impart a robust flavor to the dish. Fresh fenugreek requires cooking, so use it at the beginning.

▪   A few fresh mint leaves shredded and sprinkled onto a salad or stirred into yogurt or even a curry add liveliness, color and flavor. Mint grows easily and is a perennial. Ask a friend who has some growing in the garden to pull out a few roots, and put them into a pot or straight into your garden. You will have fresh mint from late spring to early winter every year.

▪   If you have a handful of sweet, ripe cherry tomatoes, stir them whole or sliced in half into the dish at the last minute and you will introduce additional color, texture and taste. The appearance of the dish is beautifully enhanced. Remember you feast with your eyes before your mouth.

Throughout the book, I have included suggestions for the use of one or more optional ingredients such as those above, and given instructions on how best to use them in your cooking. Please remember, though, you can make perfectly good dishes by following the basic recipes; these suggestions are an optional extra for those times when you are in the mood to create something extraordinary.