NISHA KATONA
My life began in Ormskirk, Lancashire, where I was born, the daughter of Indian immigrant doctors. I remember growing up in a house in which every emotion was vociferously expressed, every guest embraced as a member of the family; a house filled with noise, with the aroma of wild exotic cooking and, above all, filled with so much love.
I was then raised in 1970s Skelmersdale – a small town in West Lancashire – where my parents took their first medical practice. This was an entirely white, working class area and it is not an unusual tale of the 1970s immigrant that some of my earliest memories were of being firebombed, of bricks being thrown through our windows and stones aimed at us on the way to school. We had little to offer. We were not cool. We were not rich. It was actually the thing that came most naturally to us that became our saviour – it was our love for hospitality and our open kitchen that became the Kofi Annan of race relations. My mother’s generous and gorgeous rolling buffet meant our little Skem home became the place for teens to hang out. Their parents followed and my dad strode through acres of Johnnie Walker Black Label on the swaying road to integration. He didn’t complain, I promise you.
You see, above all, Indians love to feed people. There is something very humble and uncomplicated about Indian social culture – we aim to please and we want you to like us. Warmth and generosity is beamed down on you like a blinding beacon of love, whether you want it or not. Taking you by the elbow to the kitchen table and setting before you enormous plates of food is the only way to make friends, right? Good hospitality is at the heart of the Indian home and guests are treated like royalty. If you arrived unannounced at my mother’s home, within minutes the stove would be fired up and a delicious platter of something yellow and come-hither would be on its way to you. I remember scoffing snacks of tea-steeped chickpeas after school at brave Mr Jagota’s shop – one of the only Asian shops in Liverpool at the time – while he shared stories of his own childhood. I recall the dinner table at home heaving with decidedly more dishes than there were people seated around it, everyone talking over each other and sharing out the food among ourselves.
So, although there may have been many, many already awkward teenage moments made all the more awkward by the mismatching hand-me-down knitwear, a kitchen full of excruciatingly different food, a distinct lack of Adidas and no shortage of brown corduroy, I am forever, truly and unapologetically grateful for my blushes, because without them, I may never have daydreamed Mowgli into existence.
FROM THE COURTROOM TO THE KITCHEN
My route to the kitchen is perhaps an unusual one. I didn’t start off with a desire to work with food, although maybe on some deeper level I did. Like any good Indian daughter, I worked hard at school and passed all my exams. I then went on to become the first female Indian barrister in Liverpool. The law, especially at that time, was a very male-dominated industry and I recall on my first day of mini pupillage being sent a note by the head of chambers that said: ‘Tell her not to return tomorrow as she is female and Asian and the bar is no place for such a person.’ I surprised myself by returning to chambers the next day. I was more afraid of my mother than of the man at the top of the stagnant ivory tower.
Determination and the knowledge that I would have to work ten times harder than those around me lead on to a thoroughly enjoyable legal career. I was then appointed trustee of the National Museums Liverpool by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in 2008. And in 2009, the Cabinet Office anointed me Ambassador for Diversity in Public Appointments. I was an ‘expert advisor’ for the Guardian; and I also spoke regularly on the radio – both locally and nationally. I was proud to be giving a voice to women, hopefully at the same time demonstrating to other women that it is possible to succeed in a predominantly male work environment.
But a love of good food and an even greater love of the alchemy at play in the kitchen awoke in me the call to cooking; a call that I simply could not ignore. And as is so often the story with those of us who end up working in the food industry, those heady, bewitching scents of the kitchen kept pulling me back.
When not practising law, I lived the life of a fully fledged foodie. Holidays were booked solely around the local food offerings – China, Vietnam, Morocco, Italy, South Korea – and I became almost infatuated with sharing my new discoveries with anyone I could seat at my kitchen table for long enough. At night, I conjured up new dishes, marrying new discoveries with the long-held and well-learnt traditions from my family’s own handwritten recipes. I became a curry evangelist, giving lessons in the ancient curry formulas of India.
It is obvious though, I think, that curry house offerings on most British high streets are unrecognisable to most Indians. Ask an Indian for a balti and they will bring you a bucket; tikka masala was born out of a Glaswegian man’s love of gravy on his chicken; and passanda translates as ‘I like,’ as in ‘chicken, I like’.
As I delved further, researched more, I kept asking myself, where was the authentic Indian home-cooking? The hugely varied, fresh, delicately spiced, healthy dishes enjoyed at lunch and dinner by Indian families around the world? British palates, at least until recently, seemed to be geared up to reject anything that did not involve chunks of meat floating in a neon sauce.
One reason for the lack of home-style cooking on the high street perhaps lies in the fact that traditional Indian cooking does not revolve around meat. In Britain, pulses used to be seen as mostly the preserve of hippies and those with gastrointestinal complaints. But Indian cooking is at its most magical in its cooking of vegetables, and what a varied, wonderful magic trick it is.
It felt time to share these ancient recipes; passed on by my ancestors, eaten at home, on the street, packed up and taken to work. To bring real Indian food to the masses. And so, although I had loved every single day of my 20 years at the Bar, and felt an enormous sense of pride in helping my clients – the children and victims of neglect, abuse and domestic violence – I couldn’t escape those temptress tastes of far-flung lands any longer.
I used all my savings, all my inheritance, every bit of security I had and I began negotiations with Liverpool One – a slick shopping complex in the centre of town. No surprise here that I lost out on the site to a sweet donut concept. Who would take a risk on an unestablished independent peddling her mother’s recipes, when they had the sure-fire hit and covenant strength of the sugar-coated, deep-fried all-American dream?
Undeterred, I looked further out, to the bohemian and artistic neighbourhoods on the fringes of Liverpool. And the rest, as they say, is history. We set up Mowgli Bold Street and within weeks the queues formed, much to my absolute surprise. It was then that I realised that Mowgli was a thing much bigger than me. That I was a trustee of this living, sassy, independent creature and that she would teach me how she needed to be led. And she wanted to be led across the nation. It was then, watching the queues and watching my team of incredible, dedicated staff, that I felt duplicitous in continuing to practise as a barrister. Three months after Mowgli was born, I took a sabbatical and turned to face the new life in front of me.
MOWGLI
Mowgli is based on the way that Indians eat at home and on their streets: fresh, zingy, hectic, colourful flavours. But calling it ‘street food’ loses some of itself in translation and suggests something far less than it is. Street food in the whole of the East is a far cry from the ubiquitous strap line we overuse in the West. The majority of the world’s population does not revolve around a restaurant culture, but around a street food culture. Indian eating when not done at home is most often practised outside, on the street, on the move, chatting to people around you. Each vendor sells his speciality, borne of years of honing his skills into one perfect dish. Bhajis of courgette flowers, densely battered and beautifully spiced; cones of roasted chickpeas, devoured by everyone from businessmen to children dawdling on their way home from school; delicately aromatic curries served in banana leaf bowls. All of these are recreated in the pages of this book.
For the Mowgli Menu, I chose my favourite 20 Indian dishes, irrespective of region. I chose the dishes that I am addicted to. The dishes I have to eat twice a week to avoid going cold turkey. It turns out we have 20 dishes with only 8 meat dishes. The menu at Mowgli is all about the food Indians actually eat. The stuff that goes on the stove once the guests have left – humble, undressed, light fare. The stuff we think our English visitors would hate because it is not comprised of lumps of meat floating in a rich gravy. I take a huge risk with the Mowgli menu. Dishes like Temple Dahl are such a far cry from the heavy tarka dahls of the takeaways. Mowgli’s guests need to recalibrate their expectations of Indian food. Calcutta Tangled Greens and House Lamb Curry, Tea-Steeped Chickpeas and soft party Puris... these are the dishes you find cold in an Indian’s refrigerator, dormant, waiting, full of virtuosic flavour. This is the stuff of Mowgli.
I never contrived the Mowgli menu to have a particular vegan–meat balance. I simply chose the best dishes I know and it was a shocking moment when I performed the tally. I never wanted it this way. Commercial pressures would dictate a meat-heavy menu. But in that moment of crafting the finished menu, it was almost as though the food had animated me to write it. I was subconsciously awakening the food of my ancestors and once invoked, its face was quite unrecognisable. This was not a menu like any curry house I know. Suddenly the meat section looked like a minority pursuit. It overturns the balance that we have in the West where a meal must be based around meat. The Mowgli menu is how Indians eat at home and if you want to partake, everything about it will take you out of your curry comfort zone.
The dishes served at Mowgli are based around the Indian culture of ‘chat’, which translates as ‘lick’ (as in, ‘lick one’s plate clean’). Every day in Indian homes and at street stalls, chat is served in small portions of explosive flavour meant for sharing. Mixing plates creates perfect combinations of taste and texture – bright fresh coriander, the sweet-sour tang of tamarind, spicy-cool yogurt and a satisfying gram flour crunch.
I love spice – it is an addiction for me. Not so much the fiery chilli that seems beloved by British palates, but the aromatic, subtly powerful headnotes of spices like cardamom, cumin and nigella seeds. I enjoy creating pure explosions of taste in every mouthful – contrasting but complementary textures and flavours that can almost overwhelm, but are then pulled back and tempered at the last minute, cooled and refreshed. I love food you can get involved in, to pick up with your hands, to share, to steal off each other’s plates. Eating together should be an assault on all the senses – the noise, the colour, the smells and the textures – doing away with restraint and table-clothed British sensitivities. Mowgli is for me the vibrancy of an eatery, the mess, the lively Indian home of my teen years, a bustling Indian night market at lunchtime 4,000 miles away.
Food reflects the times we live in and I feel that right now is an overwhelmingly exciting time; a time in which most people – at least in the world of food of which I am now an honoured part – are open to welcoming new ideas and tastes from abroad. I eat at Mowgli twice a day, so the food you eat when you’re there really is the food I eat too. I’m constantly hanging around in the kitchen, annoying my marvellous team of chefs, mixing, meddling and trying out new ideas – some happy accidents and some careful culinary adventures. Many a happy mash-up of my Indian and British food life have happened this way.
The Mowgli menu and this cookbook is my list of desert island dishes. These are the dishes I need, of which I have never tired; these dishes tell the tales of my life and they taste of the love of my family.
TIFFIN
The food of Mowgli is the food of the tiffin carrier lunch. The best Indian food is forged for lunchtime trade. This is when the food-roulette tiffin tins tell you if you are in the good books with your spouse; whether your mum had you down for a jam or spam day.
When office workers in India leave home for work, they cannot take with them their home-cooked hot lunches. Their lunches follow them in stacked tiffin tins, by train, mule, taxi and turban. The billion-dollar industry of tiffin carriers even wait and return the washing up home. Children are sent to school with their bright tiffin carriers full of light, flavourful, vegetarian dishes designed to be easily digested and to freshen the mind.
One of the charms of tiffin is the moment of the reveal. The recipient does not know what they are going to get until they lift the lid. It will be different every day, but the dishes will all be light, fragrant and full of home-cooked flavour – the tastes of Mowgli.
THE MOWGLI MONKEY
I came to Mowgli late, a dowager tiger mother of monkeys. I designed every brick of Mowgli, every element of her physicality. I laboured ridiculously over her, and always will. Not one shelf goes up without me pondering it and positioning it. I wanted to create a place that neutralised your expectations entirely, that removed all those preconceptions you would have of an Indian restaurant so that we could then do to you what we wanted with our food. I used the temples behind my grandmother’s Varanasi home as the palette for my design. Broken-down grandeur, warm, worn brick hung about with vines, monkeys with their sass and their independent determination striding across the rooftops. The Monkey logo was borne from those memories. I still remember the whole-body thrill I felt seeing the Mowgli Monkey being carried down Oxford Street on a tote bag in London when we were just one restaurant strong. She strides before me does this monkey. With her ponderous frown and her defiant flick of the tail. She is the personification of all that I have built.
MOWGLI, THE COOKBOOK
From between these pages and then at home around your own table, I hope you will join me on my culinary journey as it diverts and digresses, twists back on itself and finally comes together as a collection of tried-and-tested dishes, kindled on the home fires of my ancestors and carried across the ages and the oceans in the hearts of those I love.
