12th April 2013
Winter 2009 - Spice & Light
Always on the move, renowned chef Cyrus Todiwala recently found himself on the island of Jersey giving students enlightenment about true Indian food.
According to Indian chef and restaurateur Cyrus Todiwala, we have a less than exact knowledge of Indian cuisine in Britain.
His London restaurants, Café Spice Namasté and The Parsee, are famous for their innovative approach to Indian cuisine and Todiwala is highly acclaimed for his individual style, and widely acknowledged as the most creative chef working in Indian cuisine today. He is also an expert on Indian Parsee cooking.
Yet there is still an urge to not only spread the word about truly Indian food but also learn about another region’s produce and give it a twist in his own inimitable style.
This quest led him to the Channel Islands, and more specifically Jersey. The connection with Jersey originated at the Real Food Festival where Todiwala used crabmeat from the island’s Fresh Fish Company for a curry demo.
Subsequently he and his wife Pervin visited the island in October to check out the local produce as well as see how to promote it in the UK. “Until recently I only knew about Jersey cows and Jersey Royals, but now I have learnt about the island’s crabs, sea bass, bream, lobsters, tomatoes, peppers, squash, pumpkins, etc,” he says.
As part of the visit, he gave a demo to students at Highlands College on an Indian dish – that same crab curry he produced at the Real Food Festival. The following day the students cooked the same dish using Jersey ingredients and served it in the college’s restaurant.
The result was sea bass leeli machchi ni curry and Kerala Nyand masala. Todiwala was invited to explain the dish, and said leeli machchi ni curry was a light green curry; Kerala was a region in southern India, nyand was crab, and masala meant anything cooked dry without a sauce.
But why didn’t it bear the slightest resemblance to what we think in Britain as Indian food?
“This is Indian Indian food, not British Indian food. Indian food is very regional and in this dish three regions were represented,” says Todiwala. “The curry is from my own Parsee community. The potato bhajee comes from the Gujerati western coast. The rice is standard throughout India of course, but this preparation has northern flavours of cardamom, cloves and cinnamon.
“But it is classical Indian cuisine, which is why you find it so different. The names of dishes on an Indian menu may be classical but the food is not.
“Take vindaloo for example. It should be prepared only from pickled pork, but in Britain the name is perceived as something to do with the heat level, and that has a totally different meaning from what a vindaloo actually is. On our menu at Café Spice Namasté it is only made with pork as it’s done in Goa.
“We try and prepare food at our restaurants that is very Indian but we use primarily British produce, and that gives a slightly different take on the dishes, but I don’t deviate from my own roots of cooking.”
He realised that Indian food was perceived in the west as hot, spicy and curried but in fact it is neither as hot as is thought, nor is the food all curry – a British term that drives him mad. “Curry is predominantly a sauce made with coconut milk. It is a south Indian word meaning “in a lot of sauce”. Coconut trees extend all around the Indian coastline – some 9,000km – and the coconut from that coastline is used to create the food of the coastline.”
• This is an abridged version of the feature written for the November issue of Jersey Life by Alasdair Crosby
His London restaurants, Café Spice Namasté and The Parsee, are famous for their innovative approach to Indian cuisine and Todiwala is highly acclaimed for his individual style, and widely acknowledged as the most creative chef working in Indian cuisine today. He is also an expert on Indian Parsee cooking.
Yet there is still an urge to not only spread the word about truly Indian food but also learn about another region’s produce and give it a twist in his own inimitable style.
This quest led him to the Channel Islands, and more specifically Jersey. The connection with Jersey originated at the Real Food Festival where Todiwala used crabmeat from the island’s Fresh Fish Company for a curry demo.
Subsequently he and his wife Pervin visited the island in October to check out the local produce as well as see how to promote it in the UK. “Until recently I only knew about Jersey cows and Jersey Royals, but now I have learnt about the island’s crabs, sea bass, bream, lobsters, tomatoes, peppers, squash, pumpkins, etc,” he says.
As part of the visit, he gave a demo to students at Highlands College on an Indian dish – that same crab curry he produced at the Real Food Festival. The following day the students cooked the same dish using Jersey ingredients and served it in the college’s restaurant.
The result was sea bass leeli machchi ni curry and Kerala Nyand masala. Todiwala was invited to explain the dish, and said leeli machchi ni curry was a light green curry; Kerala was a region in southern India, nyand was crab, and masala meant anything cooked dry without a sauce.
But why didn’t it bear the slightest resemblance to what we think in Britain as Indian food?
“This is Indian Indian food, not British Indian food. Indian food is very regional and in this dish three regions were represented,” says Todiwala. “The curry is from my own Parsee community. The potato bhajee comes from the Gujerati western coast. The rice is standard throughout India of course, but this preparation has northern flavours of cardamom, cloves and cinnamon.
“But it is classical Indian cuisine, which is why you find it so different. The names of dishes on an Indian menu may be classical but the food is not.
“Take vindaloo for example. It should be prepared only from pickled pork, but in Britain the name is perceived as something to do with the heat level, and that has a totally different meaning from what a vindaloo actually is. On our menu at Café Spice Namasté it is only made with pork as it’s done in Goa.
“We try and prepare food at our restaurants that is very Indian but we use primarily British produce, and that gives a slightly different take on the dishes, but I don’t deviate from my own roots of cooking.”
He realised that Indian food was perceived in the west as hot, spicy and curried but in fact it is neither as hot as is thought, nor is the food all curry – a British term that drives him mad. “Curry is predominantly a sauce made with coconut milk. It is a south Indian word meaning “in a lot of sauce”. Coconut trees extend all around the Indian coastline – some 9,000km – and the coconut from that coastline is used to create the food of the coastline.”
• This is an abridged version of the feature written for the November issue of Jersey Life by Alasdair Crosby