my heritage and free my mind of the preconditioned opinions I had of India as I was growing up. He is also very acutely aware of the tension that exists in my dual identity, but seems perfectly comfortable with my sense of Britishness and Indianness. Perhaps that is because he has travelled much of the world; he trained in Chicago and Switzerland. He knows something of being an outsider. The only thing he doesn’t get is my desire to cook British food.
‘It’s bloody hilarious, man!’ he says after I poke and prod my way through his superficial politeness.
‘Why?’ I ask.
‘Listen, man,’ he explains. ‘These guys, Indians, are obsessed with food, but only Indian food. I cook hundreds of meals here every week and they are mostly eaten by foreigners. Indians rarely come and eat here. Which is fine because we are an international hotel.’
I take a moment and look around the restaurant. It is early, he is right. There are very few Indians eating; and those who are here seem to have ordered from the Indian menu. I’m in trouble. Deep trouble.
This is my first dish in what promises to be a long and winding road through India. The Indians are not well acquainted with British food, less so Scots food. But I have decided that my opening foray into the education of the Indian palate should be something straight out of the heart of my childhood; a plate of food that by its ingredients and history alone tells the story of where I come from, the story of Scotland. I need to be bold, uncompromising, resolute. I must embrace my quest and deliver to Arzooman and his chefs a dish that epitomises all I am, all I hope to be. I will give them stovies.
You’ve probably never heard of stovies. They are utterly delicious – delicious and quintessentially Scottish. It is a peasant dish, said to have come from the gentry handing leftover meat from Sunday lunch to their workers. The workers would then combine this meat with potatoes and onions, frying the mixture in dripping, thereby creating ‘stovies’. This would last them the week, until the next Sunday. Much like my mum and her two pot method. Every Sunday night my mother would cook one pot of meat or chicken and one pot of daal or vegetable. By Wednesday of that week both pots would be almost empty. So on a Thursday evening both pots were combined giving us innovations such as lamb and cauliflower or chicken and daal. This was the two-pot method.
The stovies I grew up eating were mince stovies. Another common thread between the Punjab and Scotland is the combination of mince and potatoes. The Punjabis have keema, curried mince with quartered potatoes, the fl oury potatoes mashing down into the rich, spicy, minced lamb which would then be enveloped in a hot buttery chapatti. The Scots love their mince and tatties. We got stovies at school, once a week on a Tuesday. It was my favourite meal of the week; it was also my elder brother Raj’s favourite meal of the week, because it was the only lunch that was bereft of vegetables.
So I feel stovies somehow speak from both sides of my heritage. And if I am to find myself on this culinary adventure around India I must be bold, uncompromising and resolute. I must be…
But suddenly I am meek, compromising and irresolute. I can’t cook a plate of stovies in a five-star hotel for an internationally trained chef and his team. It would be mental. How could I possibly convey to them the myriad reasons for what is effectively a plate of carbohydrate-heavy brown sludge that tastes of comfort? I can’t do it. So instead I choose to cook something really poncy and European.
I pitch the idea of an Indian pesto to the not-altogether-convinced Arzooman. I explain that while it seems part of my culinary journey is bringing Britain and Europe to India, I am also trying to take a little of India back to Britain and Europe. I choose not to even mention stovies. Instead I suggest a pesto with coconut, coriander and paneer.
‘Coconut, coriander and paneer?’ The stress is all on the question mark. His face is deeply quizzical.
He thinks for a moment.
‘Not paneer, man. It’s too… grainy. Not smooth enough for a pesto.’
‘Oh,’ I respond, trying my hardest to look simultaneously unflustered and knowledgeable. ‘Yeah. Paneer. Too grainy.’
The usual cheese used in a pesto is either pecorino or parmesan. Arzooman doesn’t use pecorino, parmesan is limited and expensive, and I don’t want to use such a precious kitchen resource. And as I stand face to face with Arzooman I suspect that I may be close to tears. His eyes light up.
‘You can use strained yoghurt, man.’ With that he rushes into the kitchen.
Strained yoghurt instead of cheese? I try hard not to look confused. Confused and ill. This yoghurt strained through muslin sounds similar to something my mum used to make when I was a boy: paneer. My mum would boil milk and then split it, with the addition of distilled vinegar. There’s nothing quite as repulsive as the smell of split milk. Actually there is: split milk solids tied up in muslin. That’s what my mum would do. Once the milk was split, she would pour the entire mixture into the largest piece of muslin I have ever seen, the solids being caught in the muslin and the water draining away. She would then tie the muslin to the tap in the sink and allow every last drop of liquid to escape. Later the paneer would then be chilled and cut into cubes or grated, with its mince-like consistency. Paneer. I often think of this bulging mass of cloth dripping smelly cheese-water over the kitchen sink. And she wondered why we were less than keen to eat it? The fact that the stink of the preparation bore no similarity to the delicious taste of paneer was lost on us children. We simply refused to eat it. And she would shout at us to eat it until we cried. As children we cried over split milk. As opposed to spilt milk.
Thoughts of my mum lead me uncomfortably to thoughts of my dad. I’m fairly sure that if he were with me in this kitchen he would suggest I put down my cooking implements and return to my room for a wee lie down and a gentle thought-regathering session. But alas, my dad is on the other side of the world, the Indian man in Britain while I, the British man in India, am attempting to bluff my way through.
Arzooman is back clutching a small, golf-ball sized white package. ‘Strained yoghurt, man. Use the good stuff.’ He nonchalantly throws the cling-film-wrapped soft yoghurt ball over to me.
I catch it with both hands. ‘Great!’ I say, again trying that simultaneous look of unflustered and knowledgeable. ‘This’ll be great.’
The chicken breasts are slit and a cavity fashioned within them. The breasts are skinless. Ordinarily I would have preferred skins to have remained intact; the skins have so much flavour and they take much more colour than the naked flesh, but ho hum, skinless it is. At the continental cooking counter, visible to the entire poolside restaurant crowd that has slowly started to filter in, I am furiously chopping coriander and grating fresh coconut. Time to blend my Indian pesto. It seems only right and proper that I use coconut, so ubiquitous in Kerala that it featured seven times in seven different dinner dishes from the Sadhya feast the day before. The coriander is fine; my only concern is this strained yoghurt thing. It is like ricotta but less rich and more tart. I would have to balance it somehow.
The pesto is whizzed and turns out to be quite delicious. I try hard to hide my surprise from Arzooman. He tries less hard to hide his from me. I delicately stuff my breasts and close off the holes with toothpicks. The last thing I want is pesto spillage; that’s ugly and unnecessary. My plan is for the breasts to fry and then roast so that the ricotta, the coriander and the coconut will meld and merge and set slightly within the cavity. Generally that’s another good reason for resting the chicken, apart from the fact that rested meat is tastier for allowing the juices to settle back into the flesh.
Meanwhile I have my stock reducing. I pop the skinless chicken breasts into the frying pan, adjusting the timing for absence of skin. As they fry away,
