worked: my mum in the shop; my father long and irregular hours as a teacher in a List D school (the D stood for Delinquents). It was a glorified borstal. His days and evenings, weekends and public holidays were spent whiling the hours away with rapists, armed robbers and murderers, all of whom shared one single defining quality: they were under the age of eighteen.
And yet, even though we didn’t cuddle up in the lap of luxury I never felt that I went without. We had what we needed. And what we didn’t need, thanks to the fiendishly fiscally astute way my mother planned weekly meals, was anything more than one night of dining out a year. So that’s what we got. A little tandoori restaurant in Elmbank Street in the heart of Glasgow, the same street on which years later I would meet the woman who would become my wife. The name of the place escapes me. Glasgow in the seventies was only just starting its love affair with Indian food, a love affair that would blossom and burgeon into a full-blown, lifelong romance. And it all seemed to start at this anonymous little place just off Sauchiehall Street.
We would never have gone out to eat food that Mum could have made at home. That would have been pointless. Why pay over the odds for home food? But Mum didn’t have a tandoor and no matter how good her spicy yoghurt mix, no matter how well she balanced the chilli and the lemon, no matter how infused her chicken became, it never ever tasted like it had come out of a clay oven.
So we went to this little place and gorged on tandoori food. I remember it being delicious and my father being very excited about it. I didn’t quite understand why he was so happy eating red chicken; it was only years later that I fully comprehended how much my dad missed the food of the Punjab, the food of his home. We ate there every year on my dad’s birthday for a few years until the place burnt down. Perhaps the victim of over-eager cooking.
Sauchiehall Street was very much in my mind as I arrived in Trivandrum late at night. It’s another twenty-minute cab ride from the airport to the hotel in Kovalam. The contents of my mind could not have jarred more dramatically with the scenery around me as I walked across the runway to the terminal building. I was entering the tropical heat of southern India with its palm trees and sand, while in my mind I saw the postcards of palm trees and sand behind the bar of that small restaurant in Elmbank Street. The plane had started its journey in Bangalore, a place I would be visiting at some point soon, and had stopped at Cochin to fill up with more passengers all heading for the final stop, Trivandrum. Even though night was upon us, the temperature was only one notch below oppressive. I wonder how one deals with such heat all day and all night long?
This was the beginning of my quest. Once my journey started, I would have to give myself over to the complete travelling experience. I would have to make do with whatever mode of transport, whatever accommodation and whatever people were available. I realised that this was the last moment I had total control. I could parachute myself into deepest darkest India to test my culinary resolve in the most unforgiving of circumstances, the most intense of arenas: a small rural village a dirt-track away from western civilisation where ancient Indian cooking traditions have developed over millennia; a verdant cove of Indianness, untouched, unspoilt, unaccustomed to the strange vagaries of the western palate. I could have done that. Or I could have booked myself into a glorious five star Taj health and wellness spa. Guess what I did …
It seemed strange all those years later to be in the Taj Green Cove, a five-star hotel in India, when little of my childhood was spent anywhere but at home. And this hotel was a rather extreme version of opulence. Set in acres of tropical forest the accommodation was a series of chalets, nonchalantly scattered over the side of a small hill, overlooking the azure blue Arabian Sea below. This was one of those places where one forgets one is in India and is sure to have entered paradise. Perhaps this was the new India, the international globe-trotting hedonists’ India?
One of the main reasons I came to this hotel was because they offered a Sadhya meal, a ‘Big Feast’. Nothing too subtle in that translation. It originally offered sixty-four courses of vegetarian food, eight varieties of eight different curries. Sixty-four. And then a further eight desserts. Nice. Traditionally served on a banana leaf, dishes are served with almost mathematical precision, each area of the leaf having a designated curry type. One is meant to sit cross-legged on the floor to eat. As the maître d’ and head waiter and sommelier accompanied me to my table, I felt a little self-conscious at the thought of my oversized arse having to somehow negotiate its way floorward. Luckily the hotel had dispensed with that requirement of the Sadhya meal and I allowed the waiter to lay my crisp, white linen napkin across my lap. I appeared to be the only diner in the beautifully appointed dark-wood dining room. The smell of jasmine drifted on the air.
A banana leaf sat before me, nearly three feet wide and eighteen inches in depth. It had already been adorned with mango pickle, mango chutney, salt and a banana. It was like the start of a surrealist food gag. Then the onslaught arrived. Wave after wave of rice, daal, vegetables, more rice, papads, daal, yoghurt, coconut rice, more papads … I don’t know about you, but I can eat loads. Really. Within an hour and a half I was languishing under my own body weight in lentils, yoghurt and vegetables. Languishing, but not yet happily full, not yet content in the stomach department. Finally dessert arrived. Only three of these, each sweeter and richer than the other. I was replete. Good and proper.
I stole myself off to my room. I had planning to do. I had to decide on a meal to cook for the executive chef, Arzooman, and his crack team of sous chefs. I lulled myself off to sleep that night with thoughts of beautifully roasted chunks of lamb in an anchovy and garlic sauce and found myself dreaming about creamy, buttery mash and perfectly seasoned broccoli with a tangy hollandaise sauce.
The following evening I wandered through that same dining room, nodding familiarly to the maître d’, the head waiter and the sommelier. This time I continued past my table and beyond the door that separates the world of the guest from the world of the kitchen. I had been told that I had the run of the kitchen; it was a massive hotel and having read through all the various menus for all the various restaurants and clubs I had appraised myself fairly well of the ingredients available. I couldn’t help but feel nervous. I had no excuses, nowhere to hide. Arzooman knows what good food tastes like. And the thought of being back in a commercial kitchen was both thrilling and terrifying, hampered as I was with English as a first language. That and the fact that I knew all the staff would look at me like some freak of nature.
‘Why does the slightly overweight Sikh man from Britain want to come and cook British food in our kitchen?’ I could almost hear them asking.
I didn’t have a ready answer.
For a moment I’m genuinely not sure why I am here and what I am doing. What do I seek to achieve by cooking for these people? Are they any more likely to understand British life after a plate of my food? Did Glaswegians feel any more knowledgeable about the history and culture of India after a chicken bhuna and a peshawari nan, with a side order of aloo gobi? And it’s not like the food I am cooking will be anywhere near the standard of the food Arzooman cooks. I steel myself, reminding myself that it’s only food. What have I got to lose apart from my credibility, my reputation and my way on a journey that has only just begun. That calms me right down. I head down to the kitchen.
I’m handed a purple apron that clashes terribly with my pink kurta top. My attempt to articulate this fashion faux pas is greeted with stony silence by one of Arzooman’s sous chefs. It’s going to be a long night. And suddenly I realise that Arzooman has dedicated his entire continental kitchen to me: a kitchen completely open to the public gaze, a kitchen where my every mistake can be publicly witnessed. Marvellous.
I remind myself that if this evening goes badly and I manage to cock the whole thing up, lose a finger and poison a commis chef, then I am entitled to plead the defence of valiant failure, repack my wheely case and return to Britain. I explain my quest to Arzooman.
