How my mother inspired the menu at Indigo Deli
It’s been ten years since we set up Indigo Delicatessen, and I’ve been running the kitchen since its inception. What keeps it exciting for me is the fact that what I’m doing is extremely close to my heart, and I never have to make compromises. When we first started, I wasn’t as confident as I am now, I hadn’t completely matured in terms of my cooking, and it was Rahul and Malini Akerkar’s vision that we were producing in the kitchen. Of course, we would debate and brainstorm for hours every day before we finally drew up a menu. But it’s been an amazing journey since then and I have been learning from all walks of life.
Over the years I’ve tried to keep much of the menu the same. It is straightforward, honest stuff, food without pretences - just my kind of food. But we introduce new dishes on our daily specials and it’s through these that I encourage our chefs to experiment with new recipes and ideas. For me, it’s here that I sometimes reproduce the kind of food I grew up eating.
My mum was an amazing cook! We grew up in Jamshedpur, since my dad worked at Telco. I had a very privileged childhood. There were very few cookery shows on television in those days, but my mother would visit the local library and look up cookbooks and various magazines such as Good Housekeeping. She would take the trouble to go through them, making her own notes in the margins. She passed away a month ago, and I was going through some of her notes in which she’d translated and described words and phrases such as al dente and so on. She had a little oven, I don’t think you get that kind anymore; it looked like a little drum with a glass top. She baked the most fabulous cakes and Madeleines and all kinds of things.
She’d also make fabulous soups with vegetables that were in season. Now you get most things all year round, but in those days we didn’t even get tomatoes all the time. I remember sprinkling salt and eating raw tomatoes. Her tomato soup was served in a very specific way. She would leave the onion and tomatoes very chunky and garnish the soup with crisped onions. The mouthfeel and body of that soup is something I’ll take with me to my grave! I’ve tried to reproduce it here at Indigo Deli and we’ve served it up as a popular day’s special several times.
Another favourite that’s been inspired by my mother’s cooking is the lamb and three cheese burger, which we added to our menu a few years ago. The technique, the flavour, and the mouthfeel is all inspired by her cooking. She would add cheese cubes in the patty and the surprise of the bubbly cheese in the middle of the burger was amazing. That’s what I tried to incorporate.
My souffles too are inspired by her. Although she didn’t make souffles, she served a fluffy baked egg dish with simple buttered noodles, and sauteed onions. It was her attitude and approach to food that I admired so much.
(As told to Moeena Halim.)