Nisha Katona: 'Indians can be protective of their curry recipes - but I want to share them'

Born to Indian parents who arrived in the UK in the Sixties, Katona remembers being were “pretty much the only Indians” in Ormskirk, Lancashire.

“Everything about you was so other and so unfathomable, and so probably unwelcome, really, including the way your food smelt and tasted,” says the chef, who owns the restaurant chain Mowgli Street Food.

“So as you were, as a child, very ashamed of curry, and still, it’s ridiculous, I’m 54 and I still get embarrassed if I think my clothes smell of curry, or the outside of my restaurant smells of curry – when in fact, it’s the most delicious smell ever.”

As a child, it was perhaps indicative of the “tempestuous relationship I had with being Indian at all”, she notes.

“It was only when I got into my 30s that I really fell in love with curry and started teaching people how to cook it.

"I’ve got two daughters and when they were young, if people came home from school they would beg me not to cook curry.

"It’s the same thing, they were quite ashamed of it, because it’s other, isn’t it? It’s not nuggets and chips.

"And you don’t want to be ‘other’ when you’re growing up.”

Katona says Britain is “extraordinarily open-minded” when it comes to the world’s food though. Chicken tikka masala is almost an unofficial national dish at this point.

The chef, known for her TV work as a former judge on BBC’s Great British Menu and a guest chef on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch and ITV’s Lorraine, has now released a cookbook – The Curry Bible – focused on the exact dish she’s had a difficult relationship with.

“So, now, am I proud of curry? It’s not even that I’m proud, I think it’s necessary. Curry is a necessary part of the repertoire of the nation,” she says.

“It’s the easiest thing to cook in big quantities for a hungry crowd. It’s the most satisfying thing to eat.”

The success of Mowgli, with 27 restaurants across the UK, must tell Katona something about how much people like her curries too.

“Once you have a restaurant, and people queuing to get in, that’s the ultimate acceptance,” she smiles, and sales of her sixth book are already putting her on bestseller lists.

"What that tells a little Indian like me is that people actually love curry as much as you do. It’s no longer something that’s unwelcome, you are no longer unwelcome, you know, it’s a very profound thing.

“Every time somebody comes to eat in my restaurant, every person that comes in and puts a fork to their mouth, I am grateful.”

At home, she noticed a shift too.

These days Katona frequently posts recipes on Instagram – “It’s what I’m cooking in my own house, for my own family,” she says.

"I think my following went from 30,000 in September to 300,000 now, and that’s just because people want to know how to cook curry in a really simple, really authentic, really accessible, healthy way.”

Despite not having a background as a trained chef (she was a child protection barrister for 20 years) Katona says the “whole point” of her life has been to “take ancient recipes, tried-and-tested spice formulas that have worked in India for her ancestors and bring them to the British public and to the world.

But that doesn’t mean it’s been easy.

“When I wrote my first cookbook, and I went trying to speak to various friends’ parents about the way that they cook their dahl, or the way they do their chicken curry, and it would have been easier to try and extract a kidney than get the recipes out of an Indian,” she laughs.

“We feel as though our entire identity comes from the unique way that we can cook, and heaven forbid we should give that DNA to someone else. Heaven forbid another family could cook as well as we do.

“So part of it is that obfuscation that comes from us as Indians not giving all the ingredients, being a little bit proprietorial about recipes.

"My parents have both gone, most of my elder relatives are dead. Thank God they gave me these recipes, and thank God I’m passing them on, because what’s the point of them going to the grave?”

Her recipes include British favourites like chicken korma, butter chicken, chilli paneer and lamb rogan josh, alongside some you might not know, such as the potato fenugreek curry, tangy mackerel curry or aubergine and poppy seed curry.

“This book is an embodiment of me, which is authentically Indian, authentically home-style, but also someone who was born and raised in Britain.

"I am basically a brown English person, and those things people like to eat in a curry house, I like as well.”

Plant-based curries – and other snacks and sides – feature heavily, because that’s what Katona grew up on.

“My parents were Hindus – I’m Christian so I eat everything – but as Hindus are often very vegetarian, very vegan, so it’s a really authentic way of home cooking.”

Katona’s biggest tip for curry and spice at home is understanding that “every curry is predicated on three spices – two of which never change".

“The brother and father of the world of curry are turmeric and chilli and, depending on the genre of the ingredient [i.e. meat, fish, cheese, or veg] that third spice changes.

"If it’s meat, that third spice will be garam masala, if it’s brassicas it would be mustard seed, if it’s root vegetables it would be cumin – it’s that simple.”

The Curry Bible by Nisha Katona, Penguin Michael Joseph, £28. Photography by Nassima Rothacker.