Apart from one tiny spot of grease on her pink jumper, you would never know that Anjum Anand, TV chef and cookbook writer, is halfway through cooking lunch for 13 guests - four of whom are celebrated chefs - as she ignores her fiercely sizzling pan of stuffed chillies to fasten her three-year-old daughter's wristwatch. She is still smiling as Mahi skitters off to play with her cousin Maia, and turns her attention back to her frying pan. In short, Anand, 36, is far from the sweaty, exasperated mess that most of us turn into the moment our dinner-party guests are out of sight. In spite of the collection of Michelin stars sitting in her living room, snacking on Quorn samosas and waiting for lunch, she is unfazed and virtually immaculate.
'I was a bit nervous about cooking for such a lot of chefs,' she says, pushing chillies around the pan, 'but I thought they would probably enjoy some simple home cooking, nothing fancy, because it would be different for them, and it's less scary for me.' Consequently, today's lunch is Anand's take on traditional Punjabi dishes (her family is from the Punjab and her parents emigrated from Delhi to London some 45 years ago), but with her signature twist - which is to take Indian specialities and make them both simpler and lighter. The roomy top-floor flat she shares with her daughter and husband is in Belsize Park, north London, but she got the lunch ingredients from West Hendon, about 25 minutes away. 'There is one road of Indian shops where I always go, because I know they do the freshest raw ingredients. I do my "Indian shop" there once a week. But I get my spices from India - my mother-in-law, who stays every summer, brings them over for me: she'll check out what I've got and say, "Your cumin is too weak" or whatever, and get me fresh ones.'
Her guests are having those little samosas to start with, accompanied by a fresh and zingy green chutney made with coriander and mint. Then there will be chickpea curry with bhatura, a puffed-up fried bread, or rice for anyone who is avoiding oil, spiced potatoes, crispy strips of deep-fried okra and stuffed chillies with a calming yoghurt sauce flavoured with cumin seeds. There's also a salad of tomato, cucumber, red onion and coriander, topped with grated coconut. 'That's not traditional,' Anand points out. 'I'm making this in the south-Indian style.' Just before serving the salad she rustles up a dressing by quickly frying some cumin seeds, mustard seeds and curry leaves, which she tosses into the salad with the juice of a lemon.
There is no meat or fish for lunch today, as Anand's husband (who is away) is a Jain, and so she never cooks meat in the house. 'I sometimes feel a little bit as though our guests suffer for his vegetarianism,' says Anand, 'so I made these Quorn samosas taste as much like keema [minced meat, usually lamb] as possible. One of the chefs actually did think they were meat!'
Anand herself won't be eating much either. 'Twice a year there is a fast for nine days, which I have been doing since I was 16. A lot of women in India do it, although I only know four girls here who do. It coincides with Indian harvest time and it's for the Hindu goddess Durga. It means I will not eat any grains: no wheat, rice, lentils, chickpeas or anything that can be made into flour, and no onion or garlic, only root vegetables, fruit and yoghurt, and certainly no meat. So today I will just be eating the potatoes.' For Anand this is as much about having a detox as about religion: 'At home when I was growing up, this would be a time of prayer, which is not so much the case now, but none the less, it still feels like a very good thing to do.'
As a teenager, Anand struggled with her weight, and it was this that led her to look at adapting the food she ate at home - in the end she lost over 30 kilos. 'I lived at home until I married four years ago, so in my early twenties, I went into my mother's kitchen and asked her lots of questions - why was she doing this or that, why do you use oil here or there?' The more she learnt, the more hooked she got, and so in order to figure out how to fit cooking into a career, she went to work in a hotel kitchen as a waitress, for a catering company and even in a fast-food restaurant, though her degree is in European business.
'It's so much fun working in a team - I loved working in a restaurant environment - and it's what I miss most when I'm working alone, writing recipe books. But it was very hectic and I realised that to make it work I would have to give everything to the industry for years, and I wanted a family. When we got married my husband and I sat down and we realised that this kind of work wasn't going to be compatible with that.'
Still determined to forge a career in food, Anand went straight to Books for Cooks, London's biggest dedicated cookery bookshop and asked them if they had any books on healthy Indian food, which they didn't. Next she researched the names of the publishing houses that produced cookbooks, and the editors who worked on them.
'I even downloaded a sheet on how to write a book proposal off the internet.' Finally, her first book, Indian Every Day, was published in 2005. This got her noticed by the BBC, which gave Anand her own series last year, Indian Food Made Easy, and which was so successful that her next starts in November, along with a third book, Anjum's New Indian. Now, it's her mother who uses Anand's cookbooks.
'Terrifyingly, they've just shown the last series in India,' she says, mixing a handful of pomegranate seeds into her homemade Indian lemonade (still water, lemon, sugar, mint and a touch of salt - a relic from the days when it was made for workers in the fields).
'I really expected people to turn around and say, "Who is this girl from London, who has never even lived in India, to tell us how to cook our food?" but the reaction has been amazingly positive. I think that what is happening in India now is that a lot more women are working, and there simply isn't the time to cook elaborately. My recipes have just come at a good time because I'm not removing any of the flavours that they love, but I am making them easier to achieve. For example, I have a recipe for oven-fried chilli chicken, which is very easy and which I get emails from India asking for, but 40 years ago, most people in India didn't have ovens. Also, I've come at a good time as there are no young cooks on television in India.'
At the dining table, everything is ready to be served up, and Anand is still showing no sign of nerves, despite the presence of Vineet Bhatia and his wife Rashima (of Michelin-starred Rasoi Vineet Bhatia in London), Alfred Prasad (head chef at Michelin-starred Tamarind) and his wife Sunita Panjabi, plus Mehernosh Mody (chef at La Porte des Indes) as well as award-winning chef Udit Sarkhel and Radhika Verma from Mango and Silk. They are joined by Anand's friends Angela and Meera, plus her husband's brother and his wife Nivedita who are visiting from Calcutta, and two in-laws.
Conversation veers from the credit crunch, to the etymology of the word Parsi, to the advantages of cooking with pomegranate seeds. More or less the only point of agreement is that Anand's lunch is delicious, something she hears with a flicker of relief. Silence only falls again when the dishes are cleared and dessert appears - carrot and kheer, made with cardamom, cooked carrot and sweet, thickened milk. Then, suddenly, it's three o'clock and the chefs have to head back to their own kitchens, no doubt considerably less calm than Anjum Anand's.
Rich chickpea curry
A rich, spicy chickpea dish from the region of Punjab that is normally paired with a soft, fried flat bread called bhatura but naan works well, too. Serve with a raita or yoghurt.
Serves 6
4 tbs vegetable oil
1½ tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp carom seeds
1 medium onion, made into a fine paste with the help of a splash of water
20g ginger, peeled, halved lengthways and half sliced into thin julienne
3 fat cloves garlic, peeled
3 medium tomatoes, quartered and puréed
3 x 400g cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
½ tsp red chilli powder
2 tsp coriander powder
salt to taste
1 tsp garam masala
½ tsp dried pomegranate powder
Heat the oil in a large non-stick saucepan. Add the cumin and carom seeds and once they have sizzled for 5 seconds add the ginger julienne and the onion paste. Cook until the onions have browned well, around 10-12 minutes, stir often once the moisture has reduced.
Meanwhile purée the garlic and remaining ginger with a splash of water to a smooth paste. Pour this into the pan once the onions have cooked and cook until the moisture has reduced and the paste fries for 20-30 seconds. Add the puréed tomatoes, salt and all the spices. Bring to a boil then simmer, covered for 20 minutes or until the masala has completely reduced and the oil has been released. Add the chickpeas, stir well then add enough water to come close to the top level of the chickpeas. Bring to a boil, simmer for 5 minutes and serve.
Fried spiced okra
Chaat masala is a blend of spices and is the key flavouring in this dish, but if you don't have any and prefer a simpler dish, give the recipe a go anyway as this is the best way to cook okra. They need to be cooked when you want to eat them as they do not reheat well.
Serves 4-6
400g okra, wiped clean with damp kitchen paper, topped and tailed
4 tbs gram flour
vegetable oil, for frying
1 tsp chaat masala
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp red chilli powder
¼ tsp dried mango powder
Slice the okra pieces lengthwise into quarters. Toss with the gram flour. Heat the oil to a moderate-high heat in a large saucepan. Add all or half the okra, depending on the size of your pan. Fry for about 8 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the okra becomes crispy, with some just turning a rich golden brown colour. Turn the okra onto a plate lined with kitchen paper to drain, then tip into a bowl with the chaat masala, salt, chilli and dried mango powder and toss together. Serve hot.
Carrot kheer
I'm not convinced that words alone will persuade you to try a chilled dessert of creamy, thickened milk with softened floating threads of sweet carrots . But in just the same way that carrot cake may seem initially unpalatable, the proof is in the tasting, so do give this a go.
Serves 6
1 litre full-fat milk
250g carrots, peeled and grated
3-4 tbs sugar
good pinch of saffron strands
-½ tsp green cardamom seeds, powdered
2 tbs pistachios, chopped
2 tbs flaked almonds, toasted caramelised pine nuts, to serve
Heat the milk in a wide, heavy-based saucepan, stirring and scraping the base with the spoon frequently to make sure the milk does not catch and burn. Keep cooking until it reduces by about one third - this takes about 25 minutes.
Add the carrots and continue cooking for another 15-25 minutes or until they are soft and the milk is as thick as you like it - I like it quite thin but others like it quite thick; you will need to keep up the stirring though. Stir in the sugar, saffron and cardamom powder, cook for another 2 minutes and taste for sweetness. Chilling any food dulls its sweetness, so you may need to add a little more than you think. Cool and then place in the fridge, covered with clingfilm as milk absorbs flavours from other food in the fridge. When ready to eat, serve in bowls sprinkled with the nuts.
Stuffed jalapeño chillies in yoghurt
Most supermarkets sell these large, fat green chillies which are ideal for stuffing. If using jalapeños, try to find large ones as the stuffing takes away from the heat, as does the yoghurt. SERVES 4
8 large, fat green chillies
1 medium-large potato, boiled, skin removed and mashed
2 tbs vegetable oil, plus an extra 1 tsp
1 tsp mustard seeds
¾ tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp large fennel seeds
2-3 tbs water
2½ tbs desiccated coconut
7 tbs yoghurt
salt, to taste
15 curry leaves
for the stuffing:
¼ tsp turmeric
½ tsp ground cumin
½-1 tsp lemon juice, to taste
1 tbs chopped onion, softened in 2tsp
vegetable oil (optional)
salt, to taste
Blanch the chillies in boiling salted water for 2 minutes, then drain on kitchen paper. Slit the chillies on the straightest side to make a pocket. Scoop out the seeds and membranes and discard. Add the stuffing ingredients to the mashed potato and mix together well. Stuff the chillies with just enough mixture to fill. Heat 2 tbs of the oil in a large frying pan. Add ½ tsp each of the mustard and cumin seeds and, when they pop, add the fennel seeds.
Cook for another 20 seconds, then add the chillies. Sauté over a low heat, making sure they do not lose their shape, about 7-9 minutes. Meanwhile, whisk the water and coconut into the yoghurt and season. Heat the remaining oil in a small pan and add the remaining mustard and cumin seeds and the curry leaves. Cook for 20-30 seconds and stir into the yoghurt. Leave to cool while the chillies finish cooking. To serve, place the chillies on a plate and pour the yoghurt over.
Anjum's New Indian (Quadrille, £20) is out now. To order a copy for £18 including UK p&p call 0870 836 0885. Indian Food Made Easy starts on BBC2 on 10 November.
