15-Minute Indian | Anjula Devi
Suzy Chase: When two podcasts collide, magic happens. Welcome to Dinner Party, the podcast where I bring together my two hit shows, cookery by the book and decorating by the book around here. We're all about cooking, sharing stories behind recipes, and creating a cozy home. I'm your host, Suzy Chase, a West Village wife, mom and home cook. Inspired by Martha Stewart trying to live in a Nora Ephron movie, surrounded by toile, plaid, cookbooks, decorating books and magazines, cooking in my galley kitchen and living my best life in my darling New York City apartment in the cutest neighborhood in the city, the West Village. So come hang out and let's get into the show.
Anjula Devi: My name is Anjula Devi and I'm delighted to be talking to you today about 15-Minute Indian.
Suzy Chase: I love that this cookbook is called 15 Minute Indian because I've always thought making Indian food involved many steps and took a long time. Now, is it me or is Indian food complicated to prepare?
Anjula Devi: Indian food traditionally does have a lengthy process, and that's because you're looking to enrich all those flavors and to bring out all the spices that you're using, all those aromatic tones. However, I stumbled across a different way of cooking Indian food because I actually, I'm going to be very frank with you. I actually had a bit of a health scare three years ago, and my doctor was rather abrupt with me, and he kind of said, Angela, you do need to look at your diet. And I realized that the way my mother and father had taught me to cook was probably even though steeped in history, tradition, culture, recipes handed down from your great grandparents to your grandparents, it wasn't the best way to be eating Indian food because what we do with Indian food is that we cook it for a very lengthy period, and sadly when we do that, we lose all the nutritional value in the foods that we're cooking, particularly when it comes to plant-based foods.
So I reinvented Indian food and remarkably the title 15 minutes came very, very late. We actually just realized that we were able to by using this steam technique, which is by the way, a brand new way of cooking Indian food, was not only making the food taste so much healthier, but we realized, or I realized there were ways of bringing out those aromatics into the pot rather than slow cooking or cooking for a very long period. So what you're getting is you're getting something that's steam cooked, something that's really good for you, something that maintains its nutritional value and remarkably can be cooked in 15 minutes.
Suzy Chase: Did you ever see anyone cook like this or you came up with it on your own?
Anjula Devi: No. Given that my understanding of Indian food, and I've been cooking it for over 50 years now, knowing and understanding that knowledge, it gave me the insight to look at changing the way we eat in Indian food. Now. It is changing the dll. It is not about offending anyone or about taking away the traditional dishes that we cook. India has so many incredible regions, and we all, and even in Indian households, we all have our own unique way of cooking. But what I wanted to bring to the table was one, to make Indian food accessible. Two, to reduce the method and finally to reduce the amount of ingredients we were using. Now cleverly, the book uses five spices or less. It was really bizarre when I was looking at this method because all the time I was looking up into the sky thinking, my mom and dad are thinking, what a earth are you doing? And this is not what we taught you. So it was very, it was actually quite difficult to come to terms with the fact that you were changing the way your mother and father taught you to cook.
Suzy Chase: So you were born in London in the early 1970s, and I found this so intriguing. Your father was your food inspiration. He believed in healthy and wholesome Indian cooking, which he had been taught by his own father in Kenya. And all the men in your family were excellent cooks. I thought that was so interesting because in many cultures, the women are traditionally the primary cooks in the kitchen, and yet in your family, the men were all standout cooks. Now, did this challenge or inform any cultural expectations for you growing up?
Anjula Devi: No, because all I knew was the men were always in the kitchen, and that was where the laughter was always coming from. And then suddenly these amazing dishes were evolving, and my father was very much a kind of didn't stick to traditional Indian way of cooking. He just did his own thing, and that was what he had taught me. He always said, and don't be afraid of change. We added goose breeds to an Indian lamb dish. My aunties were horrified, and yet they were sat there licking their fingers saying, oh, this is so tasty. And then when my father told him, well, there's gooseberries in there because 1976 in the UK we had this amazing summer and heat waves and goose brews were growing from every orifice in the garden. We've just inundated all these gooseberries. And my father said, you know what? I think these gooseberries would do really well in this lamb dish.
And he just threw them in and didn't really expect too much from it. But what gooseberries do is they kind of take away that fattiness you get in lamb and then you're left with this amazing aromatic flavor with this zingy esti flavor. But my aunties were horrified when he told them, well, there's gooseberries in that because nobody would've even heard of putting gooseberries in an Indian dish. But he broke all barriers. He cooked for Indian weddings and he'd go to Indian wedding and I would be his right hand woman, if you like the power that food had. He was at his happiest when he was cooking.
Suzy Chase: I just love this line that your dad used to say to you, he'd say, and Jewel, the most important furniture in the house is our wooden table and chairs invite friends and family over and create memories at the table, ingraining laughter and conversation into the wood. That is such a great sentiment. So tell me about the table and chairs and do you still have them?
Anjula Devi: You know what, there was no matching chairs. Yeah. He used to go to the secondhand market on the Broadway in Southall, and he'd just find a chair that he loved and he'd bring it home. And my mom would say, why have you bought this chair home? And he'd say, look at it. Look at it. It's beautiful. So to something that was ugly to us, to him was beautiful. And you began to appreciate how beautiful it was. That was how he used to rub off on us. It wasn't a smart table, but it was a lived in table by someone else who had had it, and then he bought it from the secondhand market. He was so adamant that everybody would sit around this table, but it never really often happened. But when we did, there was a lot of laughter and often you'd be told off at the table as well. There was lots going on at that table.
Suzy Chase: So a recipe that I wasn't familiar with in the cookbook is a Aduki beans. Could you describe this dish that's on page 36?
Anjula Devi: Yes, absolutely. Not many people have heard of it, but they are, again, a powerhouse in terms of protein, in terms of flavor. They actually taste a little bit like kidney beans, just smaller, probably take a little bit longer to cook. But I would really, really encourage any or everyone to try those because I'm telling you the flavor in those. And what they also do is they hold their shape. So actually it's so pretty in a bowl as well, and there's lots of reasons to add this to your diet, but also ultimately they taste really, really good. And it's another bean that you can incorporate into your cooking.
Suzy Chase: So Bombay Potatoes sauteed in spices like cumin, turmeric and coriander are a hit around the world. But in this cookbook, you have a different way of enjoying potatoes, and I would love to hear about that.
Anjula Devi: That there is actually a whole chapter on potatoes, isn't there?
Suzy Chase: Yes.
Anjula Devi: Now the reason why, again, that stems from our childhood. When we were growing up, my mother and father grew almost most of the vegetables we used in the kitchen, in the back garden, they would be pulled from the earth rinsed under the coal tap and the outdoor tap and bought inside to cook, and they would be cooked immediately. And one of the things that we grew all the time, because the entire family loved potatoes, was potatoes. But again, because we realized that everything was being cooked rather quickly, we also wanted to reduce the amount of spices used. So one of the potato dishes is potatoes with cardamon, which are packed with flavors. And if you love cardamon, they are so tasty, but also brilliant as a side dish. And the beauty about 15 Minute Indian is that you can actually cook four dishes in just under an hour if you wanted to.
Suzy Chase: Another recipe I'm super curious about is your Banana Raita on page 1 76.
Anjula Devi: Again, it was my father's invention, I just tweaked it a little bit. But when you look at Indian food, you begin to realize that actually in this dish there is staris and there is say, for example, fennel, which do very similar things in a dish. So why not just let the star anise shine and remove the fennel? So that was what I did over the period of three years when I realized that I kind of really wanted to publish this book.
Suzy Chase: So in the Banana Raita recipe, is the banana in place of the yogurt?
Anjula Devi: No, they're two together. And honestly, Susie, I know it sounds bizarre,
Suzy Chase: It sounds wacky,
Anjula Devi: It sounds wacky, but if you think about it, when you are eating, say for example, a porridge dish and you add yogurt and you add fruits, it's a very similar thing. The only thing is this is savory. That's the only difference. And honestly, put it with a rice dish and it'll blow your mind. Wow. You always serve it with a rice dish, and it's so good because what I think you get is your palate understands those aromatics coming through, and then suddenly something sweet comes through, and then the sweetness and the savory come together in harmony. That's what I grew up eating because my father used to make it. And to me, that is Indian food. So what's authentic to one person may not be authentic to another person. But I wanted to put my authenticity into this book, and that's exactly what I did.
Suzy Chase: It's funny, I was reading your cookbook and I wanted to make everything and trying to figure out what I would put together for a Saturday night meal. And lo and behold, in the back of the cookbook, you give us ideas for feasts, celebratory comfort, midweek, et cetera. I would love a suggestion for a Saturday night feast.
Anjula Devi: So even now, even though the suggestion is in the book as to what you should pull together as feast, don't just take that, just flick through the book. And honestly, the book is so well balanced that it won't take you very long to make your own feast. Do you know what you should definitely have in the feast though? Padron peppers with Indian five Spice. Your guest will be thinking, oh my God, that is so good. You could even go to the potato section and say, for example, if you're not a potato fan, and in fact I will post this for you so that all your audiences can go on our Instagram page to look at this. You can replace the potatoes with ciliac, and that tastes amazing. So good. I'll create a video for your audience so that they can go to our Instagram page and take that recipe off our handle
Suzy Chase: For a meat. What would you make for a Saturday night feast?
Anjula Devi: So I would, because this is all about accessible cooking, I would slow cook, say a lamb leg in a slow cooker. I would throw all the spices in, throw something that's going to tenderize that lamb. And one of the best tenderizer is a raw papaya, but it's the skin that breaks down the fats. It's the enzymes in the skin that breaks down the fibers of something like lamb or a beef dish. So if you marinate the lamb in some papaya the night before, along with yogurt, which also breaks down the fibers of the meat and makes the meat tender and marinate it in all the spices, then all you need to do, because again, we're thinking about accessible cooking, not having to spend too much time in the kitchen and then put that leg of lamb in the slow cooker and just walk away for four hours and then come back.
Then prepare the 15 minute dishes from the book. And then what you get is something very easy to take to the table without very little effort. But nobody will know Suzy unless you tell them lamb peppers, potatoes, and then maybe, I think maybe put the zingy zesty tarty aubergine in as well. One of the reasons 15 minutes came about was because we were very much conscious of the fact that a lot of people were saying that they just don't have time. And one of the things I wanted to do was to help people break away from processed foods. And this is what the book has every intention of doing.
Suzy Chase: So now, for my segment called The Perfect Bite where I ask you to describe the perfect bite of a favorite dish, and it could be out of the cookbook,
Anjula Devi: You know what the perfect bite is? The simplest recipe in the book, and often you will find this, and it's the Padron peppers cook padron peppers on the table, and I can almost guarantee to you they'll be the first dish to go, the first dish that would be emptied. It's just the fact that the peppers are still left with a crunch. They've still got texture on through them. Indian Spice is a powerhouse of flavors. It's a complex powerhouse of flavors. It's got cumin seeds, fenugreek leaves or fenugreek seeds. It's got brown mustard seeds, it's got fennel, and it's got nigella.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Anjula Devi: So I'm at Anjula Devi on Instagram. I'm also have a website, anjuladevi.com.
Suzy Chase: Well, you have certainly inspired me, and I can't thank you enough for coming on the show.
Anjula Devi: Thank you so much for having me. It's been absolutely delightful. Thank you.
Suzy Chase: Okay, so where can you listen to the new Dinner Party podcast series? Well, it's on substack suzy chase.substack.com. You can also subscribe to Dinner Party for free on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Additionally, the episodes will be available on both Decorating by the Book and Cookery by the Book. Long story short, you'll be able to listen to it virtually everywhere. Thanks for listening. Bye.
