Creating Food Memories

Chef Alfred Prasad, with a 13-year Michelin stint, travels the length and breadth of India every year to discover forgotten, regional recipes to plate dishes that offer health, happiness and heritage

- Radhika Raj

One of the recent tasks that Michelin Star Chef Alfred Prasad, mentor chef at Omya, the modern Indian restaurant at The Oberoi New Delhi, set for himself was to recreate his mother’s Potato Methi Lamb recipe. Born to a Tamil father and an Anglo-Indian mother, and raised in Wardha, central India, the London-based chef has grown up on a range of dishes from different food cultures. His mother, a self-taught cook, borrowed heavily from recipes around her and generously experimented with the food she served at home. “By the time I grew up and recognised the value of home-cooked food, my mother was suffering from dementia and remembered very little,” he says. All Prasad had were his food memories. Purely from memory, conversations with his family and several permutations and combinations of different ingredients, he was able to recreate his childhood favourite. “My sister said that the lamb was pretty damn close to my mum’s recipe. It was one of the greatest compliments I have received. ”