Heston Unbound

One of the world’s greatest chefs shows us how cooking is not about recipes but about expressing yourself

AImost the first thing I noticed when I bought a copy of Heston Blumenthal’s Is This A Cookbook? was that he had included a selection of Indian recipes. I know that Blumenthal loves India and its food. I know also that he understands enough about our cuisine to dissect the nuances of biryani.

Some years ago, we had a long and quite magical) lunch at Delhi’s ITC Maurya, where the chefs did their best to wow him and succeeded. But what struck me was that Blumenthal could not just tell the difference between a Dum Pukht Biryani and a Delhi Biryani, he could also discuss which worked better for which occasion. The Dum Pukht biryani, he said, was a magnificent special occasion dish. But at most other times, he would rather have the Delhi biryani.

So, I was only a little surprised when I found that the book had a recipe for Baingan and Palak Biryani, dum-cooked with a purdah topping. Famous British chefs and I am not naming names) have published Indian cookbooks before, but these are usually ghost written for them by British-Indian cookery writers and never contain any interesting recipes. But, I know that Heston devises every recipe himself, so, I was intrigued.

I decided to conduct an experiment. I called Rajdeep Kapoor, Executive Chef at the ITC Maurya, the location of my memorable lunch with Heston, and asked him if the Maurya’s chefs could cook one of Blumenthal’s Indian recipes, a mutton curry. Heston had liked their food so much, I said, that it would be nice to see what they thought of his take on Indian food.