Cool Cooking With Atul Kochhar

Continuing the cool theme of my previous post, I will add Atul Kochhar to the “cool” list!

He’s delightfully nerdy and told us joke after joke and bless him, I was forced to laugh along with the rest of the audience on Saturday afternoon in Asia House.  He cracked a few wife jokes and then moved on to his curry demo. Ohhh what! I couldn’t believe my misfortune. He was going to make Lahori Chicken Curry. Jeezo! My mum is from Lahore and makes this curry every week.  I was gutted, but there were only about 5 Asians in the audience and I looked like the only Punjabi so I’m sure everyone else enjoyed the demo which was identical to my mum’s with one added ingredient, a bay leaf!

Atul answered millions of questions like “why did you add the ginger at this stage and not that stage?” with charming “no reason, I forgot to add it earlier” style answers. He was lovely!

At the end he hung around chatting to his fans and bloody typical, I’m a veggie and so couldn’t taste whether his curry was as good as mum’s!  (from memory and impossible, of course).

Atul has a new book out: Atul’s Curries of the World which most likely includes the chicken curry recipe.

Bunty

Tags: Asia House, Asia House Festival of Asian Literature, Atul Kochhar, Atul's Curries of the World, books, cooking, demonstration, FAL13, food, indian food, Lahori chicken curry, Michelin starred chef, Pakistani food, Punjabi cuisine, Recipes