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
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