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For most people food is a means to an end, but I find myself thinking, what if it’s the whole story? Fundamentally it’s the foundation of life, the yardstick of culture and a social communicator, but like with so many things in modern life convenience has trumped care. The world domination of fast food has edged out local fare and even ‘world’ cuisine has become homogenised. India likes to believe it’s above such things simply because unlike other parts of the world we know that we’re more than curry, chicken tikka masala and ‘naan bread’, but when you look more closely that facade quickly crumbles and you realise we know almost as little about our food heritage as the rest of the world.
The contemporary concept of fine-dining is never synonymous with Indian cuisine and when it is, it’s the same recycled North Indian flavours - beautifully crafted perhaps - but unoriginal. To be ‘original’ now means presenting a parade of foams, jellies and reductions, each one tasting like something they’re not supposed to. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a crack at molecular gastronomy, which I find fascinating, it’s just an observation that some of the most memorable food I’ve encountered comes from a place of simplicity and heart. I came in contact with this phenomenon once again when I sat down at a table at Arth, Mumbai with Chef Amninder Sandhu and started exploring her culinary universe.
Chef Sandhu has been making waves on the restaurant scene for years with her innovative approach to food. She was well known as the face of Masala Bay at the Taj, for her 6 successful years at her own restaurant in Assam, as the winner of the Best Lady Chef award 2015-2016 and now for the inspired conceptualisation of India’s first gas-free kitchen at Arth. In lieu of gas or electric hobs they rely exclusively on natural fuel sources for all their cooking including charcoal and wood fires and a sand pit used for slow-cooking meat. The throwback to tradition is completed by the use of copper pots and lagans. Since these are all usually used outdoors, it was a laborious process designing a kitchen from the ground up that could accommodate these facilities without having an army of Health and Safety officials knocking at the door. This decision serves a duel purpose, not only does the smoky char complement Indian flavours but it ties in to Chef Sandhu’s credo that a revival of traditional cooking is long overdue.
This approach to cooking harkens back to the New Nordic movement in Scandinavia from the early 2000’s, where chefs began to be more aware of their own rich culinary history and explore the diversity of native ingredients. Arth employs that same approach and the menu is replete with weird and wonderful ingredients discovered and sourced by Chef Sandhu herself. Over the years she’s travelled the length and breath of India searching for new recipes and techniques but her childhood in Assam also played a huge part in how she’s shaped her menu. She recalls going fishing with her Uncle who would then smoke the fresh catch in a hollow bamboo stem, she employs that technique in one of her best known dishes, Deomali, named after a picnic site she used to visit with her family. Though she’s replaced the fish with mutton, garlic and chillis, the finished product is nothing short of a revelation. The accompaniment to the dish is a technique she discovered on her travels, raw rice is wrapped in an alpinia leaf (from the Ginger family) and steamed resulting in a dense, aromatic rice cake.
Chef Sandhu believes that a career in cooking was in the cards for her even before she knew it herself. Some of her most vivid recipes were of her sister sculpting decorative birthday cakes from icing and her mother choosing vegetables from her garden to turn into new and interesting dishes. “Even in college when all we had was a hot plate, my roommate told me that when I cooked Maggi or eggs it always tasted better. ‘You should be a chef’ she told me, at the time it seemed ridiculous to base a career on good Maggi but she planted the seed,” she says. Three years into her course at Sophia’s College, Mumbai lightning struck and she made the move into the culinary industry.
As a woman in a male-dominated space she had to fight tooth and nail to be the best and was on a constant crusade to prove her skills, “Keep your mouth shut and work hard every day, that’s the only way to make it.” Through her dedication and imaginative cooking, today she’s made it to the upper echelons of the culinary circle and she’s using this to her advantage, hiring women just as often as men, “It’s not about having a kitchen of only women, it’s about finding a balance. The most important thing is your skill, not your gender.”
One glance at the Arth menu will reveal the care with which Chef Sandhu has curated her ingredients. Some complete unknowns leap out at you, such as the use of majenga leaves with chargrilled fish, which turn out to be the utterly underappreciated leaves of the sichuan pepper plant and have a muted version of its signature numbing quality. There are also lemons from the North-East, also known as Narangas in Keralan cuisine which are larger and sweeter than your average citrus, the thick rind is surprisingly edible and lacks the bitterness that you’d expect. Another find while she was on location in the river island of Majuli are baby potatoes, so small that she and her crew initially mistook them for chickpeas, she regularly imports them to Mumbai and they’ve become the central focus of her ‘Pearl Potatoes’. There’s also a gajar ka halwa made with black carrots from Rajasthan and topped with white cream that makes for a dish that’s as aesthetically pleasing as it is delicious. But in my opinion one of the standout dishes they offer is the ‘Morels Stuffed’ which - as the name might suggest - are morel mushrooms stuffed with mince on a bed of crispy nachni (ragi) and walnuts. Served beneath a cloche filled with woody smoke the dish has a theatrical edge which though beautiful, is far outshined by the delicate interplay of textures beneath.
Every part of Arth’s menu is so meticulously designed to reflect the intricacies of Indian cuisine and the many unique and fascinating ingredients we have right on our doorstep. We are essentially a country of diversity, where language, culture and cooking styles change every few kilometres but that wide array of possibilities has been sidelined in favour of aligning ourselves with the warped vision of India created in the West. So whenever people are ready to stop sipping on ‘chai teas’ and ‘turmeric lattes’, Arth will be there waiting to help you rediscover the medley of possibilities that exist within the ambit of ‘Indian’ food.
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