The Café Spice Cookbook: 84 Quick and Easy Indian Recipes for Everyday Meals (2 page)

After graduating from the CIA and while working with different international food service companies, I began to envision a new business opportunity—to develop a new Indian food brand created specifically for the American market. The interest in Indian cuisine was rapidly growing globally, and I could anticipate the natural progression towards demand for a range of food products that are Indian in flavor and design.

This is how I met the founder of Café Spice, Sushil Malhotra. I remember vividly my first meeting with him at the Café Spice bistro near New York University (NYU) in New York City. An elderly man, but with the passion and drive of a young entrepreneur, his energy impressed me. He reminded me of my father. At the threshold of a career in the food industry, I envisioned Indian food could eventually becoming mainstream and as popular as other ethnic cuisines such as Italian, Chinese, or Mexican. Here was a man who had exactly the same vision, many years before I was born! It amazed me how forward-thinking he was. That meeting is the main reason I am sitting down to write this book today. Not only are Malhotras my extended family in this country, but Sushil’s affection, warmth, and trust have been a key inspiration in my career.

Sushil and his wife Lata live in Westchester, NY. They have two daughters and a son. Sushil fondly calls me “Beta” (son in Hindi), and that makes me feel very special. I work closely with Lata, who helps me create new recipes for Café Spice, along with their son Sameer Malhotra, who runs the operation. We work as friends with the shared goal of contributing to the success of the enterprise. This common purpose makes us all work that much harder, and we make a great team.

Sushil’s story is a classic entrepreneur’s tale of passion, knowledge, and determination to overcome every hurdle and challenge to reach a desired goal. He is at the top of America’s Indian food business now, but his journey wasn’t easy. He left India during the 1960s in an era of droughts, oil crisis, refugees, and a collapsing currency. Sushil managed to get a scholarship to study at City College in New York City, where he arrived in 1966, just 17 years old. He earned a degree in engineering and went to work for Shell and Disney, later earning an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business.

Conditions in India during the following decade did not show any signs of improvement. Many of his family members also migrated to the Big Apple and together with his father, Sushil opened a small spice business that supplied South Asian spices and chutneys to New York’s curry houses. The father-son duo opened a shop on Lexington Avenue and stored their spices in their Jackson Heights, Queens garage. Sushil used his weekends helping his father deliver chutney and spices to Indian restaurants in Manhattan and Queens.

In 1976, Sushil ditched engineering to become a full-time restaurateur. Indian cuisine in America had not yet changed much in the 70s. Sushil saw an opportunity, brought in a couple of investment partners, and opened his first Indian restaurant on Park Avenue. It was called Akbar and as a fine dining establishment was meant to represent India in its glory. Diners initially didn’t take well to the concept; they found its doorman and the huge, black doors intimidating. But after a glorious review in the
New York Times
by food critic Craig Claiborne, customers poured through the black doors, and there was no looking back.

Nine years after opening Akbar, Sushil felt that it had “peaked.” He sold it and opened a new place called Dawat, with Madhur Jaffrey as chef and consultant. At the time, Jaffrey was called the “Julia Child of Indian food.” This second effort was an even bigger hit than Akbar. Its celebrity guest lists included Michael Jackson, Derek Jeter, Donald Trump, and Whitney Houston. I have heard many heart-warming stories from Jaffrey over dinner at the Malhotra residence, where she was a frequent guest. In fact, a recipe for Durupadi Jagtianiin in several of Madhur Jaffrey’s cookbooks is fondly named the “Nani mom” recipe, after Lata’s mother.

Later in the ’90s, Sushil got out of fine dining and began opening casual bistros. The first Café Spice opened its doors in Manhattan in 1995. Others soon followed in Philadelphia, Jersey City, and Gaithersburg, Maryland. The business model was to open close to college campuses, especially those with large foreign student populations. Although these establishments were very successful, the team closed them in 2010 to concentrate on quick-service restaurants and on supplying supermarkets and other retail outlets. Today, Café Spice is a successful 30-million-dollar enterprise that is growing 20 percent a year in the booming Indian food market.

More than just another restaurant cookbook, this book is about the family that has made Café Spice such a successful brand. It is about celebrating the success of a company that celebrates Indian food, and about the enterprising ideas that have enabled Café Spice to be such a pioneering brand in the food business. It is also about the passion of a family whose mission is to “give Indian cooking to the world” in a real and authentic way. The passion of the Café Spice owners has inspired me to write this cookbook.

The handpicked recipes in this book are all simple to make and contain some of my own creative twists and substitutions that make them easier for the home cook to prepare. I have included several of my own signature dishes, but most of the creations are from the Café Spice repertoire using its signature spice blends. For those of you who are familiar with Café Spice products and my own brand of chutneys and spice rubs, this book will give you the opportunity to learn how these products are used to make food that is tasty and also beautiful! The book also contains many recipes inspired by my family and friends. I hope that all of you enjoy cooking from this book as much as I have enjoyed creating it.

—Hari Nayak

A Few Simple Techniques

The heart and soul of Indian cooking is mastering the unique and imaginative use of spices, seasonings, and flavorings and learning the nitty-gritty of Indian cooking techniques. You will already be familiar with many of those techniques from your own everyday cooking. The main ones are steaming (
dum
), tempering (
tarhka
), roasting (
bhunnana
), frying (
talna
), and sautéing (
bhunao
). Other common techniques are roasting and grinding spices; browning onions, garlic, and meats; and handling sauces. Each of these methods, or a combination of two or three or even all, may be necessary to prepare an Indian dish. They are not hard to master, but it’s important to understand the basic principles of each.

BROWNING
Most Indian recipes require browning onions by frying them over medium-high heat. Evenly browned onions are more flavorful and give sauces the desired rich, deep reddish-brown color. The same goes for garlic—the flavor of garlic is quite amazing if it is fried in oil until it turns golden brown. For the best flavor and color, meat is also browned. Browning also sears the meat, which makes it juicy. I like to brown marinated meat before combining it with other ingredients. If I am cooking a larger quantity, I brown a few pieces of meat at a time in hot oil and set them aside. I then add the browned meat and all the cooking juices back into the pan with the other ingredients and let it finish cooking in the sauce.

DEEP-FRYING (
TALNA
)
Talna
refers to deep-frying, Indian style. Generally, Indian cooks use a
kadhai
—a deep pan with a rounded bottom similar to a wok. Unlike a deep-fat fryer, the size and shape of the kadhai does not allow large quantities of food to be fried at one time. The result is even frying. When deep-frying, oil should be heated to between 325° and 350°F (160° and 180°C). This temperature is crucial—if the oil is too hot, the outside of food will brown very quickly, leaving the insides uncooked; and if the oil is not hot enough, the foods will absorb the oil and become greasy. When frying, do not crowd the pan; fry the food in batches if necessary. Use a slotted spatula or spoon when removing fried food from the oil and hold each piece against the edge of the pan for a few seconds to allow excess oil to drain back into the pan. Place fried foods on a tray lined with paper towels to drain. If you intend to reuse the oil, turn off the heat as soon as you’re finished frying and let the oil cool completely. Using a fine-mesh strainer, strain the oil into an airtight container. Store the oil at room temperature.

ROASTING (
BHUNNANA
)
Traditionally in Indian cooking, roasting is done in a charcoal-fired
tandoor
(clay oven), which gives a unique flavor to roasted meats, breads, and vegetables. The juices of the meats drip onto the charcoal which sizzles and creates smoke that gives the food its unique flavor. For home cooking, an open charcoal grill is good substitute when cooking meat kebabs, vegetables, and
paneer
(cheese), though the flavor is milder than that achieved in a tandoor. An oven can be used to make breads and to roast marinated meats and vegetables. A good example that showcases the roasting technique is Tandoori Spiced Roasted Chicken (page
98
).

ROASTING AND GRINDING OF SPICES
Roasting is the key to bringing out the flavor of spices. Roasting spices removes the raw smell typical of untreated spices and intensifies their flavors by heating up essential oils. All you need is a small, heavy-bottomed skillet (cast iron works great). No oil is used when roasting spices. Whole spices are put in a dry skillet and roasted over medium heat until they turn a shade or two darker and become aromatic. The spices are then immediately removed from the hot skillet to avoid over-roasting. In my kitchen, I generally buy spices whole and then grind them myself as needed. Because spices retain their flavor and aroma much longer when left whole than when ground, grinding roasted spices in small batches is the ideal way to use them and imparts the greatest possible flavor to dishes. Traditionally in Indian kitchens, spices are ground on heavy grinding stones or with a mortar and pestle. To save time, I use a spice grinder, though a coffee grinder works equally well.