Darina Allen reveals source of her new found Indian inspiration

We’ve had a charming new voice in food here at the Ballymaloe Cookery School recently, a young Anglo Indian girl named Maunika Gowardhan, whose simple, delicious, and authentic recipes have enchanted even Jamie Oliver. In 2014, she did a FoodTube video with Jamie on her butter chicken, writes Darina Allen. 

Maunika was born in Mumbai but came to the UK in 2011 when she was 24. She had so looked forward to living in London but soon craved the enchanting flavours of her mother’s spicy cooking.

So began a correspondence to try to teach herself how to cook the kind of food she had taken for granted at home in Mumbai. Like so many Indian households, the cook in her home peeled and ground the spices and prepared the masala paste so it was a question of starting from scratch to learn the basics. Fortunately she had a keen taste memory.