‘My mother could make anything taste good’: Amrita Raichand on food, family and ‘maa ki yaadein’
Chef Amrita Raichand on inheriting her mother’s culinary skills, balancing nutrition and taste, and her new YouTube series, 'Maa Ki Yaadein'
Chef Amrita Raichand at her home in Mumbai (Photo Credit: Nidhi Jacob) In a small but comfortable two-bedroom-hall-kitchen house, a very young Amrita Raichand (nee Saluja) would be plonked on a stool next to the kitchen counter while her mother Prakash Kaur Saluja made food before heading to work. That kitchen in her house in Jamadoba in Jharkhand’s Dhanbad became her first culinary school. She learnt the chops by observing and put her first meal together when she was only eight – Bihari dal, tamatar ki chutney, aloo-beans bhujiya and rice.
“My mother could make anything taste good, be it tauri or lauki or tinde. My birthday parties where she would make everything from scratch including a cake, chole tikkis, frankie rolls, chilly chicken were the talk of the town,” she tells us, sitting in her spacious sea-facing duplex in Colaba. Right behind her is a photo of her mother who passed away this April after battling Parkinson’s for nearly a decade.
“The saag mutton was originally my maasi’s recipe but my father loved it, so my mother learnt it,” she says. Her father, a senior engineer with Tata’s Tisco in Jamshedpur, was such a foodie that he made her mother take gourmet cooking classes. “My father also pushed her to do her MA and learn driving,” she shares. Amrita was only three-and-a-half when her father passed away due to a heart ailment, leaving her mother, who was 32 at the time, to raise Amrita and her two older brothers single handedly. She took up a job with Tata Hospital and they moved to Dhanbad. And while they had to downsize their lives a bit, a proud Amrita says her mother ensured the house was filled with joy and food. “I don’t remember wanting something and not getting it,” she says.
In her home kitchen, she is hands-on. Her German knife, which she is particularly protective of, has come from her mum’s house in Parel. She uses it to chop the onions into big chunks. Soon a cooker is put on a large flame, oil goes in, followed by tej patta, onions lightly tossed, then tomato, chunks of mutton, salt and a paste of ginger, garlic and chillies. “We don’t mix the paste, otherwise it will remain at the bottom, we just leave it at the top,” she says. Soon, pots and kadhais are brought out and all five stoves are busy. She is fixing aloo-beans bhujiya — not sabji but bhujiya, where it retains the crunch — in one kadhai. Parallelly, she opens the cooker of boiled toor dal and fixes the consistency while preparing the tempering — oil, onion, jeera and hing, which goes in the middle of the cooking and not at the beginning to prevent burning. In another pan, there’s tamatar ki chutney.
Sweet-sour tamatar ki chutney (Photo Credit: Nidhi Jacob)
With most flames on high and so much cooking happening simultaneously, it naturally gets hot but Amrita doesn’t complain. Instead there is a familiar smile on her face, one we have all seen on television. Cooking comes naturally to her. She took to it as fish takes to water. She has had a team to look after day-to-day cooking for decades now, but the instinct never left — she impressed her teachers at The Lawrence School, Sanawar, cooked all meals by herself for nearly two years when she was living with her brother in Andheri East, pursuing double majors in economics and commerce from St Xavier’s College, which she topped. Modelling came later, almost by accident. Advertising veteran Suguna Swamy found in her her ‘Pond’s girl’. “I got paid Rs 75,000 for it, my brothers put Rs 50,000 in an FD I still have,” she smiles. The famous Whirlpool ad, in which she played a mother of two, happened when she was only 19.
Chef Amrita Raichand in the kitchen (Photo Credit: Nidhi Jacob)
Cooking resurfaced again, courtesy motherhood. “When I became a mother in 2007, I didn’t want to work anymore. But while weaning Agastya, I started experimenting with food. Soon came the offer for Mummy Ka Magic — it gave me the opportunity to work at my pace. The biggest joy was that I was getting to educate other parents.” While she was confident with Indian cuisine, she felt the need to refine her skills in international cooking and attended At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy in Singapore for an advanced culinary course. “Later I also did a nutrition course from Le Cordon Bleu,” she shares. “Nutrition has always been central to what I make. My motto is ‘healthy isn’t boring’.”
Bihari Dal (Photo Credit: Nidhi Jacob)
Back in the kitchen, Amrita opens the cooker with mutton, adds blanched palak, salt, pepper, dhaniya powder and red chilli powder for seasoning. In the drawing room, the table is set. She complains that the flowers she bought that morning haven’t been placed, but there is simply no room — there is too much food. There’s her mother’s, and now her, signature saag mutton, Bihari dal, a sweet-sour tamatar ki chutney, crispy aloo-beans bhujiya, rice and boondi raita. On the side are homemade mango and lemon pickles.
Queen of puddings or “mom’s pudding”(Photo Credit: Nidhi Jacob)
She has also baked ‘Queen of Puddings’ — or ‘Mom’s Pudding’, as she calls it — with beautifully torched meringue flowers on the top as the finale. “This would see all of us siblings fighting for the meringue flowers. Mine are fine. Hers were perfect.”
The whole meal, which she returned to after many years following her mother’s passing, encapsulates “childhood, mother’s love and memories.” In the process, she created ‘Maa Ki Yaadein’, her new series on YouTube. “It is my way of keeping her alive.”
Saag mutton
Saag mutton (Photo Credit: Nidhi Jacob)
Ingredients: 1 kg mutton (on the bone), 400 g spinach, 4-5 large onions (roughly chopped), 4 medium tomatoes (roughly chopped), 3 bay leaves, 1 tsp turmeric powder, 2 tsp red chilli powder (to taste), ½ tsp coriander powder, 1 tsp black pepper powder, 3–4 tbsp oil and salt to taste.
For the paste: 1 whole pod of garlic (peeled), 1 big piece of ginger (peeled), 4–5 green chillies, and 1 medium tomato.
Method
1. Blanch the spinach first. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the spinach. Cook for 1–2 minutes until wilted. Remove immediately and place in cold water. Drain and keep aside.
2. Prepare the paste. Blend together the garlic, ginger, green chillies, and 1 medium tomato into a smooth paste. Keep aside.
3. Heat oil in a pressure cooker. Add the bay leaves and let them sizzle for a few seconds.
4. Add the roughly chopped onions and sauté until they turn slightly translucent.
5. Add the roughly chopped tomatoes, turmeric powder, and red chilli powder. Mix well and cook for 2–3 minutes until the tomatoes begin to soften.
6. Add the mutton pieces and salt. Mix everything together well, coating the mutton with the onion-tomato mixture.
7. Now add the prepared ginger-garlic-green chilli paste over the mutton. Do not mix it in.
8. Shut the lid of the pressure cooker and cook for 3-4 whistles. Allow the pressure to release naturally and cool completely before opening the lid.
9. Once opened, add the blanched spinach, coriander powder and black pepper powder.
10. Turn the heat to high and cook uncovered, allowing the spinach and mutton to cook together. The mutton will have released a good amount of liquid, which will help the spinach cook down beautifully.
11. Continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the spinach is completely incorporated, the mutton is tender, and the gravy reaches your desired consistency.
12. Taste and adjust seasoning if required. Serve hot with roti, paratha or steamed rice.
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