RAGINI DEY
CHEF & SPICE BLENDER
ADELAIDE, SA
The groundbreaking Indian chef has taught Australians there is more to the cuisine than fiery curry.
When Ragini Dey is talking spice, others listen. The restaurateur, cooking teacher, cookbook author and spice blender is Adelaide’s authority on spices. Her mission is to demonstrate how quality spices can transform a dish, particularly Indian cuisine.
“People often say, ‘Oh, Indian food, it’s just so harsh,’ or, ‘You don’t get the fragrances of Thai.’ And the only reason is that not a lot of people know how to use it or they make it incorrectly,” says Dey. “So that’s where I come from really, because I’m committed to showing people that Indian food is so diverse and, really, you can make it from the simplest ingredients. It can be subtle, too; it doesn’t always have to be hot and fiery.”
Dey emigrated to Adelaide from India in the 1980s and worked as a chef, cooking teacher, restaurateur and demonstrator. Back then, she says, there was absolutely nothing in the supermarket that was authentic.
“So much of it was poor quality, full of preservatives or imported, so it was never going to be fresh or have that flavour,” she says.
In 1992, she opening her muchloved The Spice Kitchen with an ethos of making everything from scratch, down to the pickles, chutneys and spice mixes. Two more restaurants and a cookbook followed. In 2018, she opened Ragi’s Spicery, a takeaway and small spicery on the ground floor – dubbed ‘New Deli’ – with a modern Indian restaurant and bar above. She sells her five smallbatch spice blends – mild korma, butter chicken, vindaloo, South Indian-style blend and rogan josh blend – there and online.
She also gives cooking classes because, Dey says, there are still a lot of gaps in understanding on Indian cuisine. “There’s still a lot of ‘one size fits all’ cooking going on. Some restaurants, they’ll make two basic sauces for every dish on the menu and then just add tomato, yoghurt, cream or nuts. And I want to show people that’s not how Indian food is.”