START-UP SUCCESS

When former policewoman Rayeesa Asgharsandys moved to rural Herefordshire, she decided to turn her passion for curries into a business based in her own farmhouse kitchen

Creating curries from a farmhouse kitchen with Spiced by Rayeesa

" Prepping a meal is like decorating a room – you have to do the boring bit before the fun starts,” says Rayeesa Asghar-sandys, as she demonstrates with basmati rice. “Wash and strain it eight times to remove the starch; otherwise it will be sticky.” This might be a simple chore, but with such an inspirational teacher, it sounds more like a revelation.

The hot, spicy aroma emanating from Rayeesa’s Indian Kitchen cookery school has dispelled the cold air on this frosty February morning. Her house is reached along a farm track near the village of Mordiford in Herefordshire. Inside, an enthusiastic group of four is chopping, slicing and stirring, with Rayeesa encouraging them along the way. Lunch is spicy omelettes, while their morning’s work simmers on the stove, and by mid-afternoon they are all sitting down to two curries (one chicken, one vegetable), tarka dhal, brown and white rice, and chapatis made from flour and water (and plenty of kneading). The sheer quantity and variety of food dispels the myth that Indian cuisine is too time-consuming to try at home.

When she is not running workshops once a week, Rayeesa is devising new products for her range of frozen curry sauces based on family recipes from Hyderabad in southern India. “They are cooked in the traditional slow method to seal in the flavour and then frozen at the point of perfection,” she says. “They contain no preservatives or ‘nasties’, so they are natural and healthy, and it means you can cook your favourite dish whenever you like.” You simply add the sauce to your chosen ingredients of meat, fish or vegetables, and no one will know that you haven’t spent hours at the grindstone.

FINDING A NEW BEAT

Sitting at the kitchen table, Rayeesa explains how her business came about. “When my husband and I moved from London to Herefordshire in 2003, I had to think about what I could do from home to fit around the children, who were then aged two, five and seven,” she says. It would have been difficult for Rayeesa to keep up her old job: she was a constable with the Metropolitan Police. “As a girl,

I was fascinated by cop shows such as Cagney & Lacey, so in 1984, I walked into Wimbledon Police Station with my CV and applied to join the force,” she recalls. “I loved being on the beat, getting to know the community. But as a family we were always so busy, and when my husband, who works in transport, discovered rural Herefordshire, we thought it was the right moment to leave the city. We put our plan to the children, who said, ‘Only if we can have a bedroom each – and a puppy’, and the deal was sealed. I had always loved cooking and was very much inspired by my culture, so that seemed the ideal direction to take, plus I loved the idea of teaching other people how to create the dishes I enjoyed making.” And so Rayeesa swapped her truncheon for a rolling pin.

Following 18 months of research to confirm there was a demand for such an enterprise, Rayeesa opened the doors to her first cookery course customers in 2010. “After the initial costs of equipment, insurance and a food hygiene certificate, there are minimal overheads when working from home,” she says, “and as the courses are from 10am to 3pm, I was able to drop off and pick up the children from school.”

The family house is bordered by a 50-acre nature reserve of wild-flower meadows and woodland, but before Rayeesa could launch her business, she had to gut the kitchen and equip it with suitable fittings on a budget. Secondhand store cupboards came from a museum shop clear-out, while a smart wooden island from Ikea is just the right height for chopping, mixing – and chatting. The kitchen and dining areas had already been knocked through, providing a large open space, but it took hard graft to unearth the handsome flagstone floor, buried under concrete and two layers of lino. The white-painted brick walls and ceiling, with accents of red – her favourite colour – complete the warm and welcoming feel.

Rayeesa was also often asked to cater for friends’ dinner parties and weddings – on one occasion, making 220 chapatis by hand – and it was this that gave her the idea of producing authentic curry sauces for busy people. She started experimenting in a country pub, The Crown Inn in Woolhope, using the kitchen after hours and donating a large tub of her latest creations in return. “For three years, I worked from 10pm to 8am, sleeping on a pub bench while the sauces cooled down. It took time to get the technique right for cooking in bulk. I wanted to produce something that was fresh and flavourful, to achieve a balance of herbs, spices and heat. I had tried every curry sauce on the market – dried, bottled, chilled

“The sauces are cooked slowly to seal in the flavour and then frozen at the point of perfection”

– but, to my mind, they were all lacking.” When a growth in sales of her Spiced by Rayeesa frozen sauces meant she could no longer keep up with demand, she found a small factory in Wales that could take over production to her exact specifications. An appearance on Dragons’ Den in 2017 brought praise from the panel but no investment: “That experience made me determined to succeed. I knew there was a place for fast, healthy Indian food – after all, the politician Robin Cook once said that chicken tikka masala is our national dish.” Winning a year’s mentoring from a Hereford businessman, John King, was invaluable. “He has sadly passed away, but I am indebted to his generosity of spirit in sharing his wisdom with me. It was his suggestion to take stalls at farmers’ markets and food festivals, which was very useful for customer feedback.”

LEARNING FROM MOTHER

With no formal culinary training, Rayeesa credits her mother for many of the skills she has developed. “She was superb at hospitality, never daunted by family or friends turning up at the door, and, of course, food always had to be offered. She would give instructions to me and my sisters, and a meal would appear out of nowhere. I learned from her to put my heart into cooking but to be relaxed about entertaining. What I discovered is that to run your own business, you have to have a desire and a need to do something creative.”

Rayeesa’s children – Farah, Peter and Lea – are now grown up, but all appreciate home cooking. Peter, 21, currently on a gap year in India, texted her to say the food in Chennai “isn’t as good as yours, Mum”. You don’t get higher praise than that. FOR MORE INFORMATION visit spicedbyrayeesa.com. CL readers can get 15 per cent off cookery courses (standard price £140) with the code CLFEB20, and ten per cent off six sauces with the code CLSPICEDFEB20. Offer runs until 31 March 2020.