LEADER OF THE PAK
High-frying chef on how his primary school teacher gave him a taste for the spicy Indian snack and helped him bag a prized Michelin star
Michelin star chef Isaac McHale has revealed how a quest to create the perfect pakora sparked his successful culinary career.
The Glasgow-born cook, who is head chef at the acclaimed Clove Club in London’s Shoreditch, admitted his love of the Glaswegian version of the crispy Indian snack tempted him into the kitchen.
Isaac was just seven when his primary school teacher’s potato pakora inspired him to pull on a pinny and fire up the stove.
He said: “Jaggy pakoras were my turning point. They took me into the kitchen.
“The best pakora I ever had was at school.
“We had a teachers’ day where they don’t really teach and they bring something in and Mrs Sughita – I think that was her name – did a diced potato pakora.
“It was amazing, the pakora of my dreams. I was only seven but when I tasted it, I wanted to learn how to make it – and so I did.
“I used to memorise all the names of the spices, wanting to make curries, and then I got our chip pan and started making pakora. “When I was about 13, I wrote to all the Indian restaurants in Glasgow, asking if I could come and work for free. I wanted to learn how to use the tandoor oven. “I think they just laughed at me. They probably thought it was some kind of trap – a wee boy wanting to come and work with a big, fiery oven.” Isaac, who has worked at prestigious restaurants around the globe and whose Clove Club has been voted No26 on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, isn’t the only foodie to be blown away by Glasgow pakora. Renowned food critic Marina O’Loughlin also believes her native city’s pakora is the best in the world. She said: “It’s the crispness, the squidge, the heat, the strange, chalky dip. It’s just not like any pakora I’ve had anywhere else. “The idea of selling a giant plateful of vegetables to
Glaswegians who would never order vegetables is remarkable.”
In the latest issue of food magazine At The Table, acclaimed journalist, columnist and foodie Audrey Gillan describes pakora as her madeleines.
She writes: “They cal led them indescribables: clusters of gram flourbattered vegetables, little bombs of spice, deep-fried so that they were crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. In the 1970s the indescribable pakora became a Glasgow phenomenon.
“Pakoras are my madeleines. Give me a good one, ‘ jaggy’ with protruding curls of onion, peppered with whole cumin and coriander seeds, and I’m three years old again, beside my young parents, who’ve taken me to a fancy restaurant called The Shenaz.
“It’s all f lock wallpaper, with a coat-check guy in a turban and turn-yuppy pointy shoes. I’m given a side plate and a small taste of everything they order. I eat it all, but it is pakora that steals my heart.”
In the Shish Mahal Cook Book, published in 1982, the restaurant’s then owner Ali Aslam explained how an Indian snack became a Glaswegian starter.
He wrote: “The European tradition of serving a starter before the main meal is not customary in Indian or Pakistani households.
“The pakora is considered a snack, something to tide you over until dinner time. You can buy them in the street from traders who will fry them freshly for you, rather as you would expect to buy a hot dog, or hamburger, in this country; but there the similarity ends.”
Pakora came to Glasgow with the wave of settlers from Pakistani Punjab after the country gained independence from the Empire.
Enticed to the city by adverts seeking bus drivers, or simply to ply their trade as door- to- door peddlers, they soon began to open cafes, restaurants and corner shops.
The first curry shop in the city opened in 1954.
In the 1970s, Scot s became entranced by Indian food – a change from the bland mince and tatties. Restaurants with names such as Shenaz and Koh-i-Noor sounded exotic and mysterious.
Soon the city that adores fried food adopted pakora as its post-bevvy snack of choice. Nowadays you can order haggis pakora and black pudding pakora, to name but a few.
Glaswegian pakora is different to English versions of the snack, which tend to be big, doughy and fried just once a day, not to order. Glasgow-raised broadcaster and restaurant owner Hardeep Singh Kohli explained the difference: “Pakora is north Indian – more filling than batter. The Bangladeshi version is all batter and no filling. So, the Punjabi pakora is more akin to a fritter whereas the Bangladeshi pakora sold on Brick Lane, or south Indian bhaji, is a celebration of batter.” Writer Audrey, who now lives in London and has written a pakora- based blog for atthetable.co.uk, said: “I go to a shop on Brick Lane to buy a box of pakora – onion, potato, mixed, chilli and aubergine. “But they are deeply troubling, f laccid things that need a really good run- in with a chip pan. “I want it to be jaggy, not big and fluffy. They might call them pakora but they’re just not indescribable. “After eating them I always feel like booking a train ticket home.”
After eating a London pakora I feel like booking a train home