MY LIFE IN FOOD

Comedian Romesh Ranganathan

My mum’s a great cook. I grew up eating bucketloads of South Indian and Sri Lankan food.

My main memory is mutton curry with white rice, dhal and maybe some cabbage or spinach. I’m vegan now, but back then I ate a lot of meat and that dish was the thing we’d always get excited about. In Sri Lankan food, you also have ‘short eats’ (small snacks) — vade and stuff like that. Dosa, too. She used to make all that.

I recently learnt to cook Sri Lankan food.

My mum gave me — for the first time ever — the full recipe for her vegetable curry. We went over for lunch and my mum and I made all the Sri Lankan stuff ourselves.

She was over the moon. She’d been waiting years for me and my brother to learn how to do it. She has a secret mix of spices that she’s given to me in a jar, and I’m not allowed to tell anyone. It’s like Colonel Sanders. When she gives the recipe to other people, she deliberately withholds that bit so their curry isn’t exactly like hers. When they tell her it doesn’t taste quite the same, she says [impersonating his mum]: “Oh I don’t know why, I can’t figure it out either!”

The vegan selection in Ethiopia is incredible.

They have a fasting period where there’s no meat, dairy or anything like that, so it’s essentially vegan. It means every restaurant has a fasting menu, and the food is amazing. The injera — oh my god. I love it, man. Wherever we went [filming for The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan], there was an incredible vegan meal available. I was really surprised.

In Mongolia, my guide Ider ate a sheep’s head.

It didn’t make the show, but we went to a restaurant and he ate the whole head, including the eyeballs and everything. We think it’s strange, but if you’re going to kill an animal, it makes more sense to eat every part of it. I understand the ethical logic and traditions behind that. I just had salad that day.

When I was in the Arctic, I learnt seal is a delicacy.

My Inuit guide Johnny and I were sitting on the edge of the frozen ocean listening for whales when a seal popped its head out of the water. Within 10 seconds, Johnny had shot and killed it. What I wasn’t expecting was for him, as he was cutting it up, to start eating bits of it raw. He took it back to the nearest town and shared it with everybody. Not for me.

In Sri Lanka, I properly fell in love with coconut sambal.

Being there reminded me how much I like it. It’s a spicy, grated coconut that Sri Lankans have for breakfast. I think sambal is the one thing that I probably shouldn’t learn how to make. You know when you put too much food in a goldfish tank and they just eat until they die? I think that’s what would happen if I had infinite access to coconut sambal.

I wouldn’t say it, but I’d be annoyed if someone took time out of a meal to take a photo.

I think it’s slightly symptomatic of not being in the moment. Just enjoy the thing; you don’t have to capture it. I didn’t take a photo of that injera I had, and I’ve probably romanticized it, but that’s good. I’d rather have my ever-changing memory of it than an exact documentation. I’ve got nothing against photos, but stopping during a meal to take a photo is against the spirit of the whole thing. Romesh’s new book, As Good As It Gets, is out now (Penguin, £20). Interview: Farida Zeynalova