INDIAN STUNNER
INGREDIENTS
16 fresh or frozen langoustines, defrosted; 2tbsp vegetable oil (to coat the langoustines); 2tsp ground turmeric; a generous pinch of sea salt
For the pickled turmeric: 200g fresh turmeric root, peeled; 100ml pickling liquor (see below)
For the pickling liquor: (Makes 1ltr): 500ml white wine vinegar; 500g caster sugar; 2 star anise; 1 cinnamon stick; 4 cloves; 2 fresh Indian bay leaves
For the lasooni butter: 200g unsalted butter, at room temperature; a bunch of fresh coriander; 5 garlic cloves, peeled; 4 green chillies; a couple of squeezes of lime juice; a pinch of salt
METHOD:
1. Put all the pickling liquor ingredients in a saucepan over a low heat. Stir occasionally until all the sugar dissolves. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool before decanting into a sterilised jar. Store in the fridge.
2. Peel the turmeric root into thin ribbons, place into a bowl. Steep in the pickling liquor for 1-2 hours at room temperature, then keep in the fridge.
YOU don’t tend to go to Indian restaurants for fried chicken, and Will Bowlby did not go and set up his own Indian joint, Kricket, to serve it, but some things just happen.
His Keralan-influenced version, laced with turmeric and Kashmiri red chilli powder, is one of his menu regulars – but was a total accident, thanks to a tandoor-free kitchen and a small, convenient deep-fat fryer.
You’ll find the fried chicken in Will’s debut recipe collection, Kricket: An Indian-inspired Cookbook, alongside his other signature dishes; samphire pakoras – the salty seaweed-like strands are deep-fried then dredged through a tamarind and date chutney; and bhel puri – a raw crunchy mix of deep-fried chickpea noodles, puffed rice, coriander fronds and zingy chutneys – which he’s layering up on the pass as we talk.
Will, 29, started cooking aged 10 (“in a very amateurish way, obviously”), and was largely inspired by his grandmother and Jamie Oliver’s, The Naked Chef.
So keen on the chef life, he helped pay his way through university at Newcastle by setting up his own private catering company, Will2cook, as a 16-year-old, cooking for family and friends’ events.
“It was good practice and people seemed to like it – although I was young, so they had to say that,” he says wryly.
The plan was always to get through school and uni, then wrangle his way into a professional kitchen as quickly as possible (which ended up including working for chef Rowley Leigh at London restaurant Le Cafe Anglais).
What had not been part of the agenda, incredibly, considering how his career’s panned out, was Indian food.
“I never really ate Indian food,” he admits. “If I was to have a takeaway, I’d have a Chinese.” Even when he landed a job at prestigious, oldschool Mumbai restaurant Khyber, it was to run a European-style kitchen.
“I didn’t go to India with the idea of doing something with Indian food,” he says – but during the two years he spent there, he got sucked into the country’s kaleidoscopic food scene. “It’s hard not to, it’s everywhere you go, you can smell it, you can see it in the street.”
Will started taking Indian cooking classes with the private chef of a Mumbai art dealer, and supplemented staff meals with hot and sour street food and kebabs eaten outside at ramshackle rooftop restaurants.
Although, “I’m not going to lie,” he adds with a laugh, “some days I’d just go to Pizza Express because I wanted to sit in an airconditioned room and have a Diet Coke and a pizza.”
He spent his last three months in India travelling, ostensibly to eat, and scribbling down his thoughts, ideas and the dishes he’d tasted as he trailed through Goa and Calcutta, eating handfuls of chaat in old Delhi, and shami kebabs in Lucknow.
Then he came home, spent time in the kitchen with Indian chef Vivek Singh and launched Kricket with his business partner Rik Campbell.
What started out as a two-man kitchen in a South London shipping container, by the end of this year will see Will running three locations.
“I miss the simplicity of it, I miss seeing every single person walk through the door,” he says of his 40ft tin restaurant, and its ‘tiny, cramped kitchen’.
“I loved it, I wouldn’t change it for anything, it got us what we have now.” That includes fans like chefs Michel Roux Jnr, Pierre Koffmann and Masterchef champion Thomasina Miers.
Does he find it daunting, playing with traditional Indian flavours and foods? “And daunting in the respect that I’m also not Indian?” he says. “Yeah, I never really thought about that.
“I’m very, very much aware of India being a nation that’s passionate about their food, and that also means that for some people, dishes have to be done in a certain way. I’m not saying that’s not right, but in reality, every household you go to, every 100m you go, things are done in a different way – and everyone’s ‘right’, so who’s right?!”
“Why shouldn’t I do my own thing?” he adds, handing me a spoon and a bowl of that crisp bhel puri, traditionally made except for the slick of yoghurt draped across the top. “Everyone else is.”
■ Kricket: An Indian-inspired Cookbook (inset left) by Will Bowlby, photography by Hugh Johnson (Hardie Grant), £26.