The spice road

Tipped by Gordon Ramsay as the ‘next Fanny Cradock’, Ravinder Bhogal combines the skilful spicing she learnt from her mother with inspiration found everywhere from Kenya to Kent. Amy Bryant meets her. Photographs by Joakim Blockstrom

Ravinder Bhogal’s restaurant, Jikoni, opened in london just eight months ago, but i’d bet she doesn’t get much of a chance to dwell on how fast that time has gone .‘ it feels miraculous ,’ she says, when we speak on one of her rare days off ,‘ and very strange to look back on it .’ strange not least because, as a fledgling chef-patron who had never before had to deal with staffing and suppliers on top of seven-day stints at the stove, she had planned ‘a very quiet opening’ for her Marylebone venue. at first, a few friends and family came – along with aa gill, Fay Maschler and Marina o’loughlin. Plaudits rang out; the critics liked what they ate.‘ i was just trying to focus on my cooking. id idn’ tthinki wa son their radar ,’ Bhogal admits. diners followed – and continue to arrive – in droves.

Reviewers had Bhogal in their sights from the moment she won a competition on gordon Ramsay’s Channel 4 food programme The F Word, in 2007. Ramsay was on t he hunt for a new female face of television cooking and crowned her Britain’ s‘ next Fanny Cradock’. Bhogal transformed from a fashion journalist who simply ‘cooked for the girls in the office’, into a Tv presenter, food writer a nd pop-up chef. she published a recipe book, Cook in

Boots, in 2011 (‘it was my nick name; i’m always the one at the end of a party at home, in my heels, cooking for people’ ).Reflecting on that period from the homely dining room ofJiko ni,

Bhogal says it ‘seems a lifetime away’.

Bhogal was born in Nairobi to Sikh parents and learnt to cook, albeit reluctanctly, at a young age. ‘My mother was quite Victorian in her attitude ,’ she says. ‘It was like being in a Jane Austen novel, as one of four daughters; she was very concerned about our marriageability .’ Bhogal’s culinary education began early, with mountains of peas to shell – a task resented by a girl who preferred to play outside on her bike. It was her grandfather, a man who ‘ate with belt-loosening fervour ’, who inspired her when he gave her a little aluminium stove. ‘I learnt to love to cook for people, and couldn’t help but fall for the produce that we were surrounded by. Africa’s red volcanic soil was magical, and it still runs through my blood.’

Due to her father’s work as an aeronaut ic a l eng i neer, however, Bhogal spent most of her childhood in Kent, where her mother cooked everything from scratch – including, for their regula r Friday ‘English-food night’, f ish and chips featuring a batter spiced with chilli, ginger and carom seeds. It was from her that Bhogal learnt the unwritten code of handling spices – ‘when to take something off the heat; when to pop it in oil; what happens when you roast a seed, crush it, or grind it’.

This fine-tuning of f lavours forms

the backbone of Bhogal’s cooking today. On Jikoni’s menu, dainty Scotch eggs (using quail’s eggs) come with pickled chillies a nd ea r t hy dukkah, or wit h smoked-beetroot raita. Middle Eastern, South Asian, even Mediterranean influences lace the sharing dishes of slow- cooked meats and delicately rendered vegetables. Many of these proved popular at her former restaurant residencies and pop-ups (a metaphorical shove from Jay Rayner, while they were filming a food prog ramme toget her, led to g ig s i n profe s siona l k itchens at Trishna and Carousel, among others).

At Ji koni, Bhogal has f i na l ly put down roots. She has made the space uniquely hers, with lampshades made from saris, bright pom-poms and the ornate print blocks used to create the pastel tablecloths. Downstairs the walls are lined with her paintboxes – rows of tubs f illed wit h dried rose petals, pink peppercorns and chunky chaat masala. ‘Jikoni reminds me of my childhood home, with the same pistachiocoloured terrazzo floor,’ she says.

Bhogal’s cooking is an expression of the traditions of her heritage and the culture she has now embraced. And at the door is a photograph of her grandfather, a reminder that sometimes it is simply the joy of cooking for others that matters most. jikonilondon.com

Middle Eastern, South Asian, even Mediterranean influences lace Bhogal’s dishes

Right and previous page Inside Bhogal’s London restaurant, Jikoni. ‘[It] reminds me of my childhood home,’ she says