‘I’m preserving my Punjabi heritage with a global spin’ Gurdeep Loyal

The Leicester-born chef talks to Prudence Wade about embracing traditions of Indian and British cuisine

AFEW dishes make food writer Gurdeep Loyal feel nostalgic, but samosas make him positively misty-eyed.

“It’s the classic Indian chaat snack – they have been present in every single family celebration,” Loyal says. “Dare I say it, even when sad things happen, we will have samosas because everyone knows they’re the thing that will lift people up.”

In his debut cookbook, Mother Tongue, Loyal makes new versions of much-loved recipes from his childhood. “My samosas in the book are harissa, paneer, fennel seed and pistachio – mixing Middle Eastern flavours and paneer into my own take on a samosa.”

The British classic, roast chicken, gets a global interpretation with curry leaf, lemongrass and Aleppo pepper, and fishcakes come with “loads of Punjabi spices, which is from my culture, but topped with a Chinese smacked cucumber. I’ve inflected that with amchoor, a very Indian ingredient ... That amalgamates all of those things, which is what I am – British and Punjabi, but very worldly in terms of my approach to flavour”.

Now based in east London, he grew up in Leicester, and says:

“I’m from a big Punjabi family of big eaters – the only way to be Punjabi. We have a culture that’s based around food. So a lot of the things we ate was my mum’s Punjabi home cooking – such as keema and tandoori chicken, interesting curries, really buttery daals.”

In a big family that was often putting on weddings and parties, Loyal “didn’t really have a choice” but to help out with cooking as a child. “We were very adventurous in terms of what we ate, and being from Leicester, a multi-ethnic city, we used to eat Caribbean takeaways all the time,” he adds. “Our friends and neighbours were from different parts of India, so while the food we ate at home was Punjabi, I grew up eating food from Bengal, Kerala, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

“Equally, we loved pizza, pasta, burgers and American junk food – and our parents were really happy to indulge us, because they loved it as much as we did.”

Having begun his career as a management consultant, Loyal quickly realised his passion lay elsewhere and quit to join a then-relatively unknown startup called Innocent Drinks. He then became head of marketing for food, restaurants and wine at Harrods and spent time as the head of futures trends at M&S, before becoming a food writer.

“I think you can preserve your heritage by putting your own spin on things,” Loyal says of his debut cookbook. “I wasn’t overly concerned with preserving things exactly as my mum did them, because she did them different to her mum, and her mum did them different to her mum – they all put their own stamp on things.”

He is conscious of appreciating, not appropriating, food. “Appropriation is ultimately about one person in a position of power using that power over a community. Have a think about what position of power you might hold over this community. Is there a legacy of colonialism, or is there a legacy of repression of one community to another?

“I think it’s really important to engage with communities if you want to cook from their cultures, but also don’t be afraid of it. Don’t say – I’m not Jamaican, I can’t use Jamaican ingredients ... You absolutely can, but go and find out why those cultures are rooted to those ingredients. Why does Jamaican food have allspice and pimento in it?”

Loyal recognises food can be

“an emotive and emotional facet to identity”, but says: “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go out and be adventurous and curious. It’s about having a genuine curiosity and interest in the community you’re going to borrow from.”