One of my mother’s favourite sayings is, ‘If you cook with your heart and soul, you don’t need special ingredients,’” writes Michelin-starred chef and restaurateur Rohit Ghai in his new book Tarkari: Vegetarian and Vegan Indian Dishes with Heart and Soul (Hachette India). Its title like his food is deeply influenced by his roots and the food prepared by his mother. The youngest in the family, Ghai was fortunate to spend a lot of time with his parents and grew up seeing his mother make the most delectable kidney beans, lentils, dips and pickles. He also picked up the art of making perfect triangular parathas at home when he still quite young, along with other preparations like dal tadka, mint chutney, malpua, and even the cassata kulfi, which now finds place in his fine-dining menus. It was also his mother’s habit of making garam masala with a mortar and pestle rather than using an electric grinder or buying pre-ground spices that showed him how to retain the flavours of the spices in this way, Ghai adopting the same practice eventually for his restaurants. “That’s your USP, you simply can’t get those flavours at the market,” he tells us over a video call. Fittingly then, his book begins with a section titled The Magic of Spices, where he writes about how he first learned to use spices in his mother’s kitchen and the spice blends that formed the basis of his cooking, like garam masala, ghati masala, common in Maharashtrian dishes and named after the ghats, goda masala for misal pav, Chettinad spice mix and tadka or chhaunk, the technique of frying spices quickly in oil or ghee.

Rohit Ghai