Share
With a million cookbooks available on the internet for you to read and recreate the recipe in your kitchen, “Romy Gill’s India: Recipes From Home” is much more than a cookbook. It is a collection of stories and the chef’s all-time favourite Indian foods, be it street food like ghugni or classics like Dal Makhani; it tells you a story about growing up in the diverse land of India.
Romy Gill MBE, the Indian-origin chef and author, takes a reader on a journey across India while transporting her back to her mother’s kitchen. To get you an inside scoop on the celebrity author, her life in India, her journey, and her latest book, Slurrp conducted an exclusive interview with the chef. Read on to get inspired and get back to your roots.
Romy Gill And The Indian Touch To Her Stories
“My parents are from Punjab; my mother was from Ludhiana, and my dad’s from Jalandhar, so I have always had a Punjabi background. But my father migrated from there to my aunt’s place for a better lifestyle and greater opportunities, and my mother followed him. So, I grew up in West Bengal. I’ve always felt like my upbringing was very much like that of an army household with a sheltered environment. Being raised in West Bengal, I think the kind of exposure that I got is how I got to explore the varied cuisines. From South Indian cuisine, which is extensive for each state, Bengali, Assamese, Rajasthani, Gujarati, and so on, I wouldn’t have known all these cuisines if I hadn’t grown up amongst different people. Plus, I wouldn’t have been able to speak so many languages,” Romy Gill says nostalgically.
Talking about her childhood, the chef shares, “I am so grateful to my parents, as my upbringing was amazing. I could eat different kinds of food. One of my friend’s mother, who followed Christianity, would make us an utterly delicious cake on Christmas. A few of my other school friends, too, came from different states like Kashmir, where I got to eat the pahadi cuisine. Another friend from Gujarat used to make kadhi, and I learned how different it was from the Punjabi kadhi that was made at my place. There are so many chefs like me who were born and brought up in India. So, our understanding of the Indian cuisine and food is very different. So, I think that for my career, this exposure was a differentiating factor.”
“When I came to the UK, I realised that the food here was so different from what we had grown up eating. We did have some wonderful Michelin-star restaurants in London, but the culinary picture was entirely different 30 years ago. After all these years, the regional Indian cuisines are now much better understood in London. I think Dishoom, London, was the first restaurant to change the mindset and understanding of Indian food for a lot of people. It made the Indian cuisine prepared more deliciously while making it reasonable,” Romy Gill further talks about the adaptation of Indian cuisine in the UK.
Childhood Food Memories And Rituals
Chef Romy Gill MBE reveals that, being raised in a typical Indian family, she has first-hand experience with the culture, rituals, street food, and overall Indian cuisine. During the interview, the chef shared, “Eating golgappe and barf ka gola was a ritual. We used to save our pocket money till the time the golgappe vala came to sell the snack in our street. But I think Bengal, being a melting point of so many cultures, made me try to love so many different foods. Anglo Indians, Jews, Parsi, Marwari, Punjabis, Biharis, Christians, and so many culturally different families, I was lucky enough to pick my favourites from all of them.”
The chef further adds, “Some of the dishes that are still close to my heart are the cream rolls or the bread that is freshly served in the mornings. Then, there was a fruit cake at the time of Christmas that mom absolutely loved, and I included the recipe in my book. Cheese patties, Chinese noodles served with fried egg, fried rice, egg rolls, and dosa, are some dishes I grew up enjoying my entire childhood. When it comes to street food, my utmost favourite is the Bengali snack ghugni and the golgappe vala who used to come to once every week used to make them with ghugni. Other than that I also loved Punjabi aloo tikki, samosa chaat, and papdi chaat.” The best part is that all of these recipes that are close to the chef’s heart are mentioned in her latest book, so you can try what she grew up eating.
Journey From A Foodie To Chef
Knowing from her stories, it is obvious to make out the foodie part of Romy Gill. But Slurrp dived deeper to know how she started to cook and became the chef she is today. Romy Gill shares a touching story about a turning point in her life, “I just completed my 10th standard, and I decided to move to college with my friends. But sadly, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. With the radiotherapy, she lost her sense of taste. And my mum used to run around for all the house chores from our breakfast to our tiffins and then prepping dinner. So, after the radiotherapy, when she wasn’t able to taste and cook, I got inclination towards cooking and told my dad I wanted to be in the hospitality sector and that I’d be a chef. That’s where it all started from. When I came to the UK in 1993. I started with hosting dinner parties for my friends and then taking cooking classes. Later on, I learnt the business side of the profession. I enhanced my skills and opened my restaurant, “Romy's Kitchen” in 2013.”
Romy Gill’s India: Recipes From Home
“I want to be a travel writer. I think what sets me and my books apart is that I don’t believe in doing generic microwave or air fryer recipes. What I really love to do is write about things and recipes that are close to my heart, and I have a story to share for it,” proudly shared Romy Gill. The chef published her first book, “Zaika: Vegan Recipes from India” in September 2019, and the second, “On The Himalayan Trail: Recipes and Stories from Kashmir to Ladakh,” which was published in Spring 2022.
“In this book, the recipes that I have put are the ones that I have collected throughout my life. With over 70 beloved family recipes, each is a testament to the culinary areas of my upbringing and the food experiences that shaped my palate. For me, this is more than just a cookbook; it extends an invitation to savour not only the flavours of my world but also the stories that define India’s vast, vibrant landscape. It is a celebration of the melting pot of cultures and the true essence of home-cooked Indian cuisine,” says the proud author Romy Gill.
