As I drove down the narrow street in Walthamstow where Meera Sodha lives, I realised I'd gone too far, so I turned around and parked near her house. An Indian woman in a sari and winter coat stared at me.
You know this is a one way street?
Oh, no, I didn't.
I walk back to my car and execute a 3-point turn, parking around the other way and hoping that no-one has witnessed this bad driving.
It's a nice street with neat suburban terraces and shiny front doors, tiled pathways and carefully tended front gardens. But Walthamstow is odd, hovering upon the edge of affordable fashionability for over a decade, half chic, mostly shabby.
Meera and her husband haven't been here long. Meera is pregnant, her baby due in February. We sit in the kitchen near the window. She has baked some Indian spiced cookies: thick rounds of crumbly shortbread studded with leaf green pistachios. They are delicious.
I was very surprised by how well your first book did because we already have great Indian cookbooks, such as Camelia Panjabi's or Madhur Jaffrey's books. But now I've seen Fresh India, I understand why. Because you really do have a fresh approach. It's all lighter and fresher. Not so many heavy sauces.
Indian food is very diverse. In the same way as we used to think Italian food is all pasta and pizza, Indian food is very regional. The geography of India varies so much. You've got mountains in the north, deserts in the west, jungle, the coasts.
I'm from Gujarat via Uganda. The British government encourage people from Gujarat to go over to Uganda. We started the railways, and Gujaratis are known for being business people. Uganda was depicted as the land of opportunity. We were kicked out by Idi Amin in 1972. Traditionally, we are business people not restaurant people. The Indian curry house has a boiler plate menu. That's nothing like Gujarat home cooking that my family has eaten day in and day out. My first book was a collection of family recipes. My family, a family of five, came with one suitcase. I've become a bit of a hoarder.
At what age did you come to Britain?
My mum came at age 16 in 1972. I was born here. I realised I didn't know much about their past. The only way I could access it was through food. I wanted to capture these recipes. Behind every recipe was a story. That story related to what they grew in the garden. My grandfather's favourite food. How my grandfather was a vegetarian and became a meat eater. When he moved to Uganda, he became a hunter so they'd bake antelope whole. So it just happened to turn into a book.
Did you start out with a blog?
No. I wanted to capture these recipes, I was working at Innocent drinks. Someone said you should meet my wife, she's an editor. She didn't end up being my editor but I put together a proposal. I didn't know what a proposal was. I put together a collection of recipes about this family who had crossed continents and ended up in Lincolnshire.
Did you feel comfortable as a writer? Most of us got our confidence through blogs. Normally you don't jump from nothing to a book.
I was copyrighting at Innocent, which is very different to writing a book. I feel comfortable writing; I really love it. Sometimes I really have to drag the words out but when they come out... (Laughs.)
When I started my blog, I was frightened to write stuff down. I suppose I thought you had to have a degree in English or something.
Innocent is a very friendly company, but I know exactly that feeling.
'Do you have the right to write down words?'
Yes, you need validation. That someone thinks you are OK.
Before you worked at Innocent, did you go to university? What did you study?
At university, I studied Industrial Relations.
Political?
Yeah, I mean I wasn't going to become Arthur Scargill. I was interested in the relationship between government and people. Working with the most challenging people - I became besotted with the idea. I quite liked the whole university experience. I was in London; I went to LSE.
Was Innocent your first job out of university?
No, I set up a dating agency called Fancy An Indian, way before all these online dating things.
Like an Indian Tinder?
Yeah. Less swiping and sex. More matching people together.
So it was open to everyone - anyone who wanted to go out with an Indian?
Yes.
I did some documentary work, researching. Then the actual TV work I did was Natural Born Dealers for ITV. (Laughs.) I also worked for The Tiffin Box. I helped them set up a restaurant in Canary Wharf seating 144 people. I was working for The Big Lunch in PR. I then set up an arts organisation with a lady called Colette where we set up pianos and pingpong balls in public spaces to try and encourage people to come together. There is still a piano in Kings Cross.
I remember that, what a great initiative.
Then I went back to Innocent to set up a big festival called Fruitstock in Regents Park with an Olympics theme. This was under Boris Johnson. But people didn't know whether to stay in London during the Olympics. We didn't sell enough tickets, so we ended up pulling the whole thing.
I met a chef called Richard who worked at the Dock Kitchen just opposite. I'd been thinking more seriously about collecting my families recipes. I was doing half-days at Innocent, sleeping on a sofa then working the rest of the day at the Dock Kitchen. That started my trajectory towards food.
Now your full time job is food writer.
The story is a bit more complex. I really wanted to collect my family's recipes and put them together in a Word document. I was leaving Innocent at the time, but there was a scholarship available at Innocent for £1,000 [which would fund the book research]. I thought, 'I really want to do this'.
It'll pay for the flight and a couple of days.
I went to where my grandfather was born, to meet some of my cousins. I did win the scholarship. I got £1,000. I went to India and persuaded my boyfriend to come with me.
Is he Indian?
No, he's definitely very much 6'2" and blond, but has the most refined palate.
Do you speak Gujarati with your family?
I speak Gujarati. But if I go to Gujarat they can tell that I'm not from there, that my Gujarati is from Africa. There's some bits of Swahili. A lot of kitchen words. When the Gujaratis did well, which is where the animosity grew from in Idi Amin's government, they started to employ people in the house. My mum didn't grow up cooking, they had a Swahili-speaking cook. Asians who've lived in Africa use many Swahili words... Kisu means knife, for instance. And think of the restaurant Jikoni, where the chef Ravinder Bhogal is Kenyan. Jikoni means Kitchen in Swahili. I need to go to Jikoni. I've met her once, she's so lovely.
She's a very very good cook, lots of style.
She's a real beauty.
So, going back to Swahili in kitchens...
It's sort of a family cookbook, it's got elements of Lincolnshire, elements of East Africa. Our family does eat meat, although I was vegetarian for years, and even vegan for a bit. Our family lived in a small village in Lincolnshire.
Were you the only Indians in the village?
Yes, absolutely. (Laughs.) It was great for produce.
You incorporate some of these Lincolnshire ingredients in your books with an Indian twist.
Yes, like sausage kitchari. Nobody knows about Linconshire - it's so weird, it's such a long county. It's the agricultural hotbed of the country. The main crops are potatoes, leeks, brassicas. The farmers have to leave the land to fallow. Now that's turned into rapeseed oil, which I use all the time.
You often use rapeseed rather than ghee?
It's strange: growing up as an Indian, ghee is part of Indian mythology. It's an enormous energy source. We grew up being a little bit nervous about eating too much of it, as it would give you a ghee belly. It's a pure fat. I love homemade ghee. I love the smell of ghee. You walk down any road in India and you can smell it. We don't use masses of it, though. Rapeseed has a really high frying point. My mum used peanut or groundnut oil.
What about palm oil? Any other African ingredients that you snuck in there?
Cassava? East African community love cassava. If you go to Wembley, there aren't that many Gujarati restaurants, but there are a couple there. You can get mogo. A lot of ingredients won't translate. Like kanga birds, which translates to quail over here, or gogol fish, which is a bit like salmon. There are some real surprises though - asparagus grows in Uganda. Plantains as well, which wouldn't originally have been used in India.
Just thinking of how many New World ingredients are in Indian cookery today, like chilli and tomato. What is the basic ancestral Indian diet?
The lineage of Indian food is so strong. K.T Achaya wrote about the history of Indian food. It's quite dry reading. You have Kitchari, an ancient Indian recipe, which is linked to kedgeree. The first recorded recipes like dal are like BC, really old, ancient recipes. Pepper was used often in meat to mask the smell as there was no refrigeration. So they used heavy, dominating spicing.
Do you think that's why India is mostly very vegetarian?
There was the principle of 'ahimsa'. Do no harm. Gujarat is known to be the vegetarian state. There are 62 million people there, the vast majority of which are vegetarian, which I think is fascinating as it's spawned this vegetable-first way of cooking. Muslim communities make more meat. It's Buddhist principles and Hindu principles come together. It's more for religious reasons rather than refrigeration.
I didn't go to Gujarat. I would have liked to have to go to Diu.
Which is Portuguese...
So you are pregnant now?
This is my first and I'm eight months pregnant.
This is a big life change. Is your next book Indian cookery for babies?
I'm interested to see how it will change. Already, being pregnant, my palate has changed. When I had morning sickness, I didn't want to cook at all. I ate rice crispies, bland food...
By the eighth month, it gets better. I went off wine, coffee. The last month or so, it all started to come back again. When I've cooked with pregnant women, I've not said anything but I've noticed their palate is off. You can't trust their palate. Things are under seasoned. You're so sensitive, you can smell your garbage from 100 metres away.
Obviously you can't eat that much because of acid reflex.
We talk about Indian restaurant food...
My thing is home cooking. You can trace Indian food back - it's ancient. But what's bad about it, like French food, is that it hasn't progressed. There are good Indian restaurants in London.
Which Indian restaurants here do you like?
Trishna and Gymkhana. I used to work there, so I'm biased. I was a pastry chef. I did a stage. Then they said, 'do you want a job?' I realised I didn't want to work as a chef. You are in a basement. You don't cook for people you love.
I love the coriander fish at Trishna.
The atmosphere at Trishna is different. The chefs are much more relaxed. At Gymkhana, people are chopping shallots shoulder-to-shoulder at a million miles a minute.
Do you have good knife skills?
I can chop quite quickly. I'd never call myself a chef. I've learnt from my mum and my grandma. I'd love to have more cheffy skills. My mum is the best cook I know, but she chops incredibly slowly. In fact, she uses a blunt knife. That's the thing about home cooking.
That's the reason I started up supper clubs. There must be some brilliant Indian housewife or grandma whose house I want to eat in. I want access to their cooking. There was quite a feminist idea behind it, a way of women making money from home.
I bought your first book supper club on my iPad. You've got a Bombay mix recipe in there.
I'm very interested in making things from scratch. Of course, being vegetarian, I've always made a lot of Indian food. I get quite a lot of Indian people at my supper club, I suppose because it is vegetarian. I think a lot of British people make curries too hot and too sweet. I like souring agents, amchar.
And of course the British are obsessed with chicken. I find it really weird.
Yes. To me, Indian food is vegetarian but I've ordered Indian takeaway with meat-eating friends and they'll say that is the first Indian meal I've ever had without meat.
In most Indian restaurants, the vegetables are the sides.
I love sides. Just give me sides! It shows a real sophistication about Indian culture that they had animal rights from so early on. I know the Greeks did too. It had a basis in health and food safety. It does say something that there is a sophistication of philosophy there.
It's Jainism, Hinduism and Buddhism.
They are trying to be good people. We aren't even trying.
People are trying to eat less meat these days. I bought the beautiful book by Alice Hart. If I wasn't cooking out of my books, I'd be cooking out of hers.
Thinking of other restaurants - Gunpowder is a great restaurant in Shoreditch.
What about restaurants like Tayyabs? I love their tinda masala.
Yes, I love it, and Lahore Kebab House.
What do you think about French-style haute cuisine Indian food.
A lot of those restaurants did go down that route like Vivek Singhs' Cinnamon Club. I went many years ago. I didn't find heart in the food. I've not been back recently.
Indian food for business men on expenses.
I think the expense did preclude me from going down there. I am going to go to Gymkhana for my birthday or my husband's birthday. Jamavar, who was the head chef for Gymkhana and Trishna. It's in Mayfair.
Which suggests it's quite expensive.
Yes, it is quite expensive, so I'll go there for the set menu at lunch. That's the good thing about being freelance.
Yeah, there's got to be some advantages.
I also like Kricket in Brixton, Sakonis in Wembley. There's amazing bhel puri in Southall - it's just a caravan so I don't know if they've got a name. Best bhel puri in the UK. Up until a couple of years ago, there wasn't much.
There were just curry houses.
Yes, and going to Wembley is a schlep.
I went there and had mixed Indian and Chinese food.
Oh yes, Chindian! They love it in India. They are cooking Indian all the time, so when they want something different, they'll have chop suey with chilli. I do love Gobi Manchuri, deep fried cauliflower with spicy sweet chilli sauce over it. It hits the spot for sure, and I can see why they love it.
Coriander is the most popular herb on Earth, I guess because of Mexican, Indian, Thai. It used to be parsley, it's now coriander.
Really? It's such a wimp of a herb, isn't it? I do love it though. I do love Mexican food but I grew up with the Chiquitas, Las Iguanas...
...which is actually Tex Mex. I just went to the Yucatan, which is going to be really big this year. Noma is moving over there. Mexico is just like India, people think of it as one bland cuisine. But it's very regional. They use achiote, a red berry, they make a red paste. They mix it with sour orange. It's a muddy, very authentically Mexican taste. Like Mexican saffron. There are a few, mostly American, authors that have written about Mexican food.
I really want to go to Mexico.
I'd like to go back to India.
I'll have to wait until this one's (pointing to her belly) about six months.
Did you ever go to Indian Veg in Chapel Market?
Yes. I was fascinated with how many drinks they sold there; they had at least two chillers.
That's possibly where they make the money.
Possibly. No. Definitely. (Laughs.) I lived on Chapel Market for 11 years.
That's where you wrote your first book?
Yes, and most of my second one. We needed to move and someone mentioned casually that someone was developing the old Warner council flats. People were knocking through the bottom. I came here to photograph the Walthamstow stadium.
The dog stadium?
Yes. It's been closed down. Walthamstow has the longest market in Europe. I do try and get down there. I love how diverse it is.
Is it quite an Asian area?
This street is. It's funny my next door neighbours are Gujarati. The walls are quite thin, and I could hear them speaking Gujarati in there. I tried to get into a Bohra household in Bombay.
What does Bohra mean?
It's a type of community, Muslim, many from Gujarat. Amazing. The mum next door just kept bringing me food. Across the main highway that you drove down to get here, the village is very white and middle class. There's a bottle neck of John Lewis shoppers further up the high street. I don't know much about the black community, I think it's Jamaican but not entirely sure. Lots of Eastern European, lots of Polish. I like the diversity, I think that's part of the joy of being in London. There's a van that parked up outside from a Transylvanian bread company. I would have thought that was quite nich