Deccan Tiffin

Although Indian food in the UK has moved on a lot since the 1980s, a lot of it is still very heavy and dominated by the same old dishes - not at all like the deliciously diverse and often very light fare that I remember from my childhood. I would also like to dispel the misconception that Indian food is not healthy. My parents originally came from a village near the Maharashtra-Karnataka border. They were both keen cooks - uncharacteristically for his generation, my father would often be in the kitchen experimenting with different things and I would be his keen helper.

Although he was an internationally renowned academic with a modern outlook on life, he was insistent that I learned to cook traditional Maharashtrian dishes.