Wirral chef’s easy curry recipes for delightful dinner parties

Oct 31 2012 by Jade Wright, Birkenhead News

CURRY chef Nisha Katona is encouraging Wirral families to learn about the pleasure of Indian cookery.

“I was born in England to two Indian doctor immigrants who came to the UK in 1968 but spent most of my youth avoiding my mother’s uncool curries – everything Indian was ‘uncool’ then,” laughs Nisha, who lives and teaches on the Wirral.

“It was only once I got my own kitchen and started having dinner parties that I realised that the climate of Britain had changed. There was nothing cooler, no better social lubricant, than a table full of rich exotic clever curries. There was also nothing that could be quicker or simpler or cheaper for that matter, to create.”

Nisha has been running cookery courses for more than a year now. “My research showed that shockingly few Indians of my generation can cook and with the passing of the original immigrants, we lose the ability to cook Indian food simply, authentically and quickly.

Nisha adds: “First generation Indians that could afford to come to Britain were certainly rich enough to have cooks back home and hence very few of them have been able to equip their second generation offspring with the ability to cook Indian food.”

Now she is teaching budding dinner party chefs how to make her favourite dishes.

“My failsafe dinner party centrepiece is a butter chicken recipe. I suppose this is the original version of the chicken tikka masala – invented in Glasgow. I love it because it takes so little time and is so spectacular in its many layers of flavours – and in its stunning deep red glory.”

Find out more about Nisha’s classes at www.nishakatona.com