Today I had the privilege of attending The Tiffin - a talk/demo/tasting organised by Food For Real Film Festival and Squash Nutrition. It was held in a relatively new restaurant - Mogwli Street Food, which is situated on Liverpool's Bold Street and the demonstration was led by the owner, Nisha Katona.
Nisha is a wonderful person, who showed us exactly how they cooked food in the restaurant. Like many top restaurants, her recipes weren't excessively complicated but relied on just a few good ingredients.
Nisha's family are Hindu, so there was an emphasis on vegetarian recipes. When I've made curries (not being one to follow recipes) I've tended to lob all sorts of spices in, with varying degrees of success. Nisha's technique was to generally use only three spices, chilli and turmeric to provide the base notes, and a third to provide the highlights. She cooked potatoes different ways so that we could taste the differences:
Nisha then introduced Cavan:
who is one of her chefs, and was also clearly very talented. Cavan's family are Muslims and we learnt how their diets would be different to Hindus. Cavan showed us how starting with an identical base he could make two completely different chicken dishes:
one with tomatoes added, and another with yoghurt.
There was lots of advice on buying spices. I'd not heard of Panch Puran (or Five Spice) before:
but I didn't have to very far on Bold Street to find some (see next post).
Cavan also used spinach:
to make this Saagwala:
which was also delicious.
I've been to some cookery demonstrations in the past, where I felt the chef was showing off and thought "I could never do that". Here I really felt they wanted you to try these dishes in your own home. Mowgli is as much a labour of love, as it is a business, and Nisha has kindly put loads of videos here on You Tube which I recommend watching.
After tasting food all morning, I only wanted a light lunch - so guess where I went? Yes, back to Mogwli Street Food, where I tried some Calcutta Cabbage Tangle with Rooti:
To quote Nisha "this is how Indians eat at home: Indian technique applied to British
winter veg. Its one of the most delicious dishes on the menu. Its
totally low fat, totally vegan, gluten free and takes cabbage to a whole
new level with just 3 simple spices. BUT its one of our worst sellers". I enjoyed it, it was very different and I hope they don't take it off the menu!
Mogwli Street Food
69 Bold Street
Liverpool
L1 4EZ
Tel: 0151 708 9356
Web: www.mowglistreetfood.com
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