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Chicken tikka masala is a much-loved dish, but it’s only scratching the surface of delicious food cooked in a tandoor. The tandoor – a clay oven used in a lot of Indian cooking – offers a world of possibilities, and that’s something chef Maunika Gowardhan is keen to uncover. It’s not like there’s just one type of chicken tikka. From murgh malai to reshmi tikka, the options are endless – and Gowardhan, 44, had the best exposure possible growing up in Mumbai. “I grew up on really, really good street food – India is such a vibrant, diverse space. In every region you find some sort of street eat somewhere, and every corner of the country will have some sort of kebab or tikka,” she says. “Sometimes, books can have one or two of those recipes – you can’t have a whole book on just that” – and that’s what Gowardhan has set out to change in her latest cookbook, Tandoori Home Cooking. She wants people to recognise the history of the tandoor: “What really sets it apart, for me, is that it’s a cooking technique that is dated back to the Indus Valley [from 3300 BCE to 1300 BCE]. It’s something that is so historic, that has so much of a rich heritage – it’s such a vital part of how we eat, not just in the streets of India or in restaurants, but even in our own homes.” Even though most homes in India don’t have a clay oven, there are plenty of techniques to replicate that smokey flavour. “When you have a look at the way a clay oven works, essentially it’s heat that’s 360 [degrees],” Gowardhan explains. “In our domestic kitchens, the endeavour is to replicate that – conventional ovens provide heat in an encapsulated space. So they are similar, but they’re not the same.” The main difference is the coals at the bottom of a tandoor – when fat drips from any meat or anything else you put in the clay oven, it drips onto the coal and the smoke that is produced gives the food that “charred, grilled smokey flavour”, she says. But how can you get that at home? One of Gowardhan’s genius tips is making smoked butter. “You can store it in the fridge, and when you start basting your food with that smoked butter, you’re getting the charred, smokey flavour that you’re really yearning for in tandoori dishes.” Not that Gowardhan has been perfecting smoked butter from a young age. “I’m going to put my hand up here and say when I first came to England [25 years ago], I didn’t know how to cook Indian food,” Gowardhan, who now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne, confesses. She came to the UK for university, during which she was “thrilled” to be away from her parents with that “sense of freedom”. But after moving to her first house and getting a job in the city of London, Gowardhan says: “It slowly creeps up on you – when you go to an unfamiliar place, what you really miss is that familiarity.” That’s when Gowardhan started to learn how to cook Indian food, because “I craved it and yearned it all the time”, she says. She would ring her mother back in India and ask for simple recipes – daal, rice, green bean dishes. “I cooked not just for sustenance, I cooked because I missed home and I missed good food,” she reflects. Since then, Gowardhan fell in love with food and made her way into the industry, and this is her third cookbook. She now deems it her “calling”, saying: “I knew food was something that was a leveler on every aspect of my life. “When we did really well, my mother would say, ‘Can I make you something?’ If we were really upset she was like, ‘Let me cook for you’.” Gowardhan also suspects some of it comes from her grandmother, who was an “avid cook”. “My grandmother was the hostess with the mostess. In the 1950s in the city of Bombay, a lot of film stars and Bollywood film stars in India would actually come to my grandmother’s house to eat her food. To be a fly on the wall at my grandmother’s dinner parties…” Gowardhan’s grandmother passed down these recipes, and her mother’s passion for food “gave us this effervescence for cooking and eating good food”, she adds. After dedicating the past 20 or so years of her career to Indian food, there’s a major thing Gowardhan would like people to know about the cuisine. “People tend to forget it’s actually a subcontinent. Because it’s a subcontinent, you realise there is so much more, and every community has so much more to say about the food they cook. “Of course, it’s blurred boundaries as you go through every space, but I feel like every 20 or 30 kilometres you’re travelling, the food changes – because the crop changes, because the climate changes, because the soil changes. All of that makes a huge difference.” So, when people ask her to sum up Indian food, Gowardhan says: “It’s like saying, ‘What is your favourite European food?’ Impossible.” ‘Tandoori Home Cooking’ by Maunika Gowardhan (Hardie Grant, £25). Read More Banging brunch recipes worth getting out of bed for Think pink: Three ways with rhubarb to make the most of the season Love wine but can’t afford it? Here’s how to drink luxury for less Three meat-free dishes to try this National Vegetarian Week How to make TikTok’s viral whole roasted cauliflower Gordon Ramsay: ‘I’m going off the beaten track to become a better cook’

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Crystelle Pereira can’t believe how time has flown in the two years since she competed in the Great British Bake Off. “Since I hit send on that application, it’s literally felt like I have just hit, like, times 10 in speed of life!” she tells me, wide-eyed, on a video call from the home in North London she shares with her parents and one of her two sisters. The 28-year-old – who finished runner-up to Giuseppe Dell’Anno in the 2021 season – was working in a fast-paced finance job when she took part. Landing a book deal shortly after the series aired (seven publishers were vying for her signature), she waited seven months before handing in her notice to pursue a cookery career. “I wouldn’t say I’m a pessimist, but I’m a realist,” the London-born cook says. “It’s very easy to quit your job and think, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m famous, this is great’. But I thought, ‘I don’t want to quit my job blindly and chase my dreams’. I need to think, ‘Is this viable? Can I actually get work?'” How did she decide to finally take the plunge? “It got to a point where I was like, I’m just working two full-time jobs – I’ve got no more annual leave, I’m about to burn out. “And also I need to grab this opportunity with both hands and just do it [otherwise] I think I’ll always regret it.” She hasn’t looked back since: “Honestly, it’s the best decision I’ve made. [Cooking] is literally my full-time job, it’s no longer a side hobby that I rush to do after I finish a long day of work. “It means I’ve got more time to really put into my job, I’m free to go on trips to Italy to look at Parmesan,” (an excursion she’s embarking on soon) “and obviously doing my book took up so much time.” Flavour Kitchen, her debut cookbook, is a colourful ode to Pereira’s Portuguese-Goan heritage (her parents met in Mumbai before moving to the UK). Split into two halves, the savoury section features brunch bites, curries, pasta, noodles, salads and more, all bursting with international flavours, such as Goan chilli chicken fry, kimcheese toasty, and honey and chipotle baked camembert. The sweet half is all about cakes, cookies, pies and other treats with a twist. Bake Off fans will remember the pistachio, orange and cardamom carrot cake Pereira created for her final Signature Challenge. “Goa is in the south of India, and it was colonised by the Portuguese,” Pereira says, which is why Goan food is so different to the rest of Indian cuisine. Vindaloo curry, for example, has its roots in Europe: “The Portuguese had this dish called carne de vinha d’alhos, a pork and wine dish. The Goans took that and swapped Portuguese wine with Goan vinegar and that became vindaloo.” Many of the savoury recipes in Flavour Kitchen feature a liberal splash of the tangy liquid. “Our food is very vinegar-based, which sounds a bit off-putting but it just works because it’s all balanced really well,” Pereira says. “If something’s got lots of vinegar, then it’s offset with something sweet like jaggery, which is an unrefined sugar, or coconut, because coconuts are in abundance in Goa.” Given the choice, the adventurous cook would much rather tuck into fiery fish curry, egg fried rice with Korean gochujang chilli paste or noodles with “about 10 cloves of garlic” than a plate of pretentious haute cuisine. “I will be honest, this is really controversial…” she begins, pausing before admitting: “I’m not that big on French food.” Conceding that Parisian pastries are unbeatable, she continues: “I’m just more into pan-Asian and Mediterranean food – I just think the flavours are a bit more vibrant. “Like you think about South Korea, you think about gochujang; in Greece you think about fresh mint, coriander, lemon, halloumi; Mexico, you’ve got chipotle; go to the Middle East, you’ve got harissa, ras el hanout [spice mix], all these flavours.” The cook credits her mum and dad’s cooking for helping her develop a taste for the exotic, and her late grandad – to whom she dedicates the book – with overseeing her success. “He sadly he passed away before any of this took off, but I genuinely believe in life after death – I genuinely believe he’s been a big part in guiding me through all of this. “I think he just knew l was going to end up in food. Funnily enough he used to call me MasterChef – we used to watch a lot of cooking shows together.” Having amassed 190,000 Instagram followers and cooked live on Good Morning America, The Today Show and ITV’s Lorraine, Pereira is well on her way to celebrity chef status. There have been many a pinch-me moment during her first year as a fully-fledged foodie, none more surreal than when she met King Charles (at that point still a Prince) at a Queen’s Jubilee lunch event last summer. “[Charles and Camilla] turned up and I thought, ‘I’m sure they won’t come over to speak to us,” Pereira recalls. “All of a sudden he’s walked over and said, ‘Oh, do you mind if I sit there? Because there was a seat next to me.” What did the pair talk about? “I think I was just word-vomiting! I said ‘Do you like baked goods?’ and ‘Do you bake?’ “The general consensus was he doesn’t bake, but he does like to eat. He likes cakes, he likes Italian cuisine. And then I was just talking to him about my style of baking and stuff. We had a merry old chat!” As well as finding herself starstruck by royals, Pereira has had to get used to being recognised by fans: “It literally happened the day after the first episode, which was wild. “I was going to work, I was on the train platform – I had a mask on my face, which is even funnier. This girl comes up to me and goes, ‘Oh my gosh, are you Crystelle from Bake Off?” Though she was recently “so embarassed” to be spotted at the end of spin class while “red and sweaty”, being asked for selfies is a small price to pay for being able to live out her dream. “I will never complain,” she says. “Like, no one’s there like throwing things at me! If I bump into anyone on the train or on holiday or whatever everyone is genuinely so lovely, so it’s actually just really nice to be honest.” ‘Flavour Kitchen: Vibrant Recipes with Creative Twists’ by Crystelle Pereira (Kyle Books, £22).

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Every milestone is worth celebrating, no matter how big or small. That’s why we partnered with Shane Co., purveyors of timeless fine jewelry, to highlight the unique stories of those celebrating special life moments. Whether they found success in following their passions or are embarking on the next chapter of their journey, we’ll learn how these individuals are commemorating each milestone — and the role their jewelry can play in marking these significant events. Ahead, a former marketing consultant shares her journey of returning to her roots and finally pursuing her creative dreams at age 30.