That Hungry Chef

That Hungry Chef Personalised fine dining catering, private chef services and supperclubs in London. Pratap Chahal, Executive chef, Flavour Bastard

02/06/2026

I grew up with a lot of Japanese kids. They'd return from the holidays with all kinds of new and exciting food. Careful packages with dishes their mums had sent back with them.

I didn't know what half of it was. But I remember the curry. Even then — tinned, reheated in a common room — it was different to anything I'd had before.
Sweeter, thicker and like nothing I’d eaten at home.

It took me years to understand what I was actually eating. A dish that was born in India, was changed by Britain, crossed an ocean on a warship, and became so completely Japanese that it took until now to dig into its history and discover a story worth telling.

But, how did a breaded cutlet from 16th century Portugal meet Japanese curry and end up on every high street in Britain? Part 2 coming soon.

05/05/2026

Doubles pt 1/3

The story of doubles is the story of adaptation. What Emamool 'Mamoodeen' Deen and Rasulan Deen created in the 1930s wasn’t just street food — it was survival turned into something bigger than themselves, a legacy now celebrated throughout Trinidad and Tobago.

Indian indentured labourers carried with them the memory of chana masala and fried breads such as bhatura from North Indian food traditions. Indentureship emerged after the abolition of slavery in 1833 as a contract labour system, still deeply exploitative in practice. Historian Hugh Tinker, in A New System of Slavery (1974), argued that conditions frequently mirrored slavery in all but name. Across Mauritius, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Jamaica, Fiji, and South Africa, Indians were recruited — sometimes through deception, often under economic pressure — with the hope of a new life.

This ancestral dish — and the memory behind it — is what the Deens built on. A dish that started in one community, out of desperation, became claimed and adopted across the island. That's the power of food that feeds people, not just bodies.

If you've never tried doubles, find a Trini vendor. If you have, you already know. If you're in London, head over to .uk

Badru Deen’s "Out of the Doubles Kitchen" tells the full family story.

14/04/2026

Part 1
Garam masala is one of the most misunderstood spice blends in Indian cooking. Not because it's complicated — but because there is no single version. There never has been.

Every region of the subcontinent has its own. Every family has their own. Mine has seven spices, including fermented Kampot black pepper and a cardamom ratio most blends wouldn't dare.

The name tells you everything — garam means warm. Not heat on the tongue. Warmth from the inside. Ayurvedic medicine was writing about these compounds three thousand years ago.

This is Episode 1 of The Blend — a new series going deep into spice blends, their history, their science, and the hands that make them.

Two recipes in the carousel. The science behind the ratios. And a blend from the Nawabi kitchens of Rampur that will change how you think about garam masala entirely.

Do you make your own blend?
Tell me in the comments.

08/04/2026

What We Brought With Us: Episode 1.

---

In 1860, British Empire ships brought Indian workers to South Africa. Not as passengers or migrants, but as Indentured labourers — bound to sugarcane fields in Natal, working before dawn, with short breaks and nothing to call their own.

Except their food.

No plates in a field. No table. So they hollowed out a loaf of white bread, filled it with curry, and sealed it with the piece they'd pulled out. Tiffin box and lunch all in one.

That's bunny chow. Born in Durban. The first ones were vegetarian — beans, spiced the way home used to taste, the way freedom used to feel.

Today it's one of South Africa's most loved dishes. Not Indian food. Not immigrant food. Durban food. Eaten by everyone. Claimed by everyone. Built by people who had nothing and fed a city, then a nation.

This is Episode 1 of What We Brought With Us — a series on Indian diaspora food, and how the dishes people carried across oceans became the dishes entire countries now call their own.

Do you have a dish in your culture that was born out of migration and diaspora?

Tell me in the comments.

31/03/2026

If people can pronounce Daenerys Targaryen, they can pronounce Jeow Som.

That's the whole argument, really.

Cultural appropriation in food isn't always loud. It's a Lao dipping sauce renamed "crack sauce." It's dal repackaged as lentil masala on a London high street. It's injera described as Ethiopian sourdough wrap.

The name goes first. Then the context. Then the culture.

Jeow Som deserves its name. And it deserves to be made properly. Here's how:
Char 6 bird's eye chillies, 6 unpeeled garlic cloves, 3 unpeeled shallots directly over a flame or dry pan until blistered and fragrant.
Peel, then pound roughly in a mortar — you want texture, not a paste.
Stir in 30ml fish sauce,
45ml fresh lime juice
10g palm sugar.
Taste. Adjust.
Finish with roughly chopped fresh coriander.
Serve with grilled meat, sticky rice, or anything that can hold its own against something spicy, sour and alive.

Call it Jeow Som. Say it slowly. Tell your guests where it comes from.

Three questions worth asking every time you cook from a culture not your own:
Where did this come from?
Who made it first?
How do I honour that?

Power. Profit. Provenance.

Name a dish that deserves its real name.
Drop it in the comments. 👇

25/03/2026

There is nothing else that exists but the wall of rain thrashing the earth.

That is what vetiver promises.

Every summer of my childhood in Bhopal, before the monsoon broke, vetiver was there — in the cooler, in the drinks, in the air. Carrying the hope of rain before the rain arrived.

At first it smells damp, earthy, woody. Delicately smoky. Cut grass and hints of an alluring perfume. It is the scent of waterfalls and wet mud dancing with sunshine. What happens when a hessian sack full of potatoes romances vanilla, lemon, beetroot and spices.

It is what gives you hope in the tortuous heat of an Indian summer.

I cook with it now. In London, far from the burning summers and the thundering monsoons of my youth, vetiver is how I find my way back.

KHUS CORDIAL
Makes approx. 500ml
Ingredients
20g dried vetiver root, rinsed
400ml water
300g caster sugar
1 tsp lime juice
2–3 drops natural green food colouring (optional)

Method
Combine vetiver root and water in a saucepan. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for 20 minutes. Strain, discard the root. Return liquid to the pan, add sugar, stir over low heat until dissolved. Add lime juice. Cool completely. Store in a sterilised bottle — keeps refrigerated for 3 weeks.
To serve: 2 tbsp cordial over ice, topped with sparkling water and a squeeze of fresh lime.

Do you have a nostalgic scent that transports you back?

Tell me in the comments.

Most honey has never met a bee.That's not hyperbole. It's a label problem.Heated until the enzymes die. Filtered until t...
22/03/2026

Most honey has never met a bee.

That's not hyperbole. It's a label problem.

Heated until the enzymes die. Filtered until the pollen is gone. Blended from countries no one will name. The crystallisation engineered out — because supermarkets need it liquid on the shelf for eighteen months.

Real honey crystallises. Screenshot slide 3 and check your jar tonight.

The sensory world of genuine raw honey is extraordinary — bitter, resinous, smoky, botanical. Nothing like the anonymous sweetness in a plastic bear bottle.
I cook with honey the way I cook with spice.

Not as sweetness.
As a voice.

Right now my honey of choice is Arbutus and Heather from — two plants that have no business working together and yet produce something bitter, botanical and serious. The kind of honey that makes you rethink every jar you've bought before it.

Three labels that should stop you cold — blend of honeys, product of EU, pure honey. None of them tell you the origin.

Walk away.

What you want: raw honey. One country. One region. One region. A beekeeper with a name - For me, 2 of those beekeepers are Helen and Dale

An additional note on crystalisation — whether honey sets or stays liquid comes down to type of natural sugar composition of the nectar. Glucose-dominant honeys — ivy, oilseed r**e — will set quickly, sometimes even in the comb. Fructose-dominant honeys — European Acacia being the best example — will stay liquid almost indefinitely. Both can be completely raw and genuine. Sugar type, not quality is what defines a raw honey's textual character.

Save this carousel. Read it properly. Then read your label.

20/03/2026

*"Honey is a luxury, not a commodity."*

My dear friend said that to me once.
She was right. She always is.

Almost half the honey imported globally is suspected to be adulterated.
Heated. Filtered. Blended from unknown origins.
Labelled honey. But honey it is not.

Three things on a label that should stop you cold —
*Blend of honeys. Product of EU. Pure honey.*
None of them tell you where this raw honey came from.

What you want: raw honey. Single origin. Traceable.
And if it crystallises in the jar — that's not a flaw.
That's proof of life.

My favourite is Tasmanian Leatherwood honey.
Endemic to Tasmania. Found nowhere else on earth.
Growing in ancient rainforests that survived since the continents were one.

Floral. Spiced. Wild. It tastes like a place.

For some of the most extraordinary honey you'll ever taste —
— non-negotiable.
— especially their Arbutus and Heather.
Bitter. Botanical. Serious.
Everything cheap supermarket honey will never be.

*Honey-fermented rhubarb*
400g forced rhubarb, chopped
200g raw honey
5g sliced ginger
zest of one orange
3 crushed cardamom pods.
Pack rhubarb tight into a sterilised jar with the aromatics. Cover with honey. Muslin on top — never sealed.
Stir daily. Watch it come alive. Taste on day 5.
Sharp. Floral. Complex. It gets better every week.
Add it to yoghurt or spoon onto a meringue with whipped cream!

*

If you want to buy *that* Tasmanian Leatherwood honey (and so much more), head over to

Buy raw. Buy traceable.
Save this. Share it with someone still buying supermarket honey. 🍯

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