When Sake Dean Mahomed opened the first Indian restaurant in the UK way back in 1810, it’s unlikely he had any idea just how important a part the cuisine of his home country would play in British culture. Indeed, it wasn’t until the 1960s and ‘70s, when a wave of Indian restaurants (which actually tended to be owned by Bangladeshis) opened across the nation, that it hit the mainstream. Fast-forward to today, and chicken tikka masala is often cited as Britain’s national dish; we have entire TV series dedicated to Indian food and there’s a multitude of Indian restaurants on every city, town and village high street.
However, ever since the first Indian ingredients hit our shores, our relationship with and appreciation of Indian cuisine has gone through several significant changes. Back in the nineteenth century, ‘Indian’ food was often quite bland; a mix of traditional British cooking with some mild spices thrown in (think kedgeree). In the ‘60s and ‘70s, a new form of Anglo-Indian cooking emerged, which is when we fell in love with tikka masala, madras, baltis and all manner of other ‘curries’ (which never actually existed in India). Meanwhile, cooking these dishes in the home became more prevalent, as businesses began importing the required ingredients – Tilda introduced authentic basmati rice into British shops for the first time, while Indian entrepreneurs began expanding the variety of spices shipped over to our shores.
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The rise and rise of regional Indian cooking