Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware - S16 Ep 5: Ravinder Bhogal

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

The wonderful, beautiful and generous chef & restauranteur Ravinder Bhogal brought us some absolutely delicious food when she came round for this weeks episode! As the owner of the fabulous Marylebone restaurant Jikoni, Ravinder’s Comfort & Joy delivery boxes got us through the never-ending lockdowns (Sam still says it’s his best home cooked meal ever!). She told us all about how she set up the restaurant, growing up in Kenya, how she started her career on Gordon Ramsey’s ‘F Word’ and that she’s known to hang out with Stanley Tucci & cook for Sir Paul McCartney. Ravinder’s Falooda cake is one of the most delicious things I’ve ever tried, potentially my new last supper pudding! All of the delicious treats Ravinder served up are from her brand new cook book ‘Comfort & Joy’. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to Topher Manners. I'm Jessie Ware and I am at Lenny's and she's got her Lenny apron on. Just in case I forget who I am. Or you do. How are you mum? I'm okay. I had a very nice day yesterday. Had one of the first goodbye meals to Dr Alex because he's going away. So went to our favourite again, Honey & Co for lunch. Delicious. Now we also went out for a dinner date with a past guest.

Mr Phil Rosenthal invited us out with Monica and Lily, his wife and daughter, to take us to Thomas's new restaurant, who is Brat, his new restaurant. Called Mountain. Called Mountain. It is so good. And we got completely spoiled.

We had everything I think on the menu. It was absolutely amazing. Anybody who's in Soho, go to Mountain. It's brilliant. They make their own bread. They've got massive old Gosney pizza oven in the bottom. And it's just a really great bar. Tell you what I loved.

What? That red vermouth. The red vermouth from Sicily. Oh my god, it was so delicious. Maybe we should start serving our guests vermouth. I think we should. There's a vermouth bar in Nunhead, actually, very near me, that's very cool. Maybe we should go for a little aperitif before we pick the kids up from school, Mum.

Anyway, it was great fun. Monica is my spirit animal, I think, literally. Monica Rosenthal. Yeah. We finished our vermouth at the the same time looked at each other and said wine she said yeah wine i also love the fact that forget lenny's in the restaurant people on soho was stopping outside the window waving like he was a beetle yeah he's such a sweet man the nicest man um and it was just really sweet that you know look we've made some friends on this

podcast but he actually got in touch and was like, can we take you out for dinner? And I do need to discuss the second series of The Bear with him because I was only halfway through and now I'm right the way through and I think it's the best thing that I've seen on TV for a hundred years. Also, past guest Rami Youssef did the Copenhagen episode.

Love you, Rami. Anyway, today we have a wonderful chef. Well, you've tasted her food and I haven't yet. It's the best. It's one of my favourite restaurants. I went to it when I did Jay Rayner's podcast, Out for Lunch, and he introduced me to her restaurant, which is in Marylebone. It's called Gicone.

It's really cosy. It's a real neighborhood spot. I mean, I don't know anybody that lives in Maralabone. I wish I did. I wish I lived there. I think I'd like to live there. So Ravinda is from, she was born in Kenya to Indian parents. And Jikoni is a fantastic restaurant that she runs with her husband.

She's made cookbooks. In lockdown, she did this comfort and joy i think it was vegan um these deliveries and i've never had meals like it was so exciting she's here to talk about her third book comfort and joy irresistible pleasures from a vegetarian kitchen oh it's vegetarian mom i know does she only cook veggie no not at all um she's a regular on saturday kitchen sunday brunch she is an amazing chef and uh she's actually more glamorous than you mum i potentially she always comes in some fabulously colorful dress and a lip i'll keep my yellow penny on then yeah maybe keep the yellow penny on so what are we cooking well actually we've kind of asked she's bringing

some starters some dips dip, some bread. We'll let her introduce that. And then I've made, at your request, scallops with pea puree with cumin. I think it's cumin. But it really makes me upset when you say cumin. How do you say it? Cumin.

Okay. Now we know, Alice. So I've made a pea and cumin puree. Thank you. Hope it's all right. You did this for Cat Dealey, and I remember it was so delish. I think I've done it for someone else as well, scallops. Carol Vorderman.

Oh, yeah. I didn't do the pea puree, though. You did. Did I? No, I don't think I did. I think you did. Okay. Sorry, this is my fault, because I really enjoy it.

And then she's making a strawberry faluda cake which Tully thought was flood cake it was a strawberry flood cake which I also thought sounded quite fab we've just looked

in the cookbook flooded with strawberries the faluda cake it's got condensed milk cream strawberries basil seeds this sounds like

an Asian delight oh it sounds heaven Ravinda Bogle cooming up on Cable Manners. Oh Ravinda how nice to have you over. It's so nice to be here. And look, we've nearly all got the same coloured nail varnish. I did for, not even worn high, I prepared mum that you would come in looking glamorous.

Oh, you are. I had to make an effort. I mean, look at you both. You look amazing. Oh my God, please, are you kidding me? Excuse me. But the dress is very good. Thank you. It is Alamy and I am obsessed.

They're an Australian designer and all my dresses seem to come from them i just love them was it an instagram like sponsored post or did you do a book tour in australia or how did you know it wasn't i found them in selfridges there was a dress and they do collaborations with artists and there's this incredible dress in fact it's in the book and it's pink with like an evil eye on the cuff and horses and I was just like it's all over the book you'll see you always wear dresses I'm a dress girl definitely ever wear trousers sometimes occasionally but you know what I just like a dress because it's like you don't have to style too much. It's just done. You're done in one step. You look gorgeous. Thank you.

So, I mean, we always love it when we have a chef on because they cook. And you have come in with a lot of Tupperware. Can you just tell us what you have brought to the table today? Well, I cooked from the book, so we're going to have... Comfort and joy. Comfort and joy. So there's shirmul, which is this beautiful saffron like almost like brioche loaf that comes from Armenia and it's really in honestly the house

smelled so lovely this morning just smelt of saffron I've made a strawberry faluda cake for pudding and then I've got some peaches with whipped tofu and Thai basil gramolata that everyone at the restaurant's going mad about. Did you do something similar on Sunday brunch? I did. Was that the... That's the one. Oh my God, I was going to talk about that.

That was so... Mum, it's so good. And no one can believe it's vegan because the whipped tofu seems like cheese almost. It's really rich and delicious. And then I bought some pickles because we just got these beautiful vegetables from the farm that we work with it's a wonderful biodynamic farm so we pickled yesterday so I thought I'd bring you some of those and I've made a dip to go with the bread which is uh the burnt courgette and cardamom dip thank you my pleasure and mum's gonna add some scallops in there and we're we're not

gonna need to eat dinner amazing let's talk about droconi because that's how I first met you when I did Jay Rayner's podcast. Yes. And he took me to one of his favourite restaurants in London. Oh. And you came out and you were glamorous and gorgeous and I had the best scotch egg of my life. Is it still on the menu? It is. It's never coming off.

I mean, that is a signature and people come for that. That and the banana cake, people go nuts over it's such a cozy wonderful restaurant and it's exciting food that's what you make you make really exciting food but there's like this homely atmosphere that's around it and you I don't necessarily think people expect that to be in central London do you know what I mean it feels like a living room but it's such exquisite food it's the team my team I think I've got the best team in London they're just wonderful we've we're 23 people now and out of them maybe about 12 or 13 of us have worked together for five years plus and so it really is like a little family and they're

so they're such ambassadors for all our kind of values at Jikoni and hospitality is at the heart of it it's like how do you make someone feel? What do you give of yourself that doesn't appear on the check at the end of it that makes people feel amazing? And that's what they do. And I love them. But how did you start out as a cook?

Did you go to university? Yes, I did. What did you study? I had a really unorthodox route into chefing. So I was born in Nairobi in Kenya to a very traditional Punjabi family. When had they moved there? My grandfather moved in the 1940s to Kenya. He was an amazing man.

We lived in this big extended family. And my mother had this very Victorian idea that her girls must learn to join some sort of domestic cult cook so all the rest of it and I remember being five four and I'm the youngest girl so my elder sister is 16 years older than me so they all got married very young like 1920 they were done they were like you know married and then I was the younger one and then we moved to this country and you know obviously education and a different environment in life and I was the first girl to be allowed to go to university so um interesting yeah so although my father was very educated man he was quite a chauvinist when it came to girls he likened educating his daughters to planting a seed in

in your neighbor's garden like you'll never get the return and so I was this rebel and I was just like I'd seen marriages happen you know early and and what that does and the kind of potential that gets snuffed out and I went and I studied and I my finally, you know, agreed. And then he said, you're either going to do law, accountancy or pharmacy. None of which interested me. But then I'd watched a bit of Ali McBeal. So I was like, OK, that might be good. Law. So I studied.

You ended up with Harrison Ford. Yeah. I studied a year of law and was basically a nuisance because I wasn't interested. And then secretly changed my course to English and didn't tell anyone until I graduated I know and I wish where were you at university at North London University which is metropolitan now but you know I had no sort of mentors or someone who'd gone before I went there because I fancied a boy who was going there I literally followed him there and that didn't last I came out my dad

was like why did you do an English degree you speak very good English already he just didn't get it and then I started working in journalism and went into fashion and beauty journalism and then the whole food thing happened so everyone says that running a restaurant is possibly one of the most stressful jobs in the world the first two years were hell like I still have PTSD for the first two years because I was there all hours you're opening you're closing I didn't have a holiday for the first six months like not even a day off it was just intense what does your dad think of that my dad passed away before the restaurant

happened I know it's so sad but you know what there is something lovely I cry when I talk about this and actually everyone cries when I talk about this but my dad after not believing in me for so many years and being like you know girls they just should get married and that's what his plan was for me we had all these arguments about you know he'd want to introduce me to this boy and that boy and I slammed doors and like we just didn't speak the same language and then and then when he got cancer it was like he suddenly re-evaluated life and I got the biggest blessing of my life which was to have two years to become very close to him and really sort all our issues out and I remember when he was dying and he was in the hospital and he'd say to me things like you know you're not my daughter you have been like a son to me and that for him was like a

massive compliment and I took it as that at that point I just started doing food television and started cooking and for a man who was an immigrant, bricks and mortar, he was a businessman, bricks and mortar made sense to him. And I remember him saying to me, you need to open a restaurant. I'll give you, he had this site in Erith in Kent. And he was like, I'll give that to you. And it was this like pokey little cafe. And I was like, no, I don't want to open a restaurant. It's not what I'm interested in.

And then I had the opportunity to do a pop-up. And he would call me because at that time his brain was poisoned. So he was very confused all the time. And he'd call me sometimes four or five times a day being like, how was that pop-up that you were doing? How did it go? Did you enjoy it? And the night that I did the pop-up was the night,

I remember finishing it like two in the morning, cleaning the kitchen down. And I was like, I can't pop-up was the night, I remember finishing it like two in the morning, cleaning the kitchen down. And I was like, I can't wait to tell my dad tomorrow, like what, how it went. And that morning at four in the morning, I got a call from my mom saying, you better come to the hospital. And he was in for eight weeks

and I never got to show him what I've done. And I do think that he's pushed me on from beyond the grave and you know I think Ciccone was his dream for me what does Ciccone mean it means kitchen in Swahili I didn't even know did you know that no yeah he knows it's all happening I know and you know what I always say to my husband Nadim I'm like god you know maybe it's good he's dead because he'd be drinking me out of my whiskey. He'd be at the restaurant with his friends, with his cronies. Just, yeah, he would have loved it. And he must be experiencing it on some level, I'm sure.

I'm sorry, though, that's heartbreaking. It is. It is. But you know what? It's been incredible. It is, it is. But you know what? It's been incredible. And I think both my father and my grandfather really are the soul and spirit of Jikoni, especially my grandfather. And I've written a lot of actually, the book is very much a love letter to him. And it's the story of this man who like, left India, you know, in the 1940s, this voyage into the dark, you know, rebel who, I get that from him, who ran away from home looking for better opportunities, got on a ship sailing to Kenya, sailed 26 days, a migrant boat, terrible conditions, ended up back in Bombay because something had gone horribly wrong. And, you know, I can't imagine what they would have experienced.

And yet a month later, he made that voyage again and then ended up in Kenya. And even though then, you know, it was a British colony, there were racial divides, language barriers. He didn't know anyone. He had no money. He fell in love with the soil because the soil was so rich and benevolent

and it gave and it gave and it gave. And for someone who had the deep wounds of scarcity and hunger, this was a miracle for him. And he used to say very early on, he said to me, we all have to do Seva. Seva is the Sikh ideology of community service. And he said the easiest way to do community service is simply by feeding people. And the second thing he would always say is that we look for miracles, and yet here is a miracle. And he'd pick up an onion or a courgette,

and he'd say, look at this. This has withstood pest, blight, bad weather, yet it comes to our kitchen. We can cook with it. We can share what we cook. And that is a miracle. And I really started thinking about that a lot during the pandemic.

And we did comfort and joy, the delivery boxes. Which was so delicious. Yeah, I remember you had some. Honestly, yeah. And Sam still talks about it as his best. It wasn't even a taste. It was more than a taste. It was like the greatest tastes in our mouth at a very lonely time.

It was so comforting. It was so delicious. It's exciting that a book has been born out of that right yeah yeah so I thought I'd write it all down it was honestly it was yeah well you're gonna eat some of it today mum so any of your recipes are they old recipes that you used to have some of them there's uh definitely like in fact there's a recipe in the book that is um like a turnip polenta and turnips are such an unsexy plain jane vegetable but there are delicious ways of making it so what we do is we cut them up put a tiny bit of water

with some turmeric and you just kind of let them cook either in a pressure cooker or you steam them or whatever and when they've gone really soft because they've got a lot of water you mash them up and then in a separate pan you just kind of do onions with some spices some ginger garlic chili and tomatoes and then really like make a thick paste and then you pop that into the turnips mash it through and then you start adding handfuls of polenta so it becomes this wonderful kind of beautiful and turnips are so sweet as well and you put in a tiny bit of sugar just to encourage that kind of because they've got bitter but then they've got

sweet you encourage that out and that recipe is what my mother's mother used to make and my mother's mother died when my mother was two she's never even seen a photograph of her so that recipe is like touching live flesh it's like a part of her which is pretty incredible you tell stories so beautifully and I'd love you to paint more pictures around that family table you know what is a memorable dish from your childhood was there one dish that either I don don't know, your grandma, your grandfather, your mum was making that, or your dad? Never my dad. Okay, fine. But I think one of the things that really takes me back to a very happy, wholesome time in my life was ice cream.

So it was my Sunday treat with my grandfather, who is diabetic and not supposed to be eating sugar at all. with my grandfather who is diabetic and not supposed to be eating sugar at all and he would pull up in his kind of vw beetle and it was bright green like lilt green like you know really like parrot green with a soft top and we would drive into the city Nairobi and there was a place called snow cream and it was this amazing temple to 50s Americana kitsch and it was like you had a counter with like stools that you could spin around and around on until an adult told you off and made you stop and the ice cream there was just like sundaes and and i always had the same thing because i'm a creature of habit i'm like always scared if i don't order what i like like I might not like what comes yeah so I always used to have a chocolate dip cone and my grandfather always had like a banana split or something but I would eyeball everybody else's and they were you know things that looked

like they had shaving foam on them or like you know so it was vanilla ice cream in a cone in a and then they dipped it in chocolate and it it got hot crispy on the outside oh my god amazing and you know what in 2019 i went back there with my husband i was like i have to go to snow cream and the place is there it's exactly the same nothing has changed this is why we need to go to kenya you do there's so many good things in Kenya did did it taste exactly how it tasted when you were young not at all it take I was disappointing because like you know yeah but also it was the same but it was looking older and wearier a bit I suppose like I have now it's like yeah time has moved on but it was wonderful to be there you know but my heart ached for my

grandfather you know because it was again it was that thing he'd, you know, but my heart ached for my grandfather, you know, because it was, again, it was that thing he'd come, ice cream was such a luxury for him because he'd come from so little. So he really saw the joy in life, you know, and sharing food and like, you know, part of what he did with growing in his allotment or Shamba was about donating. So there was a Mamagina orphanage he would give to the orphanage he would give to medical eye camps he would share everything maybe he's just such a good man are you Sikh I'm Sikh yeah so that there's a huge element of food and Sikh yeah religion so when you go I understand it when you go to the temple I'm not sure what you call them that they serve food

that's what they do all day it's free and you just go into the temple and you can eat all day it's incredible it's all volunteers but they seem to know exactly what they're doing so I could just go and cook and I have done but like it's a wonderful thing because sometimes you see like you know Polish builders or like people who have very little like it's a wonderful thing because sometimes you see like you know polish builders or like people who have very little like it's treated as well like a food bank so for people who can't afford and there is no expectation and it's served beautifully it's all vegetarian delicious cooked mainly by women you know so very maternal cooking and it's it's blessed. People eating during the service. Yeah. Yeah, they just sit. It's like my kind of temple.

It's just perfect, really. Which is your temple? So I now used to go to the one in Kingsbury. And I'm not a regular, like I'm spiritual. I wouldn't define myself necessarily as, you know, orthodox. I'm very spiritual. I'm very happy. I'm a church bother.

I love churches. I go anywhere where I feel very happy I'm a church brother I love churches I go anywhere where I feel you know spiritual vibes but I used to go to one in Kingsbury and then now I've moved into Surrey so Southall isn't far and there's some really big uh gurdwaras in in Southall but I I'm completely amazed at what the Sikh community do, particularly during lockdown, the amount of meals that the Gurdwaras cooked and, you know, sent out to people, the volunteer effort was massive. And even now, like there's a charity and they're a Sikh charity and a bit like Medicines on Frontier, wherever there's trouble, they're there, you know, whether it was Syria, they really, and they just go and

set up kitchens. It just wonderful and they make it happen like that what was it like being an immigrant family in Kenya like how did was there any ever any tension was it difficult did you find your community I mean now looking back at it there was such divides you know like you didn't mix like you know the Indians stuck to the Indians the to the Indians, the black people. How did they all end up there? Why Kenya of all places? I think that there was a lot of, because it was then a British colony. So there was a lot of call for things like railway building, construction. So they were invited. So they were invited. So they were like, you know,

posters up saying we need work. And, and the thing that I really admire about my grandfather is he went to this place. My grandmother joined him seven years later. And she said to me, she was terrified. She had this horrific, you know, ship crossing. And she never left her village, let alone, you know, her country. Did she travel alone? She traveled with my father. So he was, you know, a country. Did she travel alone? She traveled with my father. So he was, you know, seven by the time my grandfather saw him again.

And it was just incredible because they, not only did they find home, they learned how to speak Swahili. They, you know, integrated. My grandfather was very good at that, knowing everybody, you know, people from all walks of life but I don't think generally the community was like that it felt very divided and I remember as a kid being quite lonely because I had three older sisters but they were much older they were cool teenagers and then I was this like five-year-old hanger on. Are you the baby of the family? My brother is. So they kept on going until they got their boy. So I just remember where my house was.

It was this beautiful house that my grandfather built. There was like this wrought iron gate. And I would look through the wrought iron gate and there'd be children on the other side. But I was never allowed to play with them because they weren't from my community. And there were all these racial divides. And I just remember desperately wanting to play with them and just like kind of hanging out at the Rortyne Gate, like trying to talk to them. I do remember one incident, though. My mother had fallen asleep with her emery board.

She was always embroidering or crocheting or doing such never never sat idle and it was afternoon and she'd fallen asleep and I had heard the chicken pen that we had at the bottom of the yard there was a cat in there that had given kittens and I was like I want a kitten so I commandeered this little boy this little torture to come and like go with me to get a kitten about five okay and so we kind of made this journey you know no one was watching the nanny who I had the maid who looked after us had like gone away or whatever and so we went in and then I just remember walking in the smell of chickens not pleasant but looking at the cat and before I could even try and grab a kitten I just heard this little boy screaming so he tried to steal the eggs and this hen had basically pecked

his face and then he literally ran screaming from the pen never to make that adventure again did you get a kitten no but my grandfather used to bring kittens for me like he used to be really sweet like he'd be like like look what i've got and he's like jacket pocket and there'd be a little kitten in it he's so what was his name karam karam singh and it means righteous deeds and he lived his life by that he was at by name as he was in nature yeah i love him rivender i want to know how you became a tv star I don't know if I'm a tv star I've been absolutely gorgeous yeah I don't know about tv star I don't do that much tv anymore but I started out very much on tv so I have a wonderful friend called

Heather Wiley she is a fashion stylist on one of the magazines I worked on and she knew how much I loved cooking because I was like the fashion girl's diet disasters because I cook at home and cart all this food in all the time and she called me up and she was quite psychic she had this like cosmic magical ability and she said I've just seen an advert for a show that Gordon Ramsay is doing and I just have this they're looking for a new tv female tv star and I just have a feeling that if you enter you're going to win you've got to enter and I thought well you know what why not and I just I recorded a thing of myself cooking sent it it in. Next thing, 9,000 women entered. It was like crazy.

And then the next thing, they'd narrowed it down to 50 women. And I found myself on set for the F word, cooking against all these wonderful women. And Angela Hartnett was on the panel. It was really wonderful. And I won. And it was this really crazy moment where, in a way I was in shock. But also, I felt like I really believe in manifestation. And I felt like I'd spent so much of my subconscious time thinking about cooking for people, that it didn't feel that shocking to me I'd been writing a cookery book then you know

for myself never thinking I'd get it published and the day the show aired I started getting calls from agents saying you might have a career doing this being a journalist I was very skeptical I saw eight agents and I was like no it's not for me not for me and then I went to the last agent and she was she was the only one who was like not sure about you and I was like god I really want her and then and then she's and I said to her to be honest I'm a writer and you know I've been writing this thing and she said I must introduce you to one of our agents and I had my scrappy little manuscript with me for my first book and she introduced me to Felicity Blunt my who's my

now agent all these years later and that's Stanley's wife and then his sister yes exactly and I was Felicity's first client I was her first book so yeah well now I need to eat but I also need to know whether Stanley has ever made you a an aperitif Stanley has not made you an aperitif? Stanley has not made me an aperitif. He's always doing it on Instagram, isn't he? Yeah, he's taken me out for a drink. But I was at their wedding, which was amazing. And just lovely to see two really good people. They really are both incredible human beings come together and their children and her family.

But Stanley has been incredibly supportive. Am I allowed to name drop? He did something really amazing for me now so it was my birthday in May and I decided to take the day off go to a spa and turn my phone off and then I merged at about 5 30 and switched my phone off and I had all these messages from saying happy happy birthday. Yeah, and from Felicity being like, why aren't you answering your phone? Pick up. I need a table. I need a table for five people for tomorrow

for Paul McCartney. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me. So thankfully, his PA had already called the restaurant and managed to get a table. So I was like, right, next day, I obviously have to be in the kitchen and whatever. And, you know, well-known people come in all the time. We kind of let people be and don't go up and bother them and stuff. But, you know, Paul is like, he's a legend, right? And I still was like, I'm just

going to cook for him. And how wonderful that I've cooked for him. I'm not going, obviously going to go saunter over to the table and be that person but Stanley had basically been my hype man so he'd been like when you get there ask to meet Ravinda ask her to order for you get her to tell you about the restaurant so he's in the kitchen and Neil our general manager comes down and he's like so Paul has asked to see you and so anyway went up and he was just lovely and you know really and they're vegetarians so and we're so vegetable forward at Jocony. They really had a wonderful time. And Mary was there and she's recommended lots of people.

She's so nice. Did you behave better than Lenny when she met Sir Paul McCartney? I cooked for Paul McCartney. Did you? Yeah, you didn't behave like Ravinda, I'm sure you did. No, I didn't because I'm not as gracious and as beautiful, darling. Hang on a minute. I need to ask one more question.

Okay. Is your husband a Sikh? He's not. I married out. He's also got East African Indian roots. Okay. But he is... Very handsome.

He's very handsome and very lovely. We met because at the time we met, him and his brother had set up a beautiful tea company called Lalleen Co and they do small gardens around the world really sustainable like paying people really fairly like really beautiful thing and his brother had seen that I was doing this talk and said this girl looks interesting we should try and work with her because they were doing a lot of tea tasting menus with people before I had the restaurant and I was at a friend's restaurant giving this talk and Nadim which restaurant it was the cinnamon kitchen

Vivek Singh's restaurant who I love and so Nadim sauntered in and it was a press night so there was a lot of journalists there and he thought I'm not going to be able to so he was about to leave when the PR saw him and said did you meet Ravinda I have to introduce you and I was actually seeing someone else at the time actually having my heart broken by someone who wasn't very nice to me. I have a word as I say to my grandchildren. And anyway Nadim walked in and I had arranged to meet friends who I hadn't seen for about a year and he just kept talking to me and they kept saying when's this guy leaving and I was like I have no idea what was your first impression I just thought he was so

like silken manners he was such a gentleman he was in a beautiful suit he was so kind attentive you know but I just didn't see on the eye very easy on the eye always her where's a good suit as well always like always look smart yeah he always looks smart and lovely old-fashioned manners like he stood when I stood and like you know things like that clever guy old-fashioned manners and then when he finally did leave my friend Sophie's husband Roger turned to me and said you're going to end up married to that guy so now every year on our anniversary he sends me a message saying i told you so yeah i would like to eat ravinda's food now okay because i'll cook the scallops once we've had this starter yeah should we how do you want to do it should we

eat should we have the bread and the dips and the pickles should i grab them i hope you guys are hungry yes i wanted to know how easy this bread yeah explain to the listeners uh it's the saffron yeah shirmel and how easy for people that aren't like you know seasoned bread makers is it quite an easy loaf to do this is so easy this is probably one of the easiest breads you can make and for what you get out of it in that brioche like cakey texture you wouldn't believe how easy it is it's literally not even you know like some bread recipes call for a sourdough starter or they call for letting your yeast ferment and everything goes in together oh perfect and then it gets kneaded up and rolled out by hand not even a rolling pin you just shape it by hand

and then you leave it to proof for half an hour, and you bake it. It's easy. Oh, okay, that's my kind of bread. Yeah. Should we just cut some up? Yeah, do the honors, please. If you cut it through,

so you can get cake-like slices. Oh, like a... Yeah, almost like a cake. Okay. And then you get the full depth of it. And then it's black sesame seeds and white sesame seeds on the top, right? Yeah.

Mmm, delicious. Do you like right? Yeah. Mmm, delicious. Do you like it? Mmm. Please, be my guest, Lenny. There's such a glut of courgettes at the moment, so this is like the perfect dip for them. I want to, oh my God, that's delicious. Thank you. I want to talk about your sustainability and how environmentally conscious your restaurant is.

You got awarded we're carbon neutral carbon neutral how many years ago was that that you so that was two years and we're the first independent restaurant to be carbon neutral basically it was just really important to both of us because especially coming from somewhere like kenya where you know you grow up around rural communities who don't even have fridges, like they have the lowest carbon output. And yet, they're the ones who are paying for our greedy consumption with climate change. And so it was always part of what we wanted to do. And for us, we see the business as this ecosystem. And we think that if you have a good restaurant in an area, you hope that that good spreads. So every single line of our pnl we look

at how can we be doing something good so where are we buying our produce from how can we empower small producers who are looking after our land hence our relationship with the farm waltham place how can we empower our team how can we empower you, give hospitality to our guests that's exceptional? How can we contribute to our neighborhood? That's what it's about for us. Oh, my God. That peach, Mum, have you tried the peach yet? No. Just try the peach.

Yeah. No, she's got it on a plate. Oh, she's got it. I just need you. Oh, my God. It's with the caramelized peanuts on top. Oh, my goodness. That is so good.

And that recipe, by the way, is 15 minutes start to finish. Really? In the book. Are these in the book? Yeah, they're all in the book. How good is that? Delicious. The courgette is just amazing.

It's a bit like a baba ghanoush, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. But with courgette. I call it mama ghanoush. But it's perfect right now because there are so many courgettes. I call it Mama Ganoush. But it's perfect right now because there are so many courgettes. If you grow courgettes, you'll know that you just get so many. So it's a perfect thing to do with them. It's heaven.

Oh. I wanted to know, you know, you adore food. you talk about it so beautifully, you cook it so amazingly. Where are some of the restaurants in London? When you were in Marylebone, like, I don't presume you get to eat out that much, but where are some of your favourite London, or you live in Surrey now? Yeah. Some of your favourite spots? So I think the place I go to again and again is Maison Francois.

I really love it. I've never been. Oh, you would love it, Jessie. It's kind of near Fortnum and Mason, so St. James's. It's quite extraordinary. It's really elegant. It's really chic. Just everything.

The food tastes so good. The service, the hospitality is, like, excellent. And it always feels like a really good night out right and what would be your order there because you're a creature of habit yeah oh god i always go for they do flat breads which are wonderful um so they have a you know different flat breads all the time so i go for those and then they have a pasta with um like a sausage i can't remember what kind of sausage it is mortadella or something like I can't remember but it's a really good really like lovely pasta really well cooked they do wonderful salads I mean their menu changes as well wonderful side dishes and things what else

oh gougere they do amazing gougere that melt in your mouth I went recently and they were like we're out of the gougere I nearly cried how could they be out because everyone's ordered them yeah exactly uh they do truffle chips with so much truffle on them it's like a forest of truffle like real generosity yeah we like that so okay that Maison Francois I'm going there and booking that sounds amazing I feel like a bit of a kind of a philistine for not knowing about it where Where else do you love? Okay, so off the beaten track. Yeah.

There's a place on Ealing Road in Wembley. Yeah. That's one of my favorite places to go. I've taken so many chefs there and they absolutely lose their shit about it. It's so good. It's called Ashes Africana. Okay. And it's run by Gujarati family who are also East African Indian.

Right. So it's Indian vegetarian food. But the magic is it's all cooked by elderly ladies. And you look in their kitchen and there are all these grandmothers cooking. The service is really slow, but it doesn't matter. Because the food is so fresh and so good. They do these things called kachoris, which are like a samosa but like pastry but filled with lentils that blow my mind they're so well made the pastry is so flaky and delicious and

it's a community service because the owner's son said to me recently you know we open 365 days a year I said even Christmas day he said yeah you know, we're cooking for a lot of elderly men who are, like, in this area, who are widowers, and they need to eat. And they come here, and it's so cheap, you can, like, go in

and eat for, like, 15 pounds, like a king. And this is on the Ealing Road? Mm-hmm. It looks lovely. It's lovely. It's not caramelised, but, you know,

I'm sure it will taste great. What's the, is it pea puree? It's just pea with beautiful oh lovely that looks great i'm gonna have some more of this bread what a treat delicious oh ravinda we haven't even asked i'm absolutely loving having you on i'm so thrilled for people to hear your stories and for mum to taste your amazing food last supper shall we begin I think I'm gonna shock you by saying like my starter firstly actually I do love like mezzie things I like

like lots of bits to pick on dips bread salad-y things you know all of that but actually most days I'd be really content just to eat crisps and not eat dinner i love crisps me too i can't have them in the house lenny they call out to me like i will eat the whole lot i absolutely agree with you and actually if you buy a small bag of crisps it's going to be like two mouthfuls yeah but why would and then you look at how many calories are on the side of the small pack and what I need is half a pack of the big pack which is your favorite flavor salt and vinegar yes now which salt and vinegar place do you go for like what is your choice okay so recently I was in Suffolk for latitude and there is a local I think it's called something farm field or something they are literally the best salt and vinegar crisps

I've ever eaten because they taste exactly like you know when you get the right amount of vinegar on good chips yeah that's what they taste like okay they are amazing can I offer and I've offered it in the podcast before and I'm going to do it again Yorkshire crisps yes I love and when they come in the bloody what's's it called, a tub. Yeah. And I don't know whether it's the tub that's doing it and they're laced with all the vinegar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so do you think these Suffolk crisps are better?

Yes, I do actually. I like crisps abroad. Do you like Lay's? Lay's. Yeah. Yeah, I love Lay's. I just love crisps. I like oregano crisps.

You know the ones you get in Greece? I like the ones that are fried in olive oil. You know those ones and you get them in a big bag, like half the size of your body. And yeah, family pack. I mean, that's about just the right amount for me. That is amazing. So you're kind of like a toddler when it comes to your last supper,

which is quite unusual. And I didn't think this has been a curveball. Okay, so... Bag of crisps. Okay, if you weren't going to okay so bag of crisps okay if you weren't gonna get your bag of crisps for your last supper they're in there they're in there what is the main the main I think I'm really simple and I love my mother's cooking like it's you know for me just she was just the most incredible cook and I think part of the reason

for Giconi is that I feel like all these women who joined this domestic cult and cooked and cleaned they never got any thanks and yet they were so talented all the women I grew up with they just had a knack for cooking for 50 without breaking a sweat you know and they never got to do what I'm doing the the platform that I've got, all these like very ordinary women with extraordinary stories and their food was always like you could tell it was the flavor of their hand. You know, this person made amazing kebabs, this person made amazing dal. And my mother was just good at all of it. She really was. And so something really simple like a rice a really good dal she makes excellent dal homemade achar which is pickle with lots of ghee that is like my happy place I wanted to know was

your mum encouraging of you learning no she was terrifying she's exactly what I've become gnashing tongs and teeth she was so so fierce in the kitchen. There was never any kind of love or instruction. It was just like, do it again, do it again, do it again until it's perfect. And even now, you know, years later, I think I'd still be terrified to cook. I think even now she finds it. And there's a story in the book about her and about her abdication because she's now in her 80s and I think even now she's never told me even now I have the restaurant oh this is really delicious she can't quite bring herself to because her whole identity as a human being she was married at 16 had her first child at 17 her whole she had no education her whole identity is based on being a homemaker and it's all she's

had and so for her to feel that she has to abdicate that somehow must be really really hard and I have a lot of empathy for that but I would love her to say this is delicious well Jessie never says that to me either Jessie she always does she always says it's very nice but if i were you i would have added such and such and you know what you should say back yes chef yes chef but she always has got something she would have added and done differently it's a collaborative you know it's darling it's not collaborative and i do the cooking actually there's the thing okay so we had crisps we've had your mother's doll yeah pickles and ghee and rice where are we gonna go on this pudding so can I have three yes well one

we've already talked about which is this you know moment in time with the chocolate dip ice cream with my grandfather sat by my side I would love to do that again the second is tiramisu I absolutely it's my favorite pudding and there is one particular place in Italy in Cortona called Trattoria D'Arno and I've been there many times and when I first went to that area on a holiday I went to that restaurant four times their tiramisu is exactly what it should be it's like a slop on the plate it has no shape or form they like spoon it out of the bowl and it just collapses in on itself jesse does it like that it's so good it was an accident i think this sounds great but anyway by the third time i'd been to the restaurant he was like and i just was like crazy about the tiramisu he kind of got it so

every time I go now he just brings out the whole bowl puts it on the table and he's like knock yourself out and I always have more than one helping and then the third is this like really lovely moment and this is really kind of a love letter to the people who help us as immigrants find home and when I came to this country my first initial impression was horror because it was so cold I come from this like really tropical backdrop and then it was a gray November in this like flat with no heating no washing machine was hard and I really tried to understand the traditions and the you know of this new nation and I went to this school that had all these like odd traditions like Morris dancing and it was all very weird and then there was this one tradition which I finally got and it was harvest and what

they used to do is you had to bring a cardboard box in decorate it with crepe paper and then it would be filled with tins of this and that and biscuits and then they would assign you an elderly person in your neighborhood to go and give it to and for someone who'd always grown up in an extended family with my grandparents I could not understand why in this country like you it takes they say it takes a village to bring up a child but I also understood that it takes a village to shepherd people through their golden years and so this tradition really appealed to me and I remember going to this house knocking on the door and this woman with a very pink face opened the door and she was like oh I heard you bought me some treasure and her name was Mrs Locke and she lived just down the street from me and I just didn't understand

boundaries at that age so I was literally in her house every other day I would basically pinch things that my mother had bought that I thought she needed more you were doing harvest all year yeah literally and then I'd turn up with you know shortbread biscuits or you know whatever it was and she got me into the archers. She introduced me to she used to send me to the library to go and buy get her like large print Danielle Steele or Barbara Bradford Taylor and she told me the story of her life and she used to give me these really wet sloppy kisses and she had a really bristly chin which I kind of loved and another friend of mine Sarit from Honey & Co was like that sounds like my idea of hell I loved her so she introduced me to the

thing that she swore kept her alive she ate doughnuts'd never had a donut until that they were raspberry donuts and fries turkish delight which she said so delicious so and together and I actually then years later as a chef invented a donut in her honor and it's a turkish delight chocolate donut and yeah that was mrs lock mrs lock yeah she was amazing oh that is such a great story do you want to get dessert going yeah i definitely do should i serve up serve up yes please now this is like my heaven because it has condensed milk in it doesn't it it does have and cream it's like a tres leches cake oh thank you um but with palooda which is this incredible bar pink. Can you see? Very, very on trend. Yes.

Thank you. So you can see it's kind of mottled. So you get some bits of the cake that are still like brown and spongy and then some that are dyed Barbie pink. And the whole thing with this is Faluda is this incredible syrup, a bit like a rose cordial. But it's got other like herbs and things in it as well. And it's like, it, ruafsa, which is what it is called,

translates to soul refresher. And you have it in milk, like a milkshake. And it is, it's exactly that. So it's like the medicinal Nesquik. Yeah, kind of. Okay, great, fine. And it's a really fond, nostalgic childhood memory for me. Where can you find it

in all kind of Indian supermarkets I mean we get ours on Amazon and you know and this has basil seeds in it basil seeds so in a traditional traditional faluda would always have basil seeds in it but these you can I often use just chia seeds it's just something that gives that kind of texture this is my heaven cake this is like the Portuguese cake you used to get me for my birthday mum oh my god it's wet oh my god I'm in heaven this would be like my last supper really I love it so much. I'm so happy. Because I really was thinking, what should I make? What should I make?

And then I just felt this was a crowd pleaser. But look, you can bake it in these like disposable tins. Take it to a barbecue. Everyone's going to be your best friend. And is this an easy one? Apart from getting the ingredients and once you've got them. So I made the sponge last night night which is again uh kind of you basically whiz up in your electric mixer you whiz up your eggs and your sugar until they're

really nice and thick and then you just add flour and you add rose water and a tiny bit of salt and then that's and some baking powder you bake it you mix together condensed milk double cream and milk and the rose syrup and you basically pour it over when it's hot put some you know skewer holes in pour it over leave in the fridge overnight whipped cream basil seeds or chia seeds or chia seeds i don't never know how you say them uh strawberries pistachios and rose petals and that's it done i'm really happy your kids you know i kind of made it because i thought your kids would appreciate it my kids will appreciate it thank you oh my god it's actually divine divine she's goddess like i'm coming can i come again next week

i also feel like you should be on master chef being a judge that's what i mean i think i feel like you should be doing more or the great british menu i know you're very busy doing fighting the good fight also running a really successful restaurant making cookbooks you know you're doing all of it i just do eating crisps um but i do think that more people need to hear and see you and i know they can enjoy your food every night but like it's um would you like to do more of that or I think if it's the right tv like I feel like if it's giving a message telling stories I'm really interesting in telling stories particularly women's stories because I think like I was saying ordinary women have extraordinary

stories you've just got to ask the question and then these incredible stories tumble out and I love hearing those stories and I think food is a great connector um you know and when you have someone over a plate of something they will tell you their life story and it's a wonderful thing as you guys have done so well but that's kind of what I want to do I want to be able to tell the stories of immigration um different immigrants coming in because I think that's people often ask at Jikoni how would you you know describe your food it's not Indian so how do you sum it up and we say we cook the food of immigrants because it's for those people who have the ache for what

they've left behind but then the wonder of their new landscape. And what happens when you reconcile those two things? And for me, it was like, you've come to this country, you're really precious about holding on to, you know, everyone, immigrants particularly, they say you lose all your traditions, the way you dress, your language, all of that. The food never goes. And you know that with Jewish food right look at what claudia rodin has done all those women who've held on to those recipes it's it's integral to us being human beings i think we should give this message to suella brotherman that how much immigrants contribute i just like to shake around this table do you think we've done all right have we drained society i mean you know i think what makes britain great is the immigrants actually you know like look at their stories their resilience what they've bought to the country the power behind you know all the businesses that they've set up the local economies

that they've set up all of that and yeah for me when i came here it was very much like okay i want to preserve my identity and where I've come from but here is also this amazing nation which actually seemed so barren when I first got here but now as I'm settling in there are all these influences. How many years have you been here? No I mean when I was a child you know when I started settling in and I felt that I mean I grew up in a very densely immigrant area and so all of those influences fed into my food and I think you can taste that like the food is from everywhere and we celebrate all the similarities we have but also the richness of our differences it's it's a great

thing thank you for sharing that thank you for sharing all your stories just people need to go to jaconi people need to go and buy the new book this is your third book isn't it this is my third book yeah all the things we've eaten today are in that book it is such a pleasure to spend time with you when you're you so much i guess you did still serve me food i still managed to get that out of you even though we spent more time she's the busiest woman i think in london you know jay reyna once said to me you're like a jewish woman trapped in an indian body and i was like no i'm punjabi because we are feeders just like you thank you for being here my pleasure such an honor to listen to your stories and eat your beautiful food ravinda bogle what a fascinating inspiring generous beautiful person just a wonderful

she kind of sprinkles this kind of energy over everyone with her food with the way she speaks when she talks she smiles nearly all the time and now I've decided I need to smile more I don't think I smile enough beautiful teeth she smiled but she just considered my veneers in the whole of this oh my god she'd made soft bread because she knew about my veneers from listening to the podcast she wanted to challenge my veneers thoughtful brilliant wonderful ravinda i'm so glad that you got to meet her and i'm so glad that you got to taste her food she's multifaceted you know she's not just a cook she's a storyteller she's got a fantastic heritage she just is wonderful at relationships and understanding and empathetic all the fabulous things that you want in a friend actually yeah

well she's just said please come to the restaurant so maybe you could have a friend in ravinda i'd love to comfort and joyavinda Bogle's third book is out now I can attest that the food is divine well that Faluda cake as Tully calls it

a strawberry flood cake a strawberry flood cake Faluda that was another level Barbie pink oh just the most delicious

tasting that's the thing I never even knew Basil had seen it's so fun and creative. I'm going to try that cake because that is my idea of heaven. Can you just reassure me? I know that the scallops were not caramelised.

They were nice though. But they were delicious. They were sweet and they weren't overcooked, were they? They certainly weren't. They were really nice. Yeah. In light of Ravinda coming on and telling us stories about her childhood, her family, I would really love to hear from some of you. Maybe you've got a grandparent's favourite

recipe. We would love to hear it. We'll read some out this series. It's hello at tablemannerspodcast.com and add a story in there too. I'd love to hear it. It's just so, it's always so fascinating. What a guest for the podcast. Just to, we have a lovely time, don't we mum? Thank you for listening.

Thank you to Ravinda. Comfort and Joy is out now and we will see you next week. Take care.