‘Ancestral flavours remixed with love’ is the subheading for Sanjana Modha’s Modern Masala cookbook, and while there is certainly an element of that in this imaginative new publication the descriptor almost undersells it. For what Modha has done with Modern Masala is challenge the notion that Indian food is just large varieties of curry, bread and rice - as is still a typical approach in many Indian cookbooks - by reimagining dishes for the way people cook today - and all without meat. The result might have Mughal ancestors turning in their graves, but it makes for a compelling read and answers the question of ‘do we really need another Indian cookbook?’ in the affirmative.
Make no mistake, the word modern in the cookbook’s title is not used to describe a slight recipe tweak based on the availability of ingredients or using more expensive cuts of meats as can sometimes be the case with food from the subcontinent, it reflects an approach that acknowledges the popular dishes people eat, however ‘un Indian’ they might be. So a recipe for deep orange masala butter is accompanied by an image of it smothered on a crumpet, while a recipe for gunpowder spaghetti aglio e olio ‘gives the spirit of Naples a little bit of Chennai’, with the pasta mixed with a peanutty gunpowder sauce, garlic and parmesan.
These are not just examples designed to catch the eye at the start of the book before normal procedure resumes; the book continues in this vein across its 220+ pages. There’s curried Welsh rarebit and kachumber; gnocchi in tomato dhal; a three-cheese and spinach makhani cannelloni; and even a paneer supreme traybake pizza.
For dessert you can try Indian butterfly cakes, named in honour of Modha’s eight year-old son Bodhi; and a saffron banoffee pie-fle - a pie/trifle hybrid dessert no one would have expected to find at the back of an Indian cookbook.
Then there’s baked beans butter masala - a dish made with tinned baked beans spiked with spices and cream that can be served with naan but can also easily be served as a replacement for standard baked beans, on toast or in a jacket potato, Modha suggests.
No mention is made on the cover of Modern Masala that this a vegetarian cookbook, and the penny only drops when you’re halfway through and you still have stumbled across a recipe for tandoori lamb chops. But by that time, you’re well and truly invested in what Modha is trying to do.
If all this wasn’t thoroughly modern enough, the book at the same time recognises how busy people of today, with sections dedicated to meals that can be cooked in the air fryer, those made in a one pot, pan or tray, meals that take only 30 minutes to prepare, and ones that can be frozen in batches and defrosted when required.
The recipes in Modern Masala might not be to everyone’s tastes - although one suspects they might become guilty pleasures (hello baked beans butter masala) - but they show imagination and also the versatility of Indian spices beyond their traditional norms.
Modern Masala, Ancestral Indian Flavours Remixed with Love
Number of pages: 222
Standout dish: Paneer supreme traybake pizza
Publisher and price: Quadrille, £25