PORTRAIT: KRISTEN PERERS
Although we’ve only recently met, I feel I’ve known Ravinder Bhogal since the day her book Jikoni landed on the doormat. Her words and recipes danced off the page. It has since become rabbit-eared with post-its: green ones for first-impression favourites; pink, recipes for that Easter weekend with friends; the blue ones picked out by my daughter to try. Even in her absence, Ravinder has been quite a presence at my kitchen table these past years.
One of the reasons I find her books so appealing is the very clear sense of someone with a determination to be herself; there is an unexpectedness in the recipes and combinations that feels highly individual. This is entirely reinforced in person.
Born in Kenya, of Indian parents, Ravinder came to London when she was seven, thrown into a lively immigrantdense, multicultural area. Her writing, recipes and the dishes of her restaurant Jikoni are exuberant expressions of this.
“When I opened the restaurant, it was perhaps from a subconscious need to have a place to belong, where I felt like my experience wasn’t being cauterised – where I wasn’t just the Indian girl; where I could be all of my identities and where people just like me could walk through the door and feel at home.” Ravinder had no early intention of moving into cooking. “I was dragged from my tricycle into the kitchen and at first I resented it. I’d see the boys outside playing while I was podding peas and peeling. I grew up in an extended family living in one large house with many mouths to feed. My mother was the kitchen commander-in-chief, a talented, intuitive cook. I grew up getting this incredible education, learning to understand the personalities of spices, building confidence, and while I began to love the process of cooking, it was never presented as a career.”
"When I opened the restaurant, it was from a subconscious need to have a place to belong, where I felt like my experience wasn’t being cauterised"
It wasn’t until later, when Nigella’s How To Eat was published, that Ravinder began to wonder. “Nigella was a woman with a certain domesticity – and she wasn’t a chef – but her language and the way she described the kitchen and cooking with such sensuality had me completely enchanted. It felt like someone had let light and air in. It was perfectly timed inspiration.”
"I owe so much to talented, nurturing women who were perhaps too early to claim a platform, but who gave me so much that allowed me to do what I do"
PORTRAIT: RAHIL AHMAD. FOOD PHOTOGRAPHS: KRISTIN PERERS. FOOD STYLING: JOSS HERD AND HATTIE ARNOLD. STYLING: TABITHA HAWKINS
"What we do at Jikoni is a quiet rebellion against all those who would put me in a box… We cook immigrant food; the food of people with the ache of what they left behind – but woven in with the influences of our new nation"
Ravinder began cooking at pop-ups and building a following. Appearing on The F Word in 2007 was a revelatory and profile-enhancing experience; it led to filming Food: What Goes in your Basket with Jay Rayner.