East Indian Dining with the Cottage Chef
East Indian Dining with the Cottage Chef
He comes from a colourful background and a rich body of culinary experience in India and abroad. But his roots are East Indian, and his table is set authentically so. Chef Michael Swamy welcomes us to dine in his quaint cottage kitchen
Text: Lyle Michael Food Photographs: Michael Swamy
The word cottage is significant in the life of Michael Swamy, as we see for ourselves upon a visit one afternoon to his humble abode in a green and quiet lane in the SoBo neighbourhood of Prabhadevi. First, it’s the very structure, a beautifully antiquated cottage, an East Indian bastion – the last one standing – within the concrete, redeveloped jungle that surrounds us today. Second, it’s the name his multi-faceted culinary brand goes by – The CottageChef – offering polished expertise in cooking, food photography, styling, consultancy and solutions, content creation, and writing. And now, he’s packaging his decades of experience, which includes travel, loads of it, especially in the lap of nature, to give us The BackPack Chef.
With that, ‘chef’ may very well be the suffix in his life, albeit the very crux of his being, but Michael is more than happy to push the boundaries and not be defined by culinary labels today. Cooking and baking are what he’s trained in, sure – Sophia Polytechnic and Le Cordon Bleu for you – but hosting and capturing the essence of his food through photography and stories is what puts him in another league. Yes, there’s wildlife and equestrian photography, too.
Beneath it all is Michael Swamy, a humble, down-to-earth and endearing personality with an intrinsic knowledge of his heritage and the ingredients that define his community. All of the above was yet again reiterated as we cosied in to lunch on East Indian delicacies galore, for which we promptly ignored the ‘breakfast is the fuel you need for the day’ advice experts dole out constantly. A wise decision, for there lay a treat before us, a vast spread, of traditional cuisine, with a vegetable mousse and buff chops done with the chef’s finesse to add a definitive flavour.
There’s pork vindalho, the celebratory wedding pulao with raisins, pan-fried potato chops, chicken moile – not to be confused with the South Indian moilee – East Indian appams called chittaps or hand bread,and our all-time favourite, fugeas – those little sweet dough balls. Bringing up the traditional rear was a coconut cake and chocolate fudge in symmetrical sqaures. A groaning table, indeed! What goes into an East Indian spread like this, you ask?
“The secret lies in the masalas and the dry ingredients used,” Chef begins. “It is an organic cuisine, very meat-oriented, defined by bottle masalas particular to the community. With the East Indians, the food largely comes from South America and Portugal. Like sorpotel is from Brazil, actually. The masalas would be made during summer and stored in beer bottles, hence the name, bottle masala. And they would be sealed in wax!” There is a history and an evolution to every cuisine and chronicling his community’s has been the most enjoyable aspect of cooking for him.
It’s all in the genes, for Chef Michael, who’s half East Indian from his mother’s side and half South Indian Christian from his father’s. Growing up, the table was all East Indian, though, and it paid off.
Jane Swamy was a demure yet formidable woman who headed the Xavier’s Institute of Communications for a long time before retiring and eventually passing away six years ago. And it was her words of wisdom to her impressionable son then that had him pursue hospitality as a career before anything else.
Michael goes back in time. “When I wanted to become a content creator – I even did courses in journalism and media – doing food photography and styling, and creating stories around it, mum said to me, ‘…become a chef first, then your credibility will follow’. She was right.” Which took the boy to Le Cordon Bleu, London, in 1995 to get a diploma in pâtisserie; a subject not unknown to him, having already completed the HAFT course at Sophia’s prior.
“London was the dream, I learnt under the best at LCB and went on to do a course in cuisine as well, through an all-paid scholarship. My stage training under Michelin-starred chefs taught me the importance of technique and attention to detail in cooking.” However, home beckoned the Bombay boy back, when his mother yearned for her son to be with her, not favouring a life of solitude. Dutifully, son returned only to head to the Middle East and Australia shortly after, to earn the global experience and the moneys that it brings, and to give his mum back for all she invested in his future.
Ever since, he has built his name in the culinary coliseum as a chef and food consultant, a photographer and stylist, a writer and author, a tutor and YouTuber, with noteworthy accolades under his belt such as The Gourmand World Cookbook Award and UpperCrust’s 20 Best Food Writers.
Life has its way of working itself out… Would you believe Michael began by making kulfi at home as a young boy with no particular love for cooking or a predilection for the toque and apron. It all came later, a natural progression.
“I’ve worked with so many organisations and brands in my career so far – right from the Taj group post Sophia’s to Virat Kohli’s Nueva in Delhi to The Bowl House; from Jet Wings to Bombay Brasserie, BBC Food, Noon Products, HLL, Nestle, the Australian Broadcast Co., and more – in several capacities and have only grown with each one,” says Michael. Authoring his books has been a real sense of achievement, though, with East Indian Kitchen (2012), Masala Dabba (2018), The Diabetic Cookbook (2021). Even Easy Guide to Pairing Indian Food with Wine for Pernod Ricard (2014) and curating recipes for the Canadian High Commission most recently, it’s all a mixed bag, all centred around gastronomy.
But he wanted more! To travel, to be up close with the wild, photography… That’s when he got associated with Pugdundee Safaris in 2015 and since then has been fulfilling his dream, enhancing the experience of being a chef out in nature. Cultural tourism is another facet which he explored here, with foreign tourists as the target audience. And the inverse, too, where he taught French cuisine and demonstrated modern ingredients to village children. These are the experiences he takes home with him, that leave him with an immense sense of satisfaction and the students with a leg up when they leave the brand and head out into the competitive world. Michael illustrates with, “There was a Dalit girl who learnt how to make French baguettes, and very well at that!” Travel has taken the backpacker to Kenya’s national parks, Ireland, Italy, Miami and more. “Europe and South America are next on my list, once the COVID restrictions are much less,” he states with hope.
COVID, undoubtedly, put a spanner in the works for the chef who was always on the go, but adapt he did, and seamlessly so, moving his work online, researching in-depth and shooting online, developing his website on his own, completing his books online and coordinating with digital publishers alike. Now, that local travel is a lot easier than the past two years, you might find him in a tiger reserve or a bird sanctuary, or an equestrian academy like Japaloupe in Talegaon, capturing his favourite subjects in glorious shots, working out the interiors or the menu for a restaurant, curating recipes… all along, indulging in what he loves most – interacting with the locals. For this is where the stories lie, the essence of a community.
With that, we’re back to the East Indian community and the meal before us. Sated, we check in on Chef and his choicest ingredients. “The bottle masala is a staple, few spices, potatoes, onions, of course, and bhangra (mackerel) fish – one of the most flavourful and healthy foods to have. I have also been playing around with ingredients and methods: fancy a tandoori pâté?” Sure. Maybe some horse-riding lessons, too. Another feather Michael Swamy is adding to his cap, slow and steady.
