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“My culinary palate is rooted in my mother’s language, and hers is rooted in her mother before her; an intergenerational line of love that crosses continents, connecting the past to the present through taste.”
So writes Gurdeep Loyal in his debut cookbook, Mother Tongue: Second Generation Tastes, in which he explores his British Indian identity through more than 100 palate-pleasing recipes. From Miso-Masala Fried Chicken Sando to Chocolate Orange Jalebis, the book is a rich celebration of the blended culinary culture that emanates from the diaspora. Winner of the Jane Grigson Trust Award (made to a first-time food and drink writer), Native language it also comes with advance praise from leading food writers including Diana Henry, Claudia Roden and Felicity Cloke, who calls Loyal a “Willy Wonka-style wizard of taste”.
Born in Leicester to Punjabi Indian parents in the early 1980s, Loyal grew up with the expectations of his two cultures clashing. But through a lifelong passion for food and cooking, he was able to embrace the “delicious contradictions” of his multiple British identities. Coincidentally, our Zoom conversation takes place a day after the 2021 Census data was released. It shows that one in 10 households in England and Wales now consists of people from two or more different ethnic groups, with Leicester being the city- a beacon of diversity without a common ethnic majority. “Yes, I read about this data. It’s so exciting that diaspora kids are now taking over the conversation. In my case, I say: I was born in the middle of England, and although Indianness is a big part of me, I am as much Leicester as I am Punjab, and very proud of both.” Food, maintains Loyal, provides “an amazing snapshot of Britain today. I think for me it’s the feeling that food is alive and evolving and constantly being added to and constantly being reinvented”.
When I cook, I think of flavors as if they were musical notes, and flavor combinations as if they were chords
Native language demonstrates Loyal’s ability to work with a myriad of flavors and combine them to sensational effect, including a particular penchant for combining extremes of sour and sweet, with a hint of anise and “an added crunchy texture.” His culinary background stems in part from those closest to him: “Food is the central dynamic of how my family works,” he tells me. “As I say in the book, when I call home, as I do every few days, the first question everyone asks is not, “How are you?” but, “What have you been up to?” Then there’s his career in ‘professional catering’, which includes working in the marketing team at Innocent Drinks in the company’s start-up days; and at Harrods, where as head of marketing for food, wine and restaurants he was “exposed to some of the most incredible artisan food producers and worked with chefs to create the most exquisite food”. In between were spells of global travel that also informed his palate. Until recently, Loyal worked as head of future food trends and development at M&S, where he was tasked with inspiring the team to create new products. More and more people started asking him about his influence on food and this inspired him to start thinking about writing a recipe book about the hybrid dishes he prepares for his family and friends. It was while swimming one day that phrase Native language popped into his head. “I ran out of the pool and recorded it on my phone and that’s where the book proposal came from. The team at Fourth Estate have been incredible in helping me bring this book to life.”
Striking a chord
Although Loyal is not a classically trained chef, he is a classically trained cellist. His knowledge and love of music, especially pieces that “make full use of the chromatic spectrum of sound”, have deeply influenced his approach to cooking, and he compares the way we hear different notes in music at the same time to how we taste different flavors at the same time in food. “When I cook, I think of flavors as if they were musical notes, and flavor combinations as if they were chords,” he writes. “Just as the construction of a chord from musical notes can go in infinite harmonic directions, so ‘flavor chords’ can be endlessly combined, rearranged and remixed across global keyboards.” This playful, creative approach to taste is a hallmark of Native language where Loyal takes basic flavor combinations – for example, the classic Italian tomato, garlic and basil sauce – and adds cross-cultural flavors; perhaps some cumin or tamarind, turning the dish into something Italian with a distinct Indian accent.
One of the most powerful expressions of identity is language and the phrase “mother tongue” is also very much rooted in language
And just as he wishes to encourage us to experiment with taste, Loyal also encourages us to do so Native language to bring some variety to our food shopping. “I really want people to support the diaspora communities in their neighborhood. Go to your local Indian, Chinese or Turkish food store and see what they have and connect with the salesperson there on more than a surface level. To me, the huge difference between ingredients stocked in such places and those in large supermarkets is that there will be a deep-rooted cultural reason for something to be on the shelves of a diaspora store. And it’s often a lot cheaper to shop there.” While many of the recipes in Native language require a longer than average list of ingredients to achieve their delightful flavor accords, there are also many simple dishes; cultured salads, for example, and a twist on cheese toast.
It doesn’t pay homage to its roots by repeating the past, but actually says: it’s an ever-repeating culinary tale
The dedication on the front of the book is: “For mothers, especially my own.” And an epigraph on the next page notes a request his mother Bhupinder Loyal once made in a restaurant: “Excuse me, waiter. Can I have some chilli sauce, black pepper and mustard please”. Loyal’s deep affection for his mother is evident throughout Native language, which like all the best cookbooks is full of wonderful anecdotes. One of my favorites concerns his parents’ arranged marriage: his mother, a “stylish 19-year-old with stake-lined eyes” who moved to Leicester from her native Punjab just weeks before the big day. From his many bleary-eyed viewings of their “sepia-bleached” wedding video, Loyal beautifully describes the tableside banquet that followed their gurdwara ceremony: “Paper plates full of keema samosas, spicy fish pakoras, spicy cholei with piles of fried puri, tamarind lutenica, syrupy jalebi, fudgy cardamom burfi and Johnnie Walker whiskey. It is the festive feast of displaced Punjabi migrants traveling from their homeland to their new home.” Two years later, Loyal was born in this “delicious” cuisine.
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