Maya Kaimal's father is an Indian physicist with a passion for cooking. "He approached cooking like he approached physics," she says, and would consider a dish a failure unless he could replicate perfectly from a recipe.
Little did Kaimal, a former photo editor now based in Woodstock in New York state, know that she would eventually turn her father's favorite pastime into her own successful business. After being laid off from a food magazine in 2002, Kaimal, 42, started her own line of fresh, refrigerated curry bases and chutneys that are sold in supermarkets across the United States. Just add meat and vegetables to her tamarind curry, and you can have fresh, home-style South Indian tastes half a world away from Kerala.
But it wasn't easy. When she set out to make Indian food that reflected her own experience, she had to learn about manufacturing, packing and running a business from a knowledge base of zero. First, she perfected her recipes at home. As she gathered knowledge at food conventions, she slowly started scaling them up to three liters, 37 liters, and beyond. Then she hit a proverbial wall: onions.
"Onions were a real challenge.…Western equipment is not made for Indian food," Kaimal says, laughing as her twin daughters played outside her living room. Browning onions, a key step in Indian cooking, no matter the region, was a big problem when done on a large scale. Most American equipment in food processing plants consists of large kettles, and onions need a flat surface with lots of contact with heat.
Luckily, she ended up meeting a plant manager who was ready to take on the challenge. After much experimentation and some equipment modification, the plant now browns onions for about nine hours on a large stove surface when making Kaimal's products. It's labor intensive, but worth it to get that authentic taste, Kaimal says.
Her line includes both North Indian curries such as korma, and South Indian flavors she remembers from her childhood. Her bestsellers reflect that range: coconut and tikka curry flavors are the most popular. As she has found, "There is a huge appetite for Indian food among Americans. They'll eat what you give them, they'll eat so much more."
Little did Kaimal, a former photo editor now based in Woodstock in New York state, know that she would eventually turn her father's favorite pastime into her own successful business. After being laid off from a food magazine in 2002, Kaimal, 42, started her own line of fresh, refrigerated curry bases and chutneys that are sold in supermarkets across the United States. Just add meat and vegetables to her tamarind curry, and you can have fresh, home-style South Indian tastes half a world away from Kerala.
But it wasn't easy. When she set out to make Indian food that reflected her own experience, she had to learn about manufacturing, packing and running a business from a knowledge base of zero. First, she perfected her recipes at home. As she gathered knowledge at food conventions, she slowly started scaling them up to three liters, 37 liters, and beyond. Then she hit a proverbial wall: onions.
"Onions were a real challenge.…Western equipment is not made for Indian food," Kaimal says, laughing as her twin daughters played outside her living room. Browning onions, a key step in Indian cooking, no matter the region, was a big problem when done on a large scale. Most American equipment in food processing plants consists of large kettles, and onions need a flat surface with lots of contact with heat.
Luckily, she ended up meeting a plant manager who was ready to take on the challenge. After much experimentation and some equipment modification, the plant now browns onions for about nine hours on a large stove surface when making Kaimal's products. It's labor intensive, but worth it to get that authentic taste, Kaimal says.
Her line includes both North Indian curries such as korma, and South Indian flavors she remembers from her childhood. Her bestsellers reflect that range: coconut and tikka curry flavors are the most popular. As she has found, "There is a huge appetite for Indian food among Americans. They'll eat what you give them, they'll eat so much more."
1 comment:
Dear Mr. Mohan,
Can you please pull down all the articles attributed to me that you have posted on your blog. This is a violation of a copyrighted article.
Thanks
Sebastian
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