From India, with love

Jasdeep shared his story with Jo Elwin

Cromwell’s central location is what 26-year-old Jasdeep Singh Mehrok highlights when questioned on how life is for a young man in this Central Otago town. “My friends are in Dunedin, so I go there a lot and it’s an easy drive from here, as are Queenstown and Wanaka.” He’s not fazed by small town life because he enjoys his own company and “grew up in a small town in India” – small for India that is - Tohana Haryana has a population of nearly 64,000. Jasdeep talks fondly of his hometown and there are similarities to his adopted home: Tohana is an agricultural region that was a desert before a canal project introduced irrigation. The town is encompassed by a series of seven waterways that make a striking landscape.

Tohana, the city of canals

Jasdeep left India to study. “If I had stayed, I wouldn’t have learnt as much … I would have just helped my Dad on the farm and continued with the joint family living situation where we live together and help each other. I wanted to be more independent and be part of the new world. I left India when I was 18, encouraged by my cousin in Christchurch to move there. I was scared but he helped me with everything. For the first month I was thinking ‘what am I doing here’. I was in a different world. It was hard to find a job and I had no friends, but once I started studying and made some friends I felt better.”

While studying a business diploma, Jasdeep worked as a kitchen hand in a Christchurch restaurant to pay the rent and it was here that he developed an interest in cooking. “I was working 20 hours as a kitchen hand and volunteering more hours so that I could learn to cook because I loved cooking.” Jasdeep decided to pursue cooking as a career and went on to work as a cook at a restaurant in Omarama, thanks to a friend who worked there recommending him.

The sale of the restaurant two years later saw Jasdeep move to Cromwell to work in the restaurant at Carrick Winery where he has been for three years and loving it. “The staff are very friendly, and I feel like I am in my own home.” Jasdeep speaks highly of Head Chef, Gwen Harvie who is encouraging him to grow and develop as a chef. “Gwen has given me incredible training and I am still learning every day. There are only two of us in the kitchen over winter, so we do everything. She has taught me to be very organised and to make lists,” he laughs pointing to his clipboard sitting at the ready.

He enjoys variety in his cooking, and they change the Carrick menu frequently which keeps things interesting. A string of events throughout the year also changes things up and one of these events is Jasdeep’s Indian Banquet at the end of August. The menu reads like an Indian food fan’s dream.

“I am going to make North Indian, home-style food that I learnt to cook back home,” Jasdeep enthuses. “I had to cook a lot for my family when I was younger, and I really enjoyed cooking back then too.”

There are two starters – a mixed platter consisting of onion bhaji, kofta (paneer and potato balls) and poppadum with tamarind chutney that Jasdeep makes using a friend’s recipe, “It’s a really good one,” he smiles, and mint chutney. The other is golgoppa, “crispy pastry-like balls filled with a potato and black chickpea filling with yoghurt and chutney - some might know these as pani puri, which they are called in Delhi and Mumbai, but we call them golgoppa where I am from.”

As for the black chickpeas, Jasdeep explains that they are very common in India, he gets them here from Yogiji’s Food Mart in Dunedin, where he shops for a lot of his Indian ingredients, they are somewhat nuttier in flavour and don’t break down as much as white chickpeas do.

A mango lassi will also be served before moving on to a set of four curries:

1 Goat curry made in the Punjabi style. “Gwen was saying I should do a chicken curry but for me to cook my style I would want to use a charcoal oven and we don’t have that, so I went with goat and she’s happy with that.”

2 Sarron ka saag with homemade paneer. “I will incorporate mustard greens with the spinach for better flavour.”

3 Khadi. “A dish from Rajasthan that you don’t see on restaurant menus. It’s a home-style, gravy-like curry sauce served over top of pakoras.”

4 Dhal makhani made with lentils.

The banquet will end with dessert, but Jasdeep is yet to decide what it will be. “I’m going to do a few trials first,” he enthuses.

When he’s not working, Jasdeep enjoys eating out, “I like to go and see what others are doing,” and, when pressed to share any favourites, mentions the Pan-Asian Spirit House in Dunedin’s St Clair. “They make a great kimchi fried rice and there is a lamb shank curry on the menu that I really want to try.”

Jasdeep and Sol, Carrick’s cellar door manager, share plenty of laughs and the odd glass of house wine.

He’s not here for the skiing, “that didn’t go so well, but I do enjoy swimming and I swim in the lake in summer.” He adds. “I swam a lot in the canals back home, so I am a very strong swimmer.”

As you’d expect at a winery, there’s the odd wine at the end of a shift and the Carrick Josephine Riesling is his favourite. Cellar door manager Sol confirms this and laughs, “It’s a sweeter-style riesling that goes well with curry, so of course he likes it. Jasdeep has a curry on the menu that we match with the Josephine Riesling and I’d quite like to have that curry for lunch today.”

“That’s how this all started,” adds Jasdeep, “I was making my home-style curries for staff meals and they really liked them so Gwen decided we should have one on the menu. At the moment we have a chickpea curry with aloo tikka and people love it. It’s something different and a good vegetarian option.”

Jasdeep serves his chickpea curry with aloo tikka

Jasdeep’s Indian Banquet,
Carrick Winery, Bannockburn,
Saturday 29 August, 12 noon.
Tickets $60 per person. Phone Carrick on 03-445 3480 or email dine@carrick.co.nz