ABOUT OUR CHEF
Manju Malhi was raised in North West London where she grew up surrounded by Indian culture, traditions and lifestyles. However, she spent several years of her childhood in India where she explored and experienced the vast and varied cuisines of the country.
She won the BBC’s Food and Drink competition in 1999 and cooked with Antony Worrall Thompson on BBC2 and was invited back a second time. Manju’s Simply Indian series was aired on the Taste Network in 2001. She has also appeared amongst several other programmes, on ITV’s Saturday Cooks and This Morning, FIVE’s Open House and The Terry and Gaby Show, Sky One’s Taste, UKTV Food’s Great Food Live, Food Uncut and Market Kitchen and BBC1’s Saturday Kitchen.
Her foray into the world of the gogglebox has also taken her to India for a mammoth forty part series entitled ‘Cooking Isn’t Rocket Science’ for one of India’s leading broadcasters NDTV. She was preparing British cuisine for India – a reverse of what she is generally known for in the United Kingdom!
Manju’s first book, the award winning ‘Brit Spice’ was published by Penguin Books. The paperback version came out in June 2003. Her second book ‘India with Passion’ covers regional Indian home cuisine and was published by Mitchell Beazley in 2004. Manju’s next book ‘Easy Indian Cookbook’ will be exploring more ideas on simple yet delicious dishes which she hopes will encourage more and more people to experiment with spices and make more Asian delicacies. A music CD will be attached to the cookbook to make life in the kitchen stress-free.