Season 1
Indian Food Made Easy is a British cookery series hosted by chef and food writer Anjum Anand in which she helps friends and members of the public overcome their fear of planning, preparing and making Indian food.
The series premiered in the UK on BBC Two on 9 July, 2007. There are 12 half-hour episodes in two seasons to date.
Indian Food Made Easy premiered in South Africa on DStv's BBC Lifestyle channel on Tuesday 2 September 2008, at 18h30. See "Seasons" below for seasonal broadcast dates and times.
Season 1 Repeats
Tuesdays: 23h20
Wednesdays: 11h30, 15h30
Thursdays: 19h00, 23h50
Fridays: 12h00, 16h00
Saturdays: 11h30, 14h30
Sundays: 09h00
Season 1
Chef and food writer Anjum Anand brings a lighter, fresher approach to classic Indian dishes.
Anjum has worked in innovative restaurants across the world, but her love is for simple dishes that can be made quickly and easily at home.
In each episode, Anjum help friends and members of the British public overcome their fear of planning, preparing and making Indian food. She guides them through shopping for ingredients and dispels the myth that it’s food that’s complicated to cook.
Anjum starts with the basics: how to tell how hot a fresh chilli is, what the spices of Indian food are and what equipment to use. She also visits a top Indian restaurant in London in search of a traditional Indian dessert for those with a sweet tooth.
Indian Food Made Easy is a mouth-watering series that sees Anjum show everyone from old university friends to firemen and a health spa chef how to cook light and healthy meals.
Episodes
Episode 1
Anjum attempts to show her friend Panthea, who can't cook, how easy it is to prepare a flavourful feast based on grilled kebabs and wraps.
Once Panthea masters the art of the samosa, Anjum persuades her to help out on a stall at the quintessentially English Sherborne Country Fair.
Here they hope their wraps made with chicken tikka, tandoori lamb, and the vegetarian option, paneer, mushroom and spinach would be more than a match for burgers.
Episode 2
Anjum persuades her old university friend, Alex, to prepare an Indian feast rather than buy a takeaway for his boys’ night in.
The guests are treated to a chilli-themed selection with Spiced lamb burgers made with a wonderful combination of green chillies, garlic, ginger and coriander, and mouth-watering pieces of Oven-fried chilli chicken steeped in a chilli and ginger marinade served with Smashed-fried potatoes spiced up with a little red chilli powder.
The dishes are great for the lads to tuck into while they watched the FA Cup Final.
Episode 3
Anjum sets out to prove that Indian food can be light and healthy and worthy of a slot on the menu at a spa.
She heads to the spa in the beautiful surroundings of the Charlton House hotel in Somerset where she persuades the chef, Elisha Carter, to put some of her recipes on his menu.
He loves her mouth-watering Avial (a southern Indian mixed vegetable dish with coconut) accompanied by a slightly sweet Bengal gram lentil curry, followed by the yoghurt-based dessert made with saffron, Shrikand.
Episode 4
This episode, Anjum visits a fire station in Essex. The daily diet of beans on toast or a takeaway is replaced with a curry when Anjum shows firefighter Paul Pemberton how to cook a proper curry for the 'blue watch'.
Anjum explains to Paul what type of pans to use to cook a curry and why coriander is such a vital ingredient in Indian food, then shows him how to make an aubergine dish cooked with yoghurt.
They also make a lamb curry with green chillies accompanied by naan bread.
Episode 5
Anjum headed to Cornwall to help self-taught chefs, Nirmal and Louis, who run the Little Cornish Curry Company, to face a new challenge.
The pair were about to start cooking for a curry night at a local pub and had decided to attempt to convert customers from traditional fish and chips to Indian food by serving a different kind of fish dish.
Anjum showed them how to make a coconut fish curry with yellow lemon rice and a side order of crab cakes garnished with tangy tamarind mayonnaise.
Episode 6
Anjum threw a party in her garden and checked on the progress of the people she taught how to cook Indian dishes during the series.
Her friend Alex cooked the classic side dish of Paneer with spinach; Elisha, the chef at the Charlton House hotel, made a Wild mushroom pilaff; while firefighter Paul tried his hand at Peshwari naan.
Anjum made them a summer feast with Raan, a spiced roast leg of lamb, as her centrepiece.
Seasons
(All seasons aired exclusively on BBC Lifestyle and each season consists of six episodes)
Season 1
Premiere: 2 September 2008 | Finale: 7 October 2008 | Tuesdays, 18h30
Season 2
Premiere: 14 August 2009 | Finale: 18 September 2009 | Fridays, 18h30