Chef of the Week: Anjum Anand

Anjum Anand is a British Indian food writer and a TV chef for the Indian cuisine. She is considered one of the first food writers to create Indian recipes to cater to the needs of a health conscious cook.

Anjum Anand grew up in London but has also lived and studied in Geneva, Paris, and Madrid. She speaks both French and Spanish, holds a degree in European business administration, and for a certain period she also ran a business which was mostly about importing flat-pack furniture from Eastern Europe. She has worked in the kitchens of hotel restaurants including Cafe Spice in New York, Park Royal Hotel in New Delhi where she worked as a waitress, and for Tommy Tang at Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles.

Her perspective on adapting healthy meals from a traditionally rich Indian diet came from personal experience of weight problems while she was only growing up. Her reformed diet consisted of varied traditional dishes, recreated with wholesome ingredients and limited oil. Her first book Indian Every Day: Light Healthy Indian Food was published when she was only 25 years of age.

Anand became a regular guest on UKTV Food’s Great Food Live and was engaged with the show for three years spanning from 2004 to 2007, while she also featured in the BBC Two series Indian Food Made Easy broadcast in the year 2007. Her peculiar accent and flirtatious manner of conduct have led to her being dubbed as “the Nigella Lawson of Indian cuisine in Britain”. Reacting to descriptions of herself as the “television’s tastiest chef”, she says she finds that term “preposterous”.