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Diwali is a five-day festival of lights and a time for Indians to come together and celebrate the power of light over darkness with music, lights, fireworks and feasts. The festival commences on November 12 this year with Diwali occurring on November 14.
“My family’s tradition is that we go to relative’s houses with gifts, but overnight we stay at home with all our windows open so that Lakshmi, the goddess of light, can bring us wealth and prosperity to our house. Then the next day we get together and have lunch with our extended family or friends,” says Harry Mangat, chef and owner of Indian-inspired pop-up Biji Dining.
Mangat is set to host a Diwali lunch on Sunday, November 15 at Carlton North wine bar Little Andorra featuring four courses and three sides per person. “For us Indians there’s no celebration that goes for just one day, which is why I’m collaborating with my friend chef Ross Magnaye and getting together to cook a Sunday lunch. It’s going to be a mish-mash of Indian and Filipino cuisines,” he says.
Each dish will be like no other and expectations of butter chicken/adobo hybrids should be left at the door.
Things are done differently at Biji Dining, with Biji translating to ‘grandma’ in Punjabi. He draws inspiration from his grandmother, her house in the Punjab countryside and her nourishing home-cooked meals. At his current pop-up, diners can expect oysters topped with coconut vinaigrette and dotted with fragrant curry leaf oil. Or ghee-roasted potato with coconut curry, saltbush, mint oil, pickled chilli and onion bhaji.
The pop-up was initially created in 2016 and has since undertaken stints at places like O.My restaurant in Beaconsfield and Indian-run winery Avani Wines in the Mornington Peninsula. Mangat’s focus is on challenging the notion of Indian food. “I want to make people realise they can eat it every day and also pair it with wine,” he says. He single-handedly takes on two of Indian food’s biggest objections.
“People constantly say they can’t eat Indian food two days in a row. As an Indian I grew up eating it every day, but it’s not as heavy as what we eat in restaurants here. In the beginning when I started cooking Biji Dining I started thinking I wanted to change classic dishes like butter chicken. But then slowly I thought ‘what am I doing? It’s good as it is and doesn’t need to be changed. The spices just needed to be used in different ways,’” he says. And thus was born his contemporary approach to Indian food.
“I thought that my food needs to be simple and subtle and the other focus is for it to pair well with wine. Because that’s another thing people say, they say that Indian food doesn’t go well with wine,” he says. Mangat’s dishes are elegant, and his plating skills are impressive. He aims to champion one element per plate and builds his spices up around the core ingredient carefully to avoid overpowering it. And sometimes he uses native bush foods or offers foraged plates. The result is a gentle balancing act of flavours that challenge preconceptions of what Indian food really is.
“There’s so many different regions and cuisines in India itself. Some of my friends don’t even realise that Indians eat pork. If I do something which isn’t common Indian food people get surprised and question its authenticity. So I have to explain why things are the way they are,” he says.
Growing up in Kolkata, Mangat had no dreams of becoming a chef, but rather an accountant. His knowledge of seasonality and flavours came from his mother. “My mum added chilli to food to balance out the sweetness in dishes not to overpower them,” he says. “When I came to Australia I saw canned food for the first time. I was so surprised and wasn’t sure if it was a good or a bad thing. I also couldn’t believe that you could get carrots all year round. My mind was blown.”
Upon moving to Melbourne and starting work as a kitchen hand alongside studying accounting he soon discovered that he wanted to become a chef. And so he did, and went on to intern at venues like Attica and worked as a chef at Ides.
For now, he continues to serve up his contemporary Indian-inspired dishes at Biji Dining’s pop up at Little Andorra and will do so until December 24, 2020. Book your seats now at either the Diwali pop-up or his Biji Dining pop-up here. Or stay tuned and find out where he goes next here.