We were interested,” says Namita. “We talked to chefs who were incredibly knowledgeable about the food of their region. We grew up being able to explain the difference between Jaipur lamb and Jabalpur lamb." What does she cook at home? "I love rice and daal," says Panjabi. Sitting in front of the TV? "Oh never," she giggles, "Eating is far too serious to combine with anything other than the sight of the ocean outside my window in Bombay."

VAR stood down by UEFA for next game after Kylian Mbappe’s late controversial penalty in PSG vs Newcastle Champions League clash Young chefs coming from India to work for Panjabi in Europe are given accommodation in large apartments together, to counter the loneliness of being so far away from home. Panjabi admits, however, that she does not employ female chefs. "It is too much responsibility. It could be too complicated - how would she get home after midnight alone?"You could say that our upbringing was Anglo Indian,” explains Namita. “Our schoolteachers were Scottish. We thought we were eating British food at school lunch, but it turned out they were Anglo Indian dishes. The first iteration of Chutney Mary was largely based on the food of our childhood. We wanted to preserve it, it felt like it was fading away.” In 2001, she joined her family's restaurant company, Masala World, owner of Chutney Mary, Veeraswamy, Masala Zone and Amaya. You have to remember that at that time there was no Indian restaurant in the world that was seeking to be contemporary,” adds Mathrani. “The 2001 changes coincided with Camellia officially joining the business. We made the experience far more sophisticated.” The sisters are sanguine about why they work together so well as sisters, as Namita sees it, ‘We have very different strengths which dovetail well. Besides being a brilliant cook, Camellia [author of 50 Great Curries of India] is very good at taking a helicopter view, being intuitive and looking ahead, predicting trends. Whereas I am much better at setting style and thinking about the detail and presentation of dishes and the interior. We talk food all the time. Of course, we argue and disagree, yet we laugh a lot too. I couldn’t imagine working any other way.’ It became clear that our customers wanted us to dig deeper into these cuisines,” she says. “The British palate had become more sophisticated and the colonial theme and look had had its day. We turned Chutney Mary into a more modern restaurant. The style changed dramatically and - I believe - set the benchmark for all Indian restaurants that came after it.”

The recipe serves four. As usual, I ate it all myself, with only a marginal downsizing of the ingredients. Best with white rice and accompanied bya green vegetable such as potatoes with spinach or fenugreek.)

To make the masala, toast the spices in a dry pan until aromatic. Grind to a powder in a food processor or pestle and mortar, and then mix in the remaining ingredients. Pak court acquits Nawaz Sharif in Avenfield case, NAB withdraws appeal against his acquittal in Flagship case Travel is very much part of our lifestyle and the food is an accumulation of all of our travels. The very best food is to be found in the homes of our friends, at street stalls as well as Maharaja palaces. All provide inspiration,’ Namita explains. Chutney Mary’s original look was based on the India of the 1920s and 1930s. There were murals depicting the British in India and even the titular Chutney Mary herself dining with British officers. Staff were garbed in uniforms that continued the colonial theme.

During this period Chutney Mary chalked up many firsts. It was the first Indian restaurant in London to serve foie gras and game and fresh seafood and the first to have a serious wine list. The food became even more refined and the prices went up commensurately.Camellia, who had been involved from the start, came on board full-time in 2001 when the group opened its first Masala Zone in Soho, followed by a second in Islington and a third, in Earls Court, in 2005. Chelsea wasn't the restaurant hotspot it once was,” says Mathrani. “We did of course have a loyal customer base there, but we suffered from being that little bit further out. Our City-based customers in particular were settling for the West End rather than coming over to Chelsea.”

Meanwhile, make the tadka. Heat the oil in a frying pan on a high heat, then add the mustard seeds and curry leaves. Cook for 30 seconds, until they begin to pop, then stir into the curry. Serve with rice and coriander to garnish. This one niggle aside, they appear content with what the restaurant has achieved and how it is perceived by customers and - as importantly, it appears - their peers. The 2005 Tatler Restaurant Awards recognised the trio's ground-breaking work by selecting them for the Restaurateur of the Year award, the first time it has gone to purveyors of non-European cuisine. Additionally, Amaya won both the London restaurant and new restaurant of the year awards in the 2005 Tio Pepe ITV London Restaurant Awards.If Camellia is a grand dame of Indian fine dining, she is remarkably unstuffy, saying it is fine to use some bottled ingredients (e.g. ginger and garlic) if you are in a hurry. She didn’t even raise an eyebrow when I confessed to the pork. “Sounds almost Hawaiian,” she said. “But that is creative. It is something they might do in Assam. They cook a lot of pork.” The name Chutney Mary referred to the kind of Indian woman of the British era who enjoyed the Anglo culture and was very modern and playful. To the Panjabi sisters, this epitomised Chutney Mary’s approach; something very different to other Indian restaurants in London at the time. ‘We were considered quite racy and radical,’ laughs Namita. Camellia Panjabi is the author of the world's best-selling book on curry, 50 Great Curries of India (Kyle Cathie 2006). It has sold over 800,000 copies and has been described as 'the definitive guide to Indian cooking'. The chefs asked me to give them recipes to cook the regional food I was demanding, so I went and researched classical food from the best families,” says Camellia, even as we spoon up a rarein-restaurants tahiri, the recipe of which apparently came from Sheila Dhar, writer, singer, gourmand, Madhur Jaffrey’s cousin and wife of PN Dhar, advisor to Indira Gandhi. From the royal families of Rajasthan and Hyderabad to Delhi society, all were quizzed for recipes.