At Rimutaka Prison, north of Wellington, inmates have learned to make gourmet Indian food.
Prisoners incarcerated for crimes are rekindling their humanity through the culinary arts.
Chetan Pangam, executive chef of One80 Restaurant at the Copthorne Hotel in Oriental Bay, Wellington, has been mentoring prisoners on how to make masala lamb cheeks, potato tadka, baingan masala (smoked egg plant), and more.
Pangam was one of two guest chefs (the other was Amy Gillies of Salty Pidgin) who accompanied Wellington chef Martin Bosley, pioneer of the Rimutaka Prison Gate to Plate event, on two occasions. The Gate to Plate is an annual event that forms part of the food festival, Wellington on a Plate.
The programme, launched by Bosley in 2012, serves up food to the paying public for three consecutive nights on the prison premises, overseen by Department of Corrections staff.
The event has been a sell-out with limited tickets lapped up in a matter of minutes.
“It was a bit daunting at first,” Pangam told the Indian Weekender. “But going inside a prison and working with the inmates turned out to be a fun experience.”
Pangam has done the event twice, first in 2016 and again in 2019.
“Because I went there the second time around, there were a few inmates who were there in the prison kitchen from the previous years,” Pangam recalled.
That helped him gauge where their skill sets were at.
“Rimutaka is a working prison with a proper commercial kitchen inside the prison,” Pangam explained.
“The first time I went in, I was amazed at the scale and the volume of it, and how it operated.
Six to eight months prior to the event, each of the chefs made his or her own signature dishes with the inmates, teaching them from scratch on weekly visits to the prison. The prisoners were given the recipes, briefed on the concepts and guided through the dishes.
Then each chef sat down with the inmates to design the menu for the event.
This was not Pangam’s first visit to a prison. His father was a police officer back in India and so Pangam was familiar with jails. But he had never seen a “working prison” before.
“It was a massive eye-opener for me. We had a television crew following us around.”
But the most satisfying part of the Gate to Plate experience for Pangam was the rehabilitation angle.
“Five prisoners have been released [since the programme started]. All five have found employment in the hospitality industry on release. One of them owns his own lunch bar and a catering business. This is easily one of the most successful programmes Corrections has run,” Pangam noted.
The Gate to Plate event has emerged as the showpiece programme of the Department of Corrections, with inmates from other prisons around New Zealand drawn to it and looking for a transfer to Rimutaka.
“The whole idea of the programme was to find work for the prisoners and get them back [into mainstream society]and take the stigma away from someone who’s been inside [prison],” Pangam explained.
Encountering the spices that Pangam introduced them to was daunting for the prisoners as well. They had never heard of or tasted those spices before.
Pangam proudly asserts that Indian food is his specialty, his cuisine of choice, but is quick to admit that he knows “only 25 percent of what’s out there.”
“Every household in India has its own spice mix, masalas, blends and secret [recipes] that are passed on from generation to generation.”
Pangam was surprised how well the inmates adapted to the “pronunciation” and “flavour profiles” that were very different from what they were used to.
Pangam’s signature dish was the “chettinad spice roasted lamb loin” to go with masala baby turnips and “lamb cheeks braised in a spice mix,” served with “baingan bharta.”
For that event, Pangam used a special curry leaf-infused extra virgin olive oil, supplied by his friend and olive oil producer Nalini Baruch of Lot 8 Olive Oil in Martinborough, South Wairarapa.
But Pangam’s presentation of Indian cuisine moves away from the clichéd, typical naan-roti-dhal model.
Pangam explained: “Indian cuisine has come very, very far [from that model]. There are obviously still a lot of restaurants that do the typical Indian [style] that is known to most of the people.
“But there are umpteen restaurants all around the world, in NZ too, that are doing the style of cuisine that is now known as progressive or Modern Indian cuisine.”
Pangam said on the menu or in pictures this progressive cuisine may not look Indian. But the spices the food was cooked in made it unmistakably Indian to taste.
There were no rotis, naan or rice served at the Rimutaka Prison culinary event.
The big take-away for Pangam from the Gate to Plate event was the level of the cuisine served on the night.
“It was the kind of food that would be served in any fine dining restaurant anywhere in the country.
“It was that level of food that we were serving to 80 people that had brought tickets to a record-time sellout event. And expectations, I would assume, were quite high.”
The Rimutaka Gate to Plate event is currently on hold due to Covid 19 restrictions.
[One80 Restaurant is launching their Spring menu. Link to website: www.one80restaurant.co.nz ]