Profile

PAT CHAPMAN Founder of the Curry Club, Pat Chapman is Britain’s foremost expert on curry and spicy foods. He is a popular guest chef at food shows, and his Curry Club residential weekend courses are renowned. He has guested on many television programmes, including Who’ll Do The Pudding, This Morning, Food & Drink and Good Food Live and he had a regular spot on Good Morning with Anne and Nick. His 36 books have sold over one million copies with titles including: The Curry Club Indian Restaurant Cookbook; Sainsbury's Curries; Balti Curry Cookbook, 250 Hot and Spicy Dishes from Around the World, Thai Restaurant Cookbook, Taste of the Raj, The Curry Bible, The Balti Bible and the annual Good Curry Restaurant Guide. His lastest book is the stunning India - Food and Cooking published through New Holland (2007).

Biography

From a very early age Pat Chapman had a passion for spicy food which he virtually inherited. His family had lived in India for five generations, and as a child Pat regularly sampled his granny's curries and even visited the very few Indian restaurants in London at that time. Not surprisingly, Pat was on the road to becoming a curryholic!

He studied at Bedales and Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, gained a diploma from the Institute of Marketing and became Marketing Manager with Lesney Products. Throughout this time Pat was experimenting with Indian cooking, striving to recreate the curries of his childhood. It was from this that The Curry Club was born.

Started by Pat in 1982 as a part-time venture, it grew rapidly and membership now stands at 15,000. Over the years Pat and his team have staged over 400 curry nights around the country. Pat is a popular guest chef at food shows, he takes culinary tours to India and his Curry Club Cookery Courses are renowned.

Pat is a veteran television presenter. For eighteen months, from 1995 until the programme closed, he achieved a regular daytime slot, cooking live on BBC TV's flagship Good Morning programme. In 1997 he cooked on GMTV, This Morning, UK Living's Live at Three, BBC's Food and Drink, BBC's Good Food, Granada Good Life, Carlton Food Network and, accolade of accolades, three Asian programmes: BBC's Network East, Central's Eastern Mix and Zee TV's Breakfast Show. He has also appeared in two episodes of Who'll Do The Pudding, once with Ken Hom, the other with Madhur Jaffrey.

His 36 books have sold over one million copies, including The Curry Club Indian Restaurant Cookbook (Piatkus), Sainsbury's Curries, Balti Curry Cookbook, 250 Hot and Spicy Dishes from Around the World, Curry Club 100 Favourite Tandoori Recipes and Bangladeshi Restaurant Curries - all published by Piatkus and Good Curry Restaurant Guide, published by Hodder & Stoughton. His Thai Restaurant Cookbook and Taste of the Raj were published by Hodder & Stoughton as were the following books are The Curry Bible, The Vegetable Curry Bible and The Balti Bible. His lastest book is the stunning India - Food and Cooking published through New Holland (2007).

During Autumn 97 he contributed spicy pieces to the Daily Telegraph, whose Max Davidson recently said of him: 'Chapman is to curry, what God is to the Old Testament!' It is his enthusiasm and dedication to his subject that has established Pat Chapman as Britain's foremost expert on curry and spicy foods.

Updated 2/03/2009