Cook This: 3 recipes from My New Indian Kitchen, including naan pizza

Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page.

Our cookbook of the week is My New Indian Kitchen by Vikram Vij with Jennifer Muttoo.

Vikram Vij didn’t plan to write another cookbook. But after meeting hospitality marketer Jennifer Muttoo — whom he calls Jaan (“my love” in Hindi) — first collaborating professionally, then building a relationship, the timing felt right.

“I said, ‘Jaan, we need to think about this. It’s going to be 30 years of Vij’s being open. I’m turning 60. There are lots of small milestones. You’re part of my life now. We’re all part of it together. Let’s create this thing,'” says the Vancouver-based chef.

Vij founded his flagship restaurant in 1994, breaking ground with his modern take on Indian cuisine. In 2003, The New York Times described it as “easily among the finest Indian restaurants in the world.” The accolades have kept coming, including the Michelin Guide Vancouver awarding it a Bib Gourmand in 2023 and 2024.

My New Indian Kitchen (Figure 1 Publishing, 2025) follows his 2017 memoir, Vij, and three cookbooks co-written with his ex-wife, fellow chef Meeru Dhalwala, who previously ran the Vij’s kitchen and now co-owns Lila with Shira Blustein: Vij’s Indian (2016), Vij’s at Home (2010) and Vij’s (2006).

When Vij met Muttoo three years ago, he was inspired by their conversations about food. “We would talk for hours about a dish.” He routinely sent Muttoo photos of works in progress. “She would say, ‘No, add some garnish to this,’ or ‘Add this to that,'” he says. “And so we kind of got together by talking about these recipes and these dishes.”

The book’s 80 recipes draw on their backgrounds and experiences together, including favourites from the restaurant, dishes rooted in Vij’s culinary school days in Austria, Muttoo’s grandmother’s recipes from South India by way of Guyana, including dhaal, rice bake and saltfish, and meals they can’t get enough of, such as chicken schnitzel with a tomato, nectarine, olive and burrata salad. “It’s very Austrian, slightly Indian, Italian,” says Vij. “You’re eating us on the plate, basically.”

Muttoo adds, “It’s the food we love. That’s what we put in the cookbook.”

Vij sees My New Indian Kitchen as “a truly Canadian book.” Like his menus, it features produce from Fraser Valley farms, seafood harvested from the Salish Sea and wine from British Columbia wineries — including a collaboration with Phantom Creek Estates in the Okanagan Valley and Vij and Muttoo’s first wine creation, Freedom Peacock Mala Blend.

“A lot of people veer towards wines from France or New Zealand or all of these other wines, but we’re looking at the tariffs and everything else that’s happening right now, and it’s right in our backyard. So, it’s just really tapping in and enjoying the wines that we have available to us,” says Muttoo. The partnership with Phantom Creek Estates started with a red wine to complement Vij’s dishes, Freedom Peacock Petite Cuvée, sparked by a conversation with the director of winemaking, Mark Beringer.

“That’s what we wanted to embody in this cookbook as well, that these visions and creative processes are also with connection,” says Muttoo. “It’s not just, oh, you come up with an idea, but it’s also through the bonds of connecting with people and how it can come to life so beautifully and unexpectedly.”

Along with photographer and author Gabriel Cabrera‘s food photography, the book includes photos Vij and Muttoo took on trips to North and South India. From the vibrant cover to the interior, it reflects their shared love of colour. “We’re almost like peacocks, we always say,” says Vij.

“I wouldn’t say it’s a cookbook. I would say it’s a journey book that talks about journeys and different elements of the restaurant that are very important, and what makes Vij’s, Vij’s, and what makes Jennifer, Jennifer, and what makes Vikram, Vikram.”

Vij adds that the journey has been a good one. With Muttoo in his life, he feels fulfilled. He writes that when he first opened Vij’s, there was a misconception about Indian food, ”that it was cheap, overly spicy and best paired with inexpensive beer.” Though Vij says the challenge still exists — ”even now, I still have people coming in and thinking that this is not authentic” — what’s changed is his certainty.

The restaurant has received international acclaim for its dishes, deep-seated in tradition but contemporary in presentation. In the restaurant’s early days, Vij didn’t know if they would survive by doing things differently. “Now we are confident that what we do is going to work because it’s heartfelt and delicious.”

Vij and Muttoo advocate cooking with your heart and eating with your hands in the book, which they see as an expression of freedom. It takes courage and strength to go your own way, says Muttoo. Doing so 31 years ago, Vij paved the way for a new generation of Indian chefs. “Freedom embodies the whole entire cookbook. It’s the binding of the cookbook, more or less, due to the fact that a lot of people (shy) away from creativity. They turn away from being those entrepreneurs in life, doing things that are not what everyone else is doing.”

Vij adds that he also sees it as freedom to express themselves and their Indian “rootstock”: his grafted via Austria to Canada and Muttoo’s via Guyana. “I don’t need to give up my rootstock. I don’t need to give up my Indianness,” he says. “You can still be who you are, but just with time, modernize yourself.”

1/4 cup Korma Sauce (recipe follows) 1 naan 1/2 cup sliced mushrooms 1/2 cup sliced bell peppers 1/2 cup grated paneer

Cilantro, for garnish