Author: Joan Nathan
Publication: The New York Times
Date: April 23, 2003
Stepping through the hand- carved
marble arches in Arvind and Bhagwati Amin's home in Bernardsville, N.J.,
is like being transported to a palace in their native India. The Amins
have a suite on the main floor. Their sons, Deepak, 36, and Archit, 37,
and their families occupy separate wings of the house. Each day, everyone
gathers to pray together in the family's Hindu temple.
The luxuries they enjoy have their
roots in a humble food: Hot Mix, a spicy Indian trail mix of fried noodles
made from chickpea flour and tossed with cashews, pistachios and spices.
It was the first item produced by the family business, Deep Foods, which
Arvind Amin, 61, laughingly calls "the Frito-Lay, Häagen-Dazs and
Stouffer's of Indian food." The company makes 65 snack foods, as well as
ice cream and frozen entrees.
Over three decades, Deep Foods has
been a barometer of change in the market for Indian food in America. When
the Amins came to this country, few Indian products were available, so
they made their own. Their company, with headquarters in Union, N.J., is
the leading Indian packaged food manufacturer in the United States, according
to authorities like Julie Sahni, the Indian cookbook author and teacher.
Mr. Amin left Gujarat in India in
the 1960's to take a degree in finance at Xavier University in Cincinnati,
and was then hired as an accountant by Western Electric in New Jersey.
Mrs. Amin and their sons came over in 1971. At the time, about 90,000 Indians
lived in the United States, a third of them in the New York metropolitan
area.
Mrs. Amin, known to friends as a
fine vegetarian cook, started deep-frying thin noodles in their garage.
Those noodles, stirred with spiced nuts, became Hot Mix, a hit among their
friends. As word spread, Mrs. Amin stuffed it into plastic bags and shipped
it around the country by U.P.S. for sale. On weekends, Mr. Amin visited
Indian stores and introduced it in person.
Store owners wanted a wider variety
of products, so Mrs. Amin began making different snack mixes as well as
importing chutneys, basmati rice, chickpea flour and spices. As the business
grew, more family members came from India to help. In 1977, the Amins incorporated
the business; they set up a 650-square-foot factory in Lyndhurst, N.J.,
and named it Deep Foods, after their younger son, Deepak, whose name means
lamp. In 1981 Mr. Amin quit his job to work at Deep Foods full time.
"When I joined the company," he
recalled, "my wife said: `You work for the company and manage the business
affairs, but you cannot touch the ingredients. There will be no compromising
on quality.' "
In 1985 they bought a small ice
cream company and a freezer truck. Now Deep Foods sells 14 flavors, including
fig, pistachio, mango and cashew raisin. Ice cream led to frozen entrees,
which coincided with a high-tech boom that drew many Indians into the work
force but left them no time to cook.
Mrs. Amin was ready to fill the
need. Joined by other Indian women, she started cooking the vegetarian
dishes she knew so well, spicing them and freezing them in small portions.
An automated system now doles out the precise amount of spice for a given
dish, letting the company produce 20,000 meals a day.
"We created the frozen food industry
for the Indian population," said Archit Amin, the company's director of
marketing. "It was an alternative for the younger generation and for housewives
who worked. Indian food is hard to make."
By 1991, the Indian population had
increased to 400,000 in the New York area alone. The demand for Indian
food surged as well. Soon, mainstream stores began stocking frozen Indian
entrees like kafta curry, palak paneer and samosas, many bearing the Deep
Foods label. Today, the company has several lines: Deep Foods Indian is
strictly classical vegetarian, Arch Foods offers non- vegetarian Curry
Classics and Green Guru features Indian, Thai and Asian vegetarian and
vegan dinners.
As the business grew, the Amins'
sons went to college, joining the company afterward. Although Mr. and Mrs.
Amin had fallen in love and married against their parents' wishes, both
sons opted for arranged marriages. In 1988 Arvind Amin went to India to
meet young women who might make appropriate wives for his sons. Archit
Amin fell in love with one of them from a photograph his father brought
back. "I knew I was going to marry her the first time we met," he said
of his wife, the former Monal Surti. Even their wedding, in 1988, tied
in to the family business: the couple taste- tested many Indian ice creams
and discovered one made with an improved mango pulp, which became a principal
ingredient at Deep Foods.
A few years later, Deepak Amin also
had an arranged marriage. His wife, the former Dipali Mehta, learned cooking
basics from her mother-in-law and went on to the New York Restaurant School.
She graduated with highest honors, despite some culture shock. "It was
so hard," she said. "I had never seen a lobster before and was a vegetarian."
After graduation, Dipali Amin started testing recipes for the family and
helped it expand into pan-Asian foods.
At home the family talks constantly
about food and tests and tastes recipes. The modern kitchen, which feeds
the household's six adults and five young children, has a six-burner Thermador
stove and a built-in wok base. An electric tandoori oven is ready to make
roti, the flat bread. The pantry is filled with imported ingredients, including
at least 10 kinds of dal (lentils, peas and beans), essential to an Indian
vegetarian diet, and spices, which the family grinds fresh.
Bhagwati Amin keeps an eye on her
daughters-in-law as they cook and clean, which they do together constantly,
at home and at work. "I treat them like my daughters and leave everything
to them," she said. "Love and self-discipline are the keys."
As the matriarch of both the family
and the family business, Mrs. Amin may appear to be taking a back seat
as her sons and daughters-in-law take the company into its fourth decade.
But she is still the center. In the family kitchen, she says, when no else
is around, she makes her traditional vegetarian dishes and serves them
with "a daily prayer to God before each meal."
