CURRY IN A HURRY: Local doctor's sauces help put a delicious dinner on the table in about 20 minutes

August 9, 2005 - Detroit Free Press

BY SYLVIA RECTOR
FREE PRESS FOOD WRITER

Dr. Asha Patel has plenty to keep her busy: a thriving internal medicine practice at Beaumont, Royal Oak hospital, a husband who also is a doctor, two teenage sons and a house to care for in Bloomfield Hills. You'd think the last thing she'd want is a small business to run on the side.

But like hundreds of other entrepreneurs, Patel had an idea for a food product she believed in, one she was convinced would succeed and benefit busy home cooks if she could only get it to market.

It took months of testing and two attempts, four years apart, to do it, but earlier this year her patience paid off. Her line of three Indian curry sauces, called Tasha's, is in local stores.

Made with all-natural ingredients, the savory sauces are designed to let time-pressed cooks -- like her -- come home from work and get a nutritious, high-quality dinner on the table in as little as 20 minutes with minimal effort. Cooks simply simmer the low-fat, low-sodium sauces with poultry, meat, fish or vegetables and serve with rice for an entrée that serves three to four people.

As the friendly, outgoing physician sat at her kitchen table recently and talked about why and how she came to launch a line of cooking sauces, she seemed as pleased and proud as a new mother. And like most moms, she sees a bright future for her baby.

More to the point, perhaps, she thinks curries in general are destined to go mainstream.

"You see how many pasta sauces there are in stores?" she asks. "Forty years ago, there were no pasta sauces. Now you see how many there are. The same thing is going to happen with the curry sauce," she says.

There are infinite numbers of curries, a broad term that refers to dishes flavored with spices and cooked in sauces usually made with oil, onion and garlic, among other ingredients. As many as 20 spices can be used in a single dish, but chili, cumin, coriander, ginger and turmeric are among the most common.

The spices are not only the key to curry's flavor, they're the reason Patel thinks many Americans would feel better if they ate more of the highly seasoned dishes.

'A lot of benefits'

Patel grew up in Bombay, attended medical school and practiced as an obstetrician-gynecologist in India before moving to the United States in 1986 and completing a residency at Beaumont.

"If you eat spicy foods, it increases your metabolism," she says. "It has something like a laxative effect. It increases the secretions in your stomach. It helps digestion. There are a lot of benefits of spices."

When she was practicing medicine in India, none of her patients ever complained of constipation, but here in the United States, she says, "everybody does." She believes the difference is diet. "Here, they are eating a lot of meat, a lot of fatty foods, plus they don't have anything like spices to increase their digestion."

Eating a lot of fast food is especially bad because it's usually so high in fat, she says. Too much fat in the diet can cause constipation and possibly lead to problems including colon cancer, but she believes spices can help counteract those effects.

"All the spices aid digestion. ... Every spice has some positive effect on your digestive tract -- cinnamon, cardamom, garlic, tamarind, cumin" and more, she says. The Web site she set up for Tasha's -- www.tashafoods.com -- shows pictures of many of the spices she uses and describes confirmed and possible health benefits of each one.

One of the most important and commonly used spices in curry is turmeric, containing a pigment called curcumin, the focus of numerous international scientific studies going back several years that suggest it may help combat or prevent colon cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other illnesses, she says.

The research, plus her family's involvement in the spice trade, started Patel thinking about how she could use spices to help people.

"We have a family business that, for 100 years, has exported spices to Australia, London, the United States, everywhere. I thought, 'Why don't I do something with this?' So four years ago, I started designing curry sauces."

Patel wanted something that would be easy and quick to use, but also "something that was healthier, with less salt, less sugar and less calories" than the imported, prepared curry sauces she had found in U.S. stores.

"I thought I could design something better, so I tried a lot of different ones and experimented on my children a lot," she says, laughing. She also invited Indian friends to try them, especially the coconut one designed for use with fish. It's more common to southern India's cuisine, so she had southern Indian friends taste it.

But Tasha's sauces -- Cashew Chicken Curry, Ginger Garlic Curry and Coconut Seafood Curry -- are designed for American palates, she says. They're made with freshly ground spices and other fresh ingredients for bold, distinctive flavor, but they use less chili pepper so they'll be less hot, she says.

A slow process

When Patel was satisfied with her recipes, she took them to Elena's in Auburn Hills, where officials had said they would bottle her product when she was ready. But the company -- which produces its own line of pasta sauces as well as other specialty foods for individual producers like Patel -- told her it couldn't handle the job after all, Patel says.

Because she thought Elena's was the only company that could make the sauce the way she wanted, she decided to bide her time. "I said fine, my son is in high school, and I will wait. Then when he went to college, I decided to try it again."

In the meantime, Elena's had expanded its facilities, and this time it agreed to produce Patel's sauces.

Elena's chief financial officer, Caroline Lewis, says the company helps its clients with technical advice and doesn't make judgments about whether products will succeed in the marketplace. That said, though, Lewis thinks Patel's sauces are right on trend.

"I think she's really tapping into a great market," Lewis says. "A lot of people want to make dishes at home that they're eating out."

Still, launching a new food product is always a gamble, not to mention difficult.

"It takes a lot of hard work and a lot of motivation and determination for people to make something of it," she says. "You really have to be out there." If they can survive the first two or three years, Lewis says, the chances improve that they'll survive longer term.

Patel doesn't say how much it cost to launch her products, but she says she feels fortunate that she and her husband, Beaumont psychiatrist Dr. Hiten Patel, were financially able to. Although she now has a distributor working with Indian and other ethnic markets, she first walked into Detroit's top specialty markets and sold them the products herself. It was a good feeling.

"I took a box to Papa Joe's," she recalls, and when they agreed to carry it, "I thought, 'They want it!' "

Medicine and her patients come first; the sauces are only a hobby, she says, but it's one she values, enjoys and believes in.

"I thought, 'Let me do it. It's not wrong. People can be introduced into this.' And so I am doing it. It sounds funny -- my being a physician and doing this, but if people want to criticize, I think I don't care," she says with a smile.

She's also proud of the example she is setting for her sons.

"If you have an idea, go for it. My children are seeing me do this -- taking the box of sauces and going and doing this. That's in their minds. And tomorrow, if they don't have a job, they can go and do. ... It's like a win-win all the way."

Where to get the sauces

Tasha's curry sauces sell for about $3.99 per 12.5-ounce bottle and yield three to four main-dish servings when prepared and served according to label directions.

Nutritional facts, recipes and more information, including a list of retailers, are available at www.tashafoods.com.

The sauces are available at these stores:

Ann Arbor, Hiller's and Foods of India; Berkley, Westborn Market; Birmingham, Papa Joe's and Market Square; Bloomfield Hills, India Gate; Canton, Devi Groceries and Anand Bazaar; Commerce Township, India Bazaar;

Farmington Hills, India Grocers, Asia Grocers, Mediterranean Market, Namaste Plaza, Bharath Bazaar and India Gate; Ferndale, Holiday Market; Livonia, Joe's Produce; Northville, Hiller's Market; Plymouth, Hiller's Market.

Rochester Hills, Aditya Foods and Papa Joe's; Southfield, Vic's; Sterling Heights, Aditya Foods, Larmi Foods and International Foods Inc.; Troy, Holiday Market, Balaji Foods, Good Food Co., Hasan Brothers and Asia Market; Warren, Produce Palace; West Bloomfield, Market Square, Hiller's Market and Babylon.

Contact SYLVIA RECTOR at 313-222-5026 or rector@freepress.com.