I’ve never really liked Indian food in restaurants – too much greasy, bastardised food that does my belly in – but I’ve always enjoyed cooking it at home. I enjoy roasting the spices and pounding spices and chopping herbs and smelling the smells (Indian food is perhaps the most fragrant), so I’ve always been interested in this programme. Trouble is I’ve never really warmed to Anjum Anand, the series’ presenter.

For a review from the last series of Indian Food Made Easy go here, or to have a look at our Food TV section, go here.

Last night, to kick off the series, Anjum took a closer look at Keralan cuisine and travelled to Liverpool to meet with some of the city’s large Keralan community.

Anjum also visited Mitchell family who live to sing in harmony at the dinner table. That was weird. Anyway, the Mitchells loved curry but matriarch Lynne didn’t know how to cook it. That was her challenge – to learn how to cook three new dishes and for her to present them at a farmer’s market.

“This is interesting… this is tapioca, a starchy Indian vegetable.” That was Anjum at a local Indian supermarket, in a very heavily-scripted-but-made-to-look-spontaenous segue. But still, she took the tapioca root vegetables back and got to work with Lynne – spicy tapioca mash (yum!), some homemade pickles (double yum!), and coconut chicken fry (impossible for me to comment, I’m a veggie), an amazing fish curry, vegetable noodles in a coconut broth and a salmon wrap.

Then it was off to do the usual cookery show thing, and there was a healthy mix of in-kitchen cooking and on-location stuff. What I liked about this was the fact the series used someone like Lynne, as she learnt first-hand from members of Liverpool’s Keralan community, as our own eyes and ears. As Lynne learnt about the flavours and spices and techniques, so did we.

As for Anjum, I’m still not totally convinced. I can’t quite put my finger on it why there are lingering doubts. Sure, like most cookery shows, there’s a certain amount of contrivance and forced dialogue, but I just feel Anjum is a little bit cold and too manicured. Do you know what I mean? Maybe I’m being unfair, because she seems nice enough and very passionate about the food.

At the end of the day though, Indian Food Made Easy is all about the food, and the food was terrific. I was reading Brian Viner’s review in The Independent this afternoon, and he said that as soon as Anjum started roasting spices and talking about tapioca he and his wife turned off and reached for the ready-made curry paste in the cupboard. I disagree a bit – the food was really lovely-looking and definitely made me want to cook one of the dishes. Can’t get fairer than that for a cookery series.