As an Indian American kid growing up in Georgia, Farhan Momin would see his friends eating restaurant fried chicken and barbecue sandwiches. Because his Muslim family eats halal, he could never partake.
Trapped between two cuisines — his Gujarati-born parents' home cooking and the forbidden fast food that lurked on every corner — he created his own singular style, starting at 6, when he announced he wanted to break Ramadan fast by making his own meal. The first grader was super proud of his Tandoori fried chicken, even if his dad told him it was a bit heavy on the spice. Little did he know it was the start of a recipe that would one day change his life.
In 2017, Momin put his Tandoori fried chicken in a biscuit, moistened it with his mom’s green and tamarind chutneys, and captured the heart of “MasterChef” judge Gordon Ramsay, who picked the Georgia native for Season 9 of the show. Then a dental student in Chicago, the Emory graduate sweated his way through 18 episodes of the amateur cooking competition before being sent home.
“I would always have tears in my eyes, every time I saw him on TV,” his mother, Eliza Momin, told me.
Credit: Chris Hunt
Credit: Chris Hunt
Today, Momin, once torn between a career as a chef and a dentist, manages to balance both worlds. When he’s not filling cavities or setting crowns, Dr. Momin — aka Chef Farmo — partners with his dad at Atlanta Halal Meat & Food, the combination butcher shop/fast-casual restaurant they opened a year ago in a Suwanee strip mall.
“My whole angle of cooking is all about these memories I have of eating my mom and dad’s food, and combining it with the food I was missing out on,” says Momin, 27. “I couldn’t eat Chick-fil-A. I couldn’t eat at a barbecue restaurant that all my friends were eating at. So how could I bridge the gap between these two things and come up with food that’s unique and very tasty?”
Credit: Chris Hunt
Credit: Chris Hunt
On a recent Sunday, Momin cooks the recipes for this article and, surrounded by family, sets the food on a table in front of the restaurant. The spread exemplifies his talent for combining Indian and Southern foodways.
There’s his famous Tandoori bird, marinated in buttermilk and deep-fried to perfection. There’s cornbread, modeled after a Gujarati snack cake traditionally fashioned from besan (chickpea flour). And there are two black-eyed pea creations, a falafel-like fritter and a chaat. Both are inspired by Indian street food. Both employ a legume as common to Atlanta as Ahmedabad. Both are transformed by the Momins’ green and tamarind chutneys.
A couple of bites, and you know why Farhan Momin is such an original.
RECIPES
Fried chicken, black-eyed peas, cornbread: Farhan Momin’s dishes marry Indian and Southern food in delicious and surprising ways.
Credit: Chris Hunt
Credit: Chris Hunt
Farmo’s TFC (Tandoori Fried Chicken)
Traditional Indian tandoori chicken is soaked in yogurt and spice, then cooked in a tandoor. Farhan Momin’s mingles his combined Indian-Southern heritage: He marinates chicken tenders in a buttermilk-based marinade, then deep-fries it.
Credit: Chris Hunt
Credit: Chris Hunt
Black-Eyed Pea Vada (Fritters)
On a trip to India in 2016, Farhan Momin encountered a vendor frying fritters (vada) made of ground mung beans — a traditional Gujarati street snack. He came up with the genius idea of replacing the mung beans with black-eyed peas, a staple in the cuisines of India and the American South. Serve them with Mrs. Momin’s Green Chutney and Tamarind and Apple-Butter Chutney (see recipes).
Credit: Chris Hunt
Credit: Chris Hunt
Mrs. Momin’s Green Chutney
Farhan Momin’s mother, Eliza, is famous in her circle for this bright condiment. Coconut powder can be found online or in Indian supermarkets, or you can make your own in the food processor. Simply grind unsweetened coconut flakes to make a coarse powder.
Tamarind and Apple-Butter Chutney
Cooking India’s classic tamarind chutney can be an all-day affair of stewing dates, tamarind pulp and unrefined cane sugar, then grinding the sludge into a sauce. Over the years, the Momins found that spicy apple butter is great stand-in for the dates.
Credit: Chris Hunt
Credit: Chris Hunt
Crispy Black-Eyed Pea Chaat
After seeing an episode of Alton Brown’s “The Best Thing I Ever Ate,” in which the TV star visited a bar that served fried black-eyed peas as a crispy snack, Farhan Momin was inspired to used crispy black-eyed peas to build a chaat.
Credit: Chris Hunt
Credit: Chris Hunt
Khaman Cornbread
In Gujarat, where Farhan Momin’s parents are from, a favorite street snack is khaman dhokla (squares of steamed chickpea-flour bread). Add cornmeal and buttermilk, and you have something very similar to Southern cornbread. Momin finishes his jalapeno and whole-kernel cornbread the traditional Gujarati way: tempered with a heady drizzle of oil (or ghee) infused with dried chiles, black mustard seeds, coconut and curry leaves.
Credit: Chris Hunt
Credit: Chris Hunt
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