A passage to India, in Lake Leelanau

By Susan Ager

Sun contributor

In Rosie’s kitchen, there are no recipes, no measuring cups or spoons or scales.

Ask Rosie how long it takes to make, say, her saag paneer (spinach with cheese), she will answer two to three hours. But more accurate is a lifetime: a lifetime of learning Indian cuisine, a lifetime of devotion to it.

In Leelanau County, for people who love food, Rosie is like Oprah. Her first name is enough. Born and educated in India, she has become the queen of authentic ethnic food in a county with very few Indian residents or tourists. But her cuisine is beloved, all of it prepared from scratch in a tiny old kitchen at the back of N.J.’s Grocery in Lake Leelanau and sold from a cooler near the store’s single check-out lane.

Since 2005, when she emigrated to America, Rosie – born Rajani Punhani (pronounced rah-ZHAN-ee poon-HAH-nee) – has built a following for the foods she learned to cook in India’s northwest Punjab province on her childhood home’s two-burner stove. By age 10, after her father died, she was cooking for her family of five, including her brother Sam Chugh, who manages N.J.’s, and another brother, Raj Aneja, who owns it from India.

Before Rosie wed in an arranged marriage at age 28 she earned two college degrees, in business and in education, but found that teaching didn’t suit her.

“I was kind of an artistic type, to make my own paintings, to paint pots, to knit and crochet,” she says. “Cooking was also my passion. I love to feed people. When people eat, that makes me so happy. I cook by heart.”

“By heart” means by memory, adding ingredients by intuition. But by heart also means by fate. She tells me more than once, “This is my destiny. This is my dream come true.”

Within five minutes of my arrival, Rosie is feeding me. First a hot cup of from-scratch chai tea, then two fried samosas with a green sauce that wakes me up! Then a to-go container of butter chicken, hot off the stove, with white rice, topped with cilantro and pickled onions. (I took most of it home to share.) 

She is short and compact, with an unlined face that looks younger than 56. She wears her black hair pulled back beneath a net, although a hank falls over her forehead. Around her neck is a thin gold chain, and around her wrists two gold bracelets – traditional wedding gifts to an Indian bride from her parents. Her frilly blue print apron is from Mexico, a gift from co-worker Miguel Albarran. A former cook at Hansen’s in Suttons Bay, Miguel now works on the edge of Rosie’s kitchen, preparing salsas, burritos and more. 

The kitchen, half as big as a one-car garage, is the warm, colorful, aromatic and tasty soul of N.J.’s.

Since she arrived almost 18 years ago, not much has changed in the kitchen but the lightbulbs. Its tiny powder-room sink is too small for her biggest pots. Next to the kitchen is the store’s back door, which swings open and shut dozens of times a day, gusting cold or blasting heat. One blessed change: The kitchen’s electric stove, the kind derided as finicky by serious cooks, was replaced early on with a gas four-burner. It’s now sooty and black, as if it’s been through hell.

On high shelves next to the stove are most of Rosie’s common spices, in plastic tubs, some relabeled with masking tape: cumin, fenugreek, cardamom, fennel seeds and others uncommon in American kitchens. On another shelf, bigger tubs of turmeric, and her own curry and garam masala, staples of the Indian kitchen.

“People say our food is spicy, but all of the spices have medicinal value,” she says. Turmeric in particular boosts the immune system, and she has been eating more of it during Covid.

She makes her own yogurt, and her own paneer cheese, similar to tofu in that it happily carries the flavors of whatever surrounds it. She boils milk on the stove then adds a glug or two of vinegar from the jug, then rinses the curds and pours them into a strainer lined with muslin from India, “because I can’t find the right thing here.” 

Rinsed after each round of cheese, she can re-use the same muslin for a year.

Aromatics like onion and garlic don’t come prepped from Gordon Food Services. They are peeled, chopped, pureed and stored in an upright freezer. Mint grows outside the door in the summer. Fresh ginger and cilantro are chopped daily. 

“We use mint and cilantro a lot. Some people say they don’t like cilantro,” she says, shrugging, “but they eat my food.” 

Her pride is her garam masala, so special she does not sell it out front as she sells most of her ingredients (like various lentils, chickpeas, even amchur or mango powder.) To begin, she lightly toasts the following in a pan: coriander seeds, cumin seeds, whole cloves, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, black cardamom, green cardamom, fennel seed, fenugreek seeds and carrom seeds, a type of carraway. She pulverizes it all in a spice grinder.

To give me a whiff, she unscrews the lid of a half-gallon plastic storage tub. Wow! It’s alive, unlike the 2017 jar of McCormick’s in my own cupboard.

Indian food wasn’t popular when she began cooking here. Brothers Sam and Raj immigrated to the U.S. first, seeking a business to run in California. Her husband Paul followed and ran a Blimpie’s in LA for a while. When West Coast opportunities dried up, a friend in Grand Rapids offered the brothers a small grocery in a remote northern Michigan town.

They bit. Sam’s wife Reena began cooking for the family in the grocery’s kitchen, and non-Indian employees, tasting Indian for the first time, persuaded her to offer it for sale. She left soon after for California, leaving Rosie alone in the kitchen.

N.J.’s was founded in 1912 by Noah Joseph Plamondon in what was then called Provemont. Six years later it moved to the current site. It might have advertised in the old days, but hasn’t since Raj bought it in 2004. Nor have Rosie’s wonders been widely promoted, although N.J.’s website lists 36 dishes available from what it calls India’s Kitchen. Word is that, come spring, a sandwich sign proclaiming N.J.’s Indian food will stand on the sidewalk.

Sam Chugh can’t say how much Rosie’s food helps his profit, but he knows that in 18 years, sales at N.J.’s have tripled, thanks in part to the Internet. Google “where to get Indian food” in northern Michigan and N.J.’s pops up. (Angela Dhami, whom Rosie calls a family friend, sells some Indian food from Deep’s in Northport, but offers far fewer options.) 

Early on, Rosie would prepare rice in a standard 8-quart pot in which you or I might cook chili for four. Now, she employs a restaurant super pot whose lid could double as a hubcap. She makes basmati rice daily, and sometimes in the summer twice a day. How?

“I take a plastic tub full of rice and I rinse it. You should always wash rice. It has some kind of thing that’s not good for your stomach. So, four or five times I rinse it then very gently fold it together with my hand. Never squeeze it! I soak if for 15 minutes in room temperature water. Then I start boiling water in a big pot, and I add salt and a little oil. When it’s hard boiling, drain the rice and pour it in. Never cook it slow. Then you just check, and when it’s just before done, 95 percent done, then you drain the rice in a strainer and then that’s it. Sometimes I had a little bit of cold water, but that’s it.”

As for chicken, 25 or 30 pounds of it gets cooked every other day in the busy season, then diced and mixed into her sauces for butter chicken, chicken briyani, tandoori chicken and, the most popular, chicken tikka masala.

That one is new for Rosie. Growing up vegetarian in a Hindu family, she has never tasted meat or fish. But soon after she started at N.J.’s, selling only meatless dishes, a customer asked if she could prepare chicken tikka masala for him.

“I found a recipe on the Internet,” she says, “and thank God for that chef and thank God for that customer because it is a big hit.”

But she refuses to handle raw chicken, letting other employees set breasts and thighs in roasting pans. Rosie subsists on fruits, vegetables and legumes, especially lentils (dal in India). She believes lentils are the easiest protein to digest. 

She is proud of her reputation. A few years ago, her chicken tikka was paired with Pinot Grigio wine at Boathouse Vineyards across M-204 from NJ’s, during a county-wide wine tour involving about 1,200 people. Afterwards N.J.’s was swarmed with hundreds of customers. “It was a huge hit,” says manager Jan Weber, “one of our most popular pairings. Everyone asked, ‘Where can we get this?’ and we sent ’em over to N.J.’s.”

Rosie also caters events and has fed as many as 200 guests at weddings. She teaches Indian cuisine to small groups who ask.

Most customers never see her, but some become friends. Barb Duvall of Suttons Bay, retired from the MSU Extension, met Rosie when both of their daughters attended Leland schools. She had never tried Indian food, but indulged her curiosity about Rosie’s culture. She has become a devoted fan.

“I try to tell others about her food but I always say, if you’re hesitant, start with the chicken tikka masala and white rice. Because she also makes biryani rice, which is spicy, and if you get that instead, and put the chicken tikka on top of it – you won’t forget it!

“The other thing she makes out of this world are the samosas! If you don’t get there early, they’re gone. And the green sauce that goes with them is to die for. I could eat that with a spoon.”

She introduced her sons to Rosie’s food when they were boys. One now lives in Traverse City and the other in Chicago, but when they’re home together they insist on two meals: pizza from the Roman Wheel in Suttons Bay, and Indian from Rosie’s kitchen.

Even Rosie’s daughter, Surbhi, a 27-year-old engineer for Kellogg’s, confirms that her mother’s joy is feeding people. “To her, it’s not like work.” In college Surbhi was obligated to haul back to her college friends as many samosas as she could. Her favorite dish when she comes home from Grand Rapids is her mother’s mustard saag with makki roti, a dish you won’t find on N.J.’s website. In her own kitchen, she says, “I try to follow my mother’s recipes, but it never tastes the same.”

Everyone I spoke with agreed: Rosie is humble, gentle and completely dedicated to her kitchen. Through it she supports her brothers’ business, which also employs her husband Paul as liquor and wine manager. Apart from occasional visits to her daughter, she works every day of the week, and almost every day of the year because N.J.’s is the only grocer in the county to remain open even on holidays. 

The couple have never owned a car and do not drive. When day is done, and the store is about to turn off its lights, Rosie walks the 100 yards to the home she shares with her husband and brother. Over her arm she carries a wire basket filled with supper, the same food she has cooked and enjoyed for decades, the authentic and true taste of the home to which she yet to return.

N.J.’s Grocery (njsgrocery.com) is open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. this season. Call 231-256-9195 for availability of specific Indian dishes, or to reserve them. Samosas sell out early!

Susan Ager, a former Detroit Free Press columnist, lives in Northport.