April 23, 2003  NYTimes Dining & Wine  

Laura Pedrick for The New York Times

FIRST TASTE Amin family members in their New Jersey home. In foreground, Bhagwati and her daughter-in-law Dipali; behind them, from left, Arvind, Nisheel and Deepak. 

Laura Pedrick for The New York Times

ALWAYS AT HAND Some of the spices the Amins use in creating their dishes. 

From a Deep-Fryer in a Garage to an Indian Food Empire

By JOAN NATHAN

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."