The kitchen counter looks clean, and the sink isn't filled with a pile of dishes. It is a rare, no-cooking day for us. Three frozen packs holding parathas, batata wadas and samosas in frozen form are waiting to be grilled on the pan and deep-fried in preheated oil at 180 degree C.

Started by father-daughter duo Sandeep Kalia and Tanya Morarjee, Eat Fresh offers a menu of home-cooked items including aloo paratha, samosa and batata vadas that are frozen and have a shelf-life of up to six months. Kalia, who has worked at five-stars across India and overseas, along with Morarjee, who has a background in advertising, started supplying bulk orders to flight kitchens and banquets from their factory in Bhiwandi last year. "The lockdown brought its challenges of supplies and labour issues. We decided to launch a retail menu. The food is cooked normally and then cooled to a certain temperature, after which it is blast-frozen to around minus 22 degrees C. In some items like the samosas, we fry it to keep it from crumbling. The food has no additives and in fact, frozen food is more nutritional than food kept in the fridge as the bacterial movement is minimum," explains Morarjee.