About us
ABOUT NIRU
My name is Niru Kumra and I am in my 50s, born in Punjab in India and raised in Fredrikstad. I have always had an interest in food and got it through my mother’s milk with my mother as a hobby cook and my grandmother as a housekeeper teacher in 1947
I had my breakthrough in the school kitchen in the 6th grade, where I eagerly learned to make Norwegian cakes and yeast baking that my mother was not familiar with. I didn’t get a chef’s education, but several years at school with economics at Østfold district college, project management at BI and innovation at NTNU a few years after I started MasalaMagic. Through 13 years in various ministries, the private business world and not least the “school of life”, I have had incredible fun and at times challenging times.
On a daily basis, I live out my dream through masalamagic.net (started in 2003), where the dream of own chutneys was the seed of what is now a small “tree” of family business with a vision to make Indian food as well known as pizza, pasta and tacos. I am the first to have written an Indian cookbook in Norwegian, “Indian food on Norwegian plates” was published in 2004. Here the ball started rolling with cooking classes in school kitchens, which have now become part of my everyday life.
At Carl Berner, I have a course center where you can learn to cook Indian food, offer catering for private individuals and companies, culinary trips to India and now have a food range of 17 products, “Nirus Masalamagic”, which can be bought at, among others, Meny, Jacobs and Kiwis. In autumn 2017, I published my second cookbook “Masalamagic – the magic in the Indian kitchen”.
Otherwise, I have three wonderful children and a loving spouse who supports me and is my team-MasalaMagic. They are both guinea pigs, colleagues and cheerleaders when mother needs it.