I started my underground restaurant almost ten years ago. I couldn't afford to set up a restaurant of my own (average cost to set up a restaurant in London is around a million quid), so I decided to use my own home. Ruminating on the idea since visiting Cuba in 2000, things really took off when I started my food blog in 2008. Suddenly I had a way to disseminate and publicise my own events. Social media was a game changer.

The Guardian turned up to cover the first night which was intimidating; I was still feeling my way around the whole project. Restriction inspires innovation: I pre-sold tickets after no shows; I saw that large shared tables with family-style plates worked best, giving people a chance to socialise with strangers; I got creative with themed dinners, people would even dress up. As well as my personal blog msmarmitelover.com, I started a communal site, Find a Supper Club, to inspire others. I always had it in mind to start a movement, an eating revolution, where home cooks could earn money and gain confidence, retired chefs could flex their cooking muscles without relapsing into the grind of 16 hour days and, most importantly, enable women, still so absent in professional kitchens, to have a part-time restaurant in keeping with their family commitments.

A decade later, you can find supper clubs all over the world. I have spent the last few weeks in India where, via the website Authenticook.com, I visited the home restaurant of Jyoti Vora in Bombay.
Arriving by tuktuk, from the outside, the building looked scruffy and unprepossessing.
I knocked nervously on the front door on the first floor, and the door opened wide to reveal a white tiled luxurious flat. Jyoti's son and daughter in law welcomed me in with a bowl of marigolds and candles, daubing my forehead with orange powder and placing a fragrant jasmine flower bracelet on my arm.

Jyoti's family originally came from the Gujarat region, but moved to Bombay so her food was Gujurati. (Locals don't call it Mumbai). Grandma was there too, sitting smiling on the ornate blue velvet sofa. I was handed a pink drink, flavoured with rose and fresh coconut, and, snacking on the freshest peanuts boiled in tamarind and salt, in their shells, I was shown around the flat. In one of the bedrooms there was a large swing hanging from the ceiling, held by large metal chains with tiny brass elephants.

They explained 'It is popular in Gujarat to have an indoor swing'.

On the wall, there was also an elaborate shrine to Shiva. Two tiny figurines were dressed up in mini gold saris.

'We change their clothes everyday, give flowers, offer prashad (a kind of holy Rice Krispies), and light candles.' 

Jyoti took me into the kitchen where she and her servant (everyone has servants in India) taught me how to cook a Gujarati feast. As we cooked we chatted.

'Every region has its own type of cuisine. Gujurati food is considered very sweet by Indians. We like to combine flavours in the same dish: salt with sweet, tangy with bitter. '

After a couple of hours of cooking, the whole family sat down.

 The meal was presented on a silver platter with small silver bowls, Thali style. The 'wet' curries were ladled into the bowls and the drier curries were spooned onto the tray. We started with two kinds of roti bread, rice comes at the end of the meal. There are a selection of 10 different pickles and chutneys, each home made.

Typical Gujurati dishes include patra, made with colocassia leaves, stacked and folded, spread with chickpea batter, steamed then fried. I had two types of dal, one very simple and the other for special occasions, a kind of royal dal including pistachios, cashews, raisins with chapati dumplings. I had a steamed rice cake, similar to idli, called Khichyu. The colours, flavours and textures were exquisitely unique and very different to eating in an Indian restaurant.

I was taught how to eat Indian style, using the tips of my fingers and the thumb to push the rice into my mouth. I lacked elegance and grandma laughed toothily at my efforts, telling me to stick to a spoon.

Ultimately this is the point of supper clubs, the movement I founded: not only do you get to eat delicious family style food that isn't served in restaurants, but I discovered more about Indian life in that one afternoon than in a whole month travelling around India.

Gujarati Royal Dal for Sunday lunch

Bhopal:

'This is India' shrugged a local.

That evening the travel agents sat around a bonfire drinking rum. Wanting to avoid this, I'd found a precious spot in a corner of the restaurant where I could charge my laptop and access the internet to publish a blog post. But one very drunk travel agent repeatedly interrupted me, tottering to the table, learning over me, bawling nonsense. At first I tried to be polite but by the sixth time I stood up and ordered him out of the room. My inner memsahib was emerging.

Drowsing I was awoken at 1.30 am by the sound of multiple WhatsApp texts from one of the Travel Mart organisers barking at me for not having made sufficient arrangements for where to go after the Fam trip.

 'It's not my job to help you' she said. 

She was a tourism marketing employee. What was her job then?
We had to be up at five am in the morning to travel to our next destination, Pench. 
She ordered me to tell her by the next morning what precisely I was doing after the Fam trip ended.

'Look it's 1.30 in the morning and I have to be up in three and a half hours' I wearily texted back.

Before the trip she had assured me that it would be easy to make arrangements while there. But there was no time, and no internet to send emails. She accused me of lying about the internet.

'How is it that you can use WhatsApp?' she scolded.

I don't know. I don't know how the internet works. Now I felt upset and abandoned. I'd manage but I'm unused to being told off as if I'm a naughty child, by text, in the middle of the night. 

A nice room in Pench

We think of pumpkins as an autumnal North American food, although I was disappointed to discover that they usually buy canned when baking pumpkin pie. There is a wide selection of pumpkins and squashes: from giant pin cushion style of Turban Squash, to spaghetti squash, or the dense sweet flesh of acorn squash and butternut. 

Pumpkin can be found in Mexican, Japanese, Indian and Italian cuisine. Squash are a vegetable that improves with time: they can be matured over from last year, deepening in flavour, if kept in a cool dry place. Note that the enormous pumpkins that are carved into lanterns aren't the best for eating, being watery and tasteless.

Halloween occurs as autumn turns to winter: the wet amber leaves have been swept up and the nights begin to frost. Here are a few tips and recipes to expand your pumpkin repertoire and a couple of wine suggestions.

Interesting squashes/pumpkins you should try:

• Butternut squash. I love it roasted and tossed into salads or served with couscous, a few pomegranate seeds and parsley. The 'coquina' variety is nicely sweet.
• Spaghetti squash. Once baked, the centre can be forked into spaghetti-like strands. You can treat it like courgetti, a gluten-free replacement for pasta and the latest trend for fashionable 'clean' eaters. Or add lashings of salty butter and parmesan, as I do.
• Tromboncini. Trombone-shaped Italian squash. When young, slice up and use like courgette; when older, use like squash.
• Gem squash. Wonderfully sweet: stuff and bake.
• Acorn squash. Another small squash. Can be pureed into soup or stuffed.
• Onion squash. Small, baked, mixed with cheese. This is great on toast.
• Kabocha squash. Popular in Japan. Perfect simply roasted with soy sauce, ginger, sesame seeds and served with sushi rice.
• Hokkaido. Teardrop-shaped, deep red/orange squash. Use in a tart, a soup or simply roasted.
• Delicata squash. Italian from Lombardy. Difficult to find in the UK but it's easier to chop up than other squashes and the skin is edible so no peeling required. Roast with a little salt.
• Crown Prince. Large blue/grey skinned squash with sweet orange flesh inside.
• Harlequin. Pointy decorative squash is also good to eat.
• Turban squash. Spectacular - looks just like a Turkish hat.

Pumpkin Soup Recipe: