Exuberant Diwali Sweets From a Rock-Star Chef

RALEIGH, N.C. — As a child growing up in Chandigarh, India, the chef Cheetie Kumar knew that Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, was approaching by the aromas emanating from the kitchen. She remembers catching the scent of whole milk simmered with freshly cracked cardamom and carrots in the air as she ran outside to play.

“I cannot tell you what I was playing or whom I was playing with,” Ms. Kumar said. “But those smells are with me to this day.”

At Garland, the restaurant in downtown Raleigh she opened with her husband, Paul Siler, in 2013, Ms. Kumar makes Indian and pan-Asian food with a vibrant North Carolina slant. A self-taught cook, she thrives by uniting global flavors and erasing the geographic boundaries of ingredients and techniques.

Her food is nuanced and edgy, and so is she: Ms. Kumar moonlights as the lead guitarist for a rock band, Birds of Avalon. “It’s a creative outlet as well as a source of creativity,” she said.

Her path to professional kitchens wasn’t a linear one. In the early 1980s, when she was 8, she and her family immigrated to New York and lived on Gun Hill Road in the Bronx. There, her relationship with cooking developed more from duty than delight. Her parents — each has a Ph.D in biochemistry — worked full-time in immunology research. Despite the demanding schedule, Ms. Kumar’s mother prepared Punjab-style homemade meals virtually every weeknight.

“We went out for dinner maybe four times a year,” Ms. Kumar said. Her mother’s dinners always had at least one vegetable, like the fragrant cauliflower-and-potato dish aloo gobi, and some kind of dal finished with tomato tarka alongside basmati rice, chapati, yogurt and mango pickle.