Scotland's taste for curry seems undiminished since it first became trendy in 1970s Glasgow thanks to establishments such as Ashoka, Shish Mahal and Koh-i-Noor. 

You only have to look at the list of nominations in the Scottish Curry Awards 2014 to see that the whole of the country has embraced Indian cuisine, even if Glasgow does remain the country's self-proclaimed curry capital.

Echt Tandoori (Aberdeenshire), Akash Restaurant (Helensburgh), Coriander (Oban), Bombay Brasserie (Dunfermline) were all voted restaurant of the year in four regions; Uzairs Tandoori (Motherwell) was takeaway of the year; and Cook Gill, co-founder with Indi Singh of the rapidly expanding restaurant chain, Cook & Indi's World Buffet in five locations near Glasgow, has been crowned Curry King of the Year (his brother Charan Gill founded the Harlequin Group, Europe's largest Indian restaurant chain before he sold it in 2005).

Nothing ever stays the same for long, and that's especially true of food trends. Indian cuisine is not immune, and a personal memoir by Monir Mohammed, founder in the early 1990s of the Mother India restaurant in Glasgow (and now with second one in Edinburgh as well as Mother India Cafe, two Wee Curry Shop restaurants and two Dining-In Delis) illustrates how updating and modernising a menu is vital for survival.

Monir - and his photographer Martin Gray - grew up, as I did, in the early days of Indian restaurants in Scotland. Chicken tikka masala, biryani, lamb rogan josh and plenty of pakora were staples, along with flocked wallpaper and dim lighting.

The young Monir learned authentic Punjabi cuisine from his mother Hajra Bibi, and versions of her haddock curry and tinned salmon with boiled eggs curry have made their way onto the menu at his restaurants.

Luckily he hasn't adopted his teenage favourite of deep-fried pizza supper; he grew up in a four-bedroomed tenement in Glasgow's east end in the 1970s with his parents, married brother and his wife, plus two other brothers and a sister, and didn't like his mother's curry, always preferring chips and British-style takeaways.

Nevertheless he learned how to make the best chicken stock with old hens rather than younger birds after his dad made an arrangement with a local farmer to have four delivered to their flat every week; they would be killed by Monir and his father in the halal way and used for curry, while chapatis were homemade by his mother.

His brother Jamil took on a restaurant in Bathgate in the late 70s - the Taj Mahal, the first Indian restaurant in the area - and all family members had to help.

"In those days, people did make the jump from running grocery shops to restaurants, they simply thought, 'a restaurant is a kind of shop'", he writes.

"The chat among the Asian community was that a restaurant was somehow a step up from a corner shop, with a higher profit margin," writes Monir.

Chicken Maryland and steaks were also offered for those who hadn't acquired a taste for spiced food.

Moni himself opened his first restaurant in Dalry, but it was one particular stay at his father's farm in Pakistan, to look after his ailing father and mother many years after his parents had returned to live there, that gave him the grassroots culinary experience necessary to branch out and open Mother India. 

They lived off the land for everything, except lentils and salt, which meant that the buffalo had to be milked, eggs had to be fetched and onions dug up each day; as his father grew his own wheat, Monir learned how to have it milled and to make it into bread (chapatis were always made by the women). 

Cooking for his parents was a daily challenge to get them interested; as a result his cooking skills improved and his palate developed.

On his return home he opened the original Mother India at a time when Ashoka was the dominant Indian restaurant chain, so he decided to do something new: a shorter menu of authentic Punjabi cuisine he'd learned at home, served on vintage Scottish Edwardian tableware. 

Vegetable curry with cauliflower, mushrooms and peas; karahi dishes and on-the-bone chicken curry - a revolutionary step at the time - were received by Glaswegians with open arms who loved the new look.

Monir's memoir is something more: a cookbook of recipes honed over time plus some distinctly modern ones, all using Scottish ingredients. Monkfish kebabs, lamb chops with baby turnips and spiced Cullen skink are just some of them.

It's a reflection of how Indian cuisine has become a real part of city life, always changing with the times.