}
The Cookbook of Us, Volume 1 [OH853]
Nikesh writes:
My mother once told me, "If you want people to know who you are, offer to cook for them". A meal is heritage and taste, history and smell all wrapped up together into the alchemy of a plate of food. You can learn a lot about a person from what they cook for you. Are they pulling out a showstopper to wow you, is it something simple and quick to fill your belly and stimulate conversation, is it something technical, or is it something from their past, something that paints a picture for you of them, of their family and of their history? Each dish tells a story. Each mouthful is a piece of our souls.
When I eat khichdi (a simple Gujarati rice and lentil dish, sometimes referred to as 'peasant food') I can taste all the times my mother or someone in her family has been ill. I can taste the way they were cared for with this comfort dish. I can taste years of love and care and attention, all in a mound of ricey-lentily goodness. That is food to me. That is Indian food. Not tikka masala. Are you rogan joshing me? When I have my kaki's theplas, I can taste her youth in Bombay, the frenetic interplay of cumin and fenugreek conjure up an intense epic time in the maximum city.
When I smell Gujarati food, it's like my mum's still alive.
I wish I'd learned to cook like my mum did. I wish I'd let her teach me when she offered. I was a week away from leaving home and she said teaching me some simple dishes would mean I was never far from home. That way, when I cooked for people, they would get a sense of her, and a sense of who I am because of her. I was too late. And now, I chase her through smell and taste and I try and replicate the dishes she wanted to teach me so that our culture would live on. Food is important because the kitchen is important. The kitchen is the main thoroughfare of any household. It's a magnet. Here we eat, we talk, we share secrets, good times, bad times, strange moments, smells, touches, arguments, make-ups, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Everything happens here.
Afraid that our recipes were dying out, not being passed on from generation to generation because of apathy, an apathy I saw in myself and worried was being replicated amongst my peers.
We take photos of food other people have prepared for us to post on the internet. We gather together to watch food competitions. The kitchens are other people's. The recipes are designed to appeal to the masses. We meander through recipe books designed to help us cook more for less, quick meals in short bursts of time, gourmet meals with complicated ingredients, on a budget, to lose weight, the staples, the show-stoppers - none of these recipes will mean as much to us as those of our mothers.
When I got married, my mother-in-law supplied my wife and me with a recipe book as a wedding present. Inside the recipe book were dishes from all of our families, their staples, what they were famous for, what they considered their signature dishes. Inside the book were three recipes by my mother. I can cook them all with my eyes closed. And every time I do, I’m transported, like I'm in a time machine, to another space and another place. I’m in my mum's kitchen, reading comic books, while she cooks dhal-bhatt-shaak-rotli, her foot up on a bench, her small black serrated knife cutting vegetables into the palm of her hand.
Because if the house smells like her and tastes like her and sounds like her, it’s like she’s there. She never left me.
Preserving family recipes, that's what I'm obsessed with. That's all I want to do. I want to preserve our ways, the ones that are the first to go, or the second along with language. I want to preserve the way we smell and we taste and we sound. Because if my kitchen smells like your family, and it tastes like your family and it sounds like your family, I’ll be part of you.
If you want people to know who you are, offer to cook for them.
What follows below is that cookbook, Volume 1: The ladies of Dhek Bhaal. One piece of advice I was given: 'Always use a teaspoon, never a tablespoon'
1. Chicken Biryani - by Rukhiya Bibi
"These days when I cook, I end up adding too much salt or chilli so my kid cooks for me. I learnt from my mum. From watching me my daughter has learnt too. This is how we pass it on. Forever.
First, in a saucepan you boil rice and in another, you brown onions then add masala all the ones you use for a biryani. You need onion, chopped tomatoes, red chilli, curry powder, tomato powder, turmeric and you mix this all together. Sometimes, you can add ginger, garlic, pomegranate, ground coriander and garam masala. Then you add the chicken. When the rice is cooked, take it out of the saucepan. You have to create layers in your biryani. These days kids just add the rice straightaway to the chicken, but I don't like that."
2. Aubergine Curry - by Raj Kaur
"I learned to cook from my dad, My mum had TB so I couldn't learn from her. My dad cooked really well, even meat, everything. My family are now in India. Whenever I go to India, my sons they always say, Mum, you cook, and then I cook for them.
The aubergine you cook under the grill. While it cooks you slice up some onions, tomato and chilli and then add salt and pepper and chillis. When you're ready, fry this in a tarka. First brown the onions and spices and then you add the grilled aubergines and mix together. When it's cooked, serve it with fresh coriander and that's it. I like to eat it with mattar chawal (rice and peas). This is where you brown onions and add jeera in oil. Then you add the rice and peas. Add double the amount of water to the rice to boil (1 cup of rice equals 2 cups of water). That's it. They cook really well."
3. Chicken Tandoori - by Maksuda
"I taught myself how to cook because my mum passed away when I was young. So I learn on my own by heart. I was 10. I have a very big family and I just looked around, I just watched and learnt.
You wash the chicken and put lemon and salt on it and leave for 5-10 mins. Then you mix some masala, like chicken tikka masala, kashmiri masala or tandoori and masala. Mix all three masalas together and add salt and red or yellow coloring mix together and coat the chicken. You can cook the chicken in the oven or you can steam it."
4. Palaak - by Ashida
"These days it is easy to cook because everything is written down. My God taught me how to cook. We lived in a village and we would make meat once and week. We would make vegetables, aloo mattar, gobi. I just learnt everything by watching an auntie or sister.
Palaak da saag is very easy. Take an onion, a little garlic and ginger and fry and then add tomatos and then add the saag. If you want to add anything else that is up to you."
5. Dhal - by Fazal
"My mother always said to me, 'When I pass away you will remember me too'.
You need one cup of yellow dhal and, one cup of water. Soak one in the other. Chop up some garlic and add it with green chillis. Heat some oil, chilli and turmeric, curry masala and tomato powder. Make a mixed masala paste – also add one spoon of curry powder and salt. When it's a paste, add the dhal and two cups of water. If it has soaked enough, the dhal should be ready in 15/20 minutes."
6. Karela (gourd) - by Kalsoom
"When I was young I never went near the hot pots... I just watched. I feel like she is standing next to me, she used to cook so well. She used to make kadhi, everyone used to love it and people would come over to have some. Saying can we have some kadhi. That's how well known her kadhi was. My mum had a very big heart. No one would leave our house hungry.
You peel the karela, well that is how I do it, I don’t like the skin on them. You peel and cut them and take the seeds out. You slice the karela on one side and then use a spoon to take the seeds out. You just add the seeds to the masala and grind everything together. We use ginger, garlic, jeera, onions and garlic. I use everything, dry coriander, masala, I put everything in and try fry it all up and fill the karela with the mixture and add to the frying pan. So first you peel the karela and add salt to them, the salt helps the karela to release any excess water, I then fry the karela and then fill them. So wash them, peel and salt. Wash them well in water and then fry them in oil, then you fill them with the masala and just like how I made tinda (another gourd) you make these like that."
7. Lentils and Rice - by Salma
"We never used from the shop any kind of spice, no we grind in the house. In olden times we even had a chakki, two pieces of stone, big ones and the women would grind the wheat in the house and they used that grinder and the roti was so lovely and soft. My mum's very nice cooking always used an angeethi (fire stove), not the gas cooker, not the oil cooker, no, wood, they used wooden pieces on the angeethi and she cooked very nice, there was a slow cooker and a slow fire, even the lentils, even small vegetables.
First you soak the lentils, however many you want make and then you rinse them. The lentils I use is chana dhal. That is my favourite dhal. So you boil the lentils and keep it bubbling over, in the meantime you make the masala.
You put ghee in a pan with onions, dry coriander, garam masala, green chilli, tomato and then fry it all together but just a little. Then you add this to them lentils and then you add fresh coriander. It comes out wonderful."
8. Keema Biriyani - by Hajra Bibi
"Child, I have been cooking all my life, curries, rice, lentil, everything. It is easy for me.
I have jeera, coriander, black pepper and some other masala. I fry the keema really well and then add the tomoatos the sprinke the masala on top. Then I create a layer of keema, one layer of rice and another layer of keema and rice again. Then I press it for 10/15 minutes and you get first-class biryani.
So just by teaching our kids how to cook and that obviously will be passed down by generation to generation. So just make sure you always cook Indian food ar home."
My mother once told me, "If you want people to know who you are, offer to cook for them". A meal is heritage and taste, history and smell all wrapped up together into the alchemy of a plate of food. You can learn a lot about a person from what they cook for you. Are they pulling out a showstopper to wow you, is it something simple and quick to fill your belly and stimulate conversation, is it something technical, or is it something from their past, something that paints a picture for you of them, of their family and of their history? Each dish tells a story. Each mouthful is a piece of our souls.
When I eat khichdi (a simple Gujarati rice and lentil dish, sometimes referred to as 'peasant food') I can taste all the times my mother or someone in her family has been ill. I can taste the way they were cared for with this comfort dish. I can taste years of love and care and attention, all in a mound of ricey-lentily goodness. That is food to me. That is Indian food. Not tikka masala. Are you rogan joshing me? When I have my kaki's theplas, I can taste her youth in Bombay, the frenetic interplay of cumin and fenugreek conjure up an intense epic time in the maximum city.
When I smell Gujarati food, it's like my mum's still alive.
I wish I'd learned to cook like my mum did. I wish I'd let her teach me when she offered. I was a week away from leaving home and she said teaching me some simple dishes would mean I was never far from home. That way, when I cooked for people, they would get a sense of her, and a sense of who I am because of her. I was too late. And now, I chase her through smell and taste and I try and replicate the dishes she wanted to teach me so that our culture would live on. Food is important because the kitchen is important. The kitchen is the main thoroughfare of any household. It's a magnet. Here we eat, we talk, we share secrets, good times, bad times, strange moments, smells, touches, arguments, make-ups, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Everything happens here.
Afraid that our recipes were dying out, not being passed on from generation to generation because of apathy, an apathy I saw in myself and worried was being replicated amongst my peers.
We take photos of food other people have prepared for us to post on the internet. We gather together to watch food competitions. The kitchens are other people's. The recipes are designed to appeal to the masses. We meander through recipe books designed to help us cook more for less, quick meals in short bursts of time, gourmet meals with complicated ingredients, on a budget, to lose weight, the staples, the show-stoppers - none of these recipes will mean as much to us as those of our mothers.
When I got married, my mother-in-law supplied my wife and me with a recipe book as a wedding present. Inside the recipe book were dishes from all of our families, their staples, what they were famous for, what they considered their signature dishes. Inside the book were three recipes by my mother. I can cook them all with my eyes closed. And every time I do, I’m transported, like I'm in a time machine, to another space and another place. I’m in my mum's kitchen, reading comic books, while she cooks dhal-bhatt-shaak-rotli, her foot up on a bench, her small black serrated knife cutting vegetables into the palm of her hand.
Because if the house smells like her and tastes like her and sounds like her, it’s like she’s there. She never left me.
Preserving family recipes, that's what I'm obsessed with. That's all I want to do. I want to preserve our ways, the ones that are the first to go, or the second along with language. I want to preserve the way we smell and we taste and we sound. Because if my kitchen smells like your family, and it tastes like your family and it sounds like your family, I’ll be part of you.
If you want people to know who you are, offer to cook for them.
What follows below is that cookbook, Volume 1: The ladies of Dhek Bhaal. One piece of advice I was given: 'Always use a teaspoon, never a tablespoon'
1. Chicken Biryani - by Rukhiya Bibi
"These days when I cook, I end up adding too much salt or chilli so my kid cooks for me. I learnt from my mum. From watching me my daughter has learnt too. This is how we pass it on. Forever.
First, in a saucepan you boil rice and in another, you brown onions then add masala all the ones you use for a biryani. You need onion, chopped tomatoes, red chilli, curry powder, tomato powder, turmeric and you mix this all together. Sometimes, you can add ginger, garlic, pomegranate, ground coriander and garam masala. Then you add the chicken. When the rice is cooked, take it out of the saucepan. You have to create layers in your biryani. These days kids just add the rice straightaway to the chicken, but I don't like that."
2. Aubergine Curry - by Raj Kaur
"I learned to cook from my dad, My mum had TB so I couldn't learn from her. My dad cooked really well, even meat, everything. My family are now in India. Whenever I go to India, my sons they always say, Mum, you cook, and then I cook for them.
The aubergine you cook under the grill. While it cooks you slice up some onions, tomato and chilli and then add salt and pepper and chillis. When you're ready, fry this in a tarka. First brown the onions and spices and then you add the grilled aubergines and mix together. When it's cooked, serve it with fresh coriander and that's it. I like to eat it with mattar chawal (rice and peas). This is where you brown onions and add jeera in oil. Then you add the rice and peas. Add double the amount of water to the rice to boil (1 cup of rice equals 2 cups of water). That's it. They cook really well."
3. Chicken Tandoori - by Maksuda
"I taught myself how to cook because my mum passed away when I was young. So I learn on my own by heart. I was 10. I have a very big family and I just looked around, I just watched and learnt.
You wash the chicken and put lemon and salt on it and leave for 5-10 mins. Then you mix some masala, like chicken tikka masala, kashmiri masala or tandoori and masala. Mix all three masalas together and add salt and red or yellow coloring mix together and coat the chicken. You can cook the chicken in the oven or you can steam it."
4. Palaak - by Ashida
"These days it is easy to cook because everything is written down. My God taught me how to cook. We lived in a village and we would make meat once and week. We would make vegetables, aloo mattar, gobi. I just learnt everything by watching an auntie or sister.
Palaak da saag is very easy. Take an onion, a little garlic and ginger and fry and then add tomatos and then add the saag. If you want to add anything else that is up to you."
5. Dhal - by Fazal
"My mother always said to me, 'When I pass away you will remember me too'.
You need one cup of yellow dhal and, one cup of water. Soak one in the other. Chop up some garlic and add it with green chillis. Heat some oil, chilli and turmeric, curry masala and tomato powder. Make a mixed masala paste – also add one spoon of curry powder and salt. When it's a paste, add the dhal and two cups of water. If it has soaked enough, the dhal should be ready in 15/20 minutes."
6. Karela (gourd) - by Kalsoom
"When I was young I never went near the hot pots... I just watched. I feel like she is standing next to me, she used to cook so well. She used to make kadhi, everyone used to love it and people would come over to have some. Saying can we have some kadhi. That's how well known her kadhi was. My mum had a very big heart. No one would leave our house hungry.
You peel the karela, well that is how I do it, I don’t like the skin on them. You peel and cut them and take the seeds out. You slice the karela on one side and then use a spoon to take the seeds out. You just add the seeds to the masala and grind everything together. We use ginger, garlic, jeera, onions and garlic. I use everything, dry coriander, masala, I put everything in and try fry it all up and fill the karela with the mixture and add to the frying pan. So first you peel the karela and add salt to them, the salt helps the karela to release any excess water, I then fry the karela and then fill them. So wash them, peel and salt. Wash them well in water and then fry them in oil, then you fill them with the masala and just like how I made tinda (another gourd) you make these like that."
7. Lentils and Rice - by Salma
"We never used from the shop any kind of spice, no we grind in the house. In olden times we even had a chakki, two pieces of stone, big ones and the women would grind the wheat in the house and they used that grinder and the roti was so lovely and soft. My mum's very nice cooking always used an angeethi (fire stove), not the gas cooker, not the oil cooker, no, wood, they used wooden pieces on the angeethi and she cooked very nice, there was a slow cooker and a slow fire, even the lentils, even small vegetables.
First you soak the lentils, however many you want make and then you rinse them. The lentils I use is chana dhal. That is my favourite dhal. So you boil the lentils and keep it bubbling over, in the meantime you make the masala.
You put ghee in a pan with onions, dry coriander, garam masala, green chilli, tomato and then fry it all together but just a little. Then you add this to them lentils and then you add fresh coriander. It comes out wonderful."
8. Keema Biriyani - by Hajra Bibi
"Child, I have been cooking all my life, curries, rice, lentil, everything. It is easy for me.
I have jeera, coriander, black pepper and some other masala. I fry the keema really well and then add the tomoatos the sprinke the masala on top. Then I create a layer of keema, one layer of rice and another layer of keema and rice again. Then I press it for 10/15 minutes and you get first-class biryani.
So just by teaching our kids how to cook and that obviously will be passed down by generation to generation. So just make sure you always cook Indian food ar home."
