A Kitchen Full of Stories is your ninth book. How is it it different from your earlier books? This is more than just a cookbook themed around traditional Malabar food. It is an amalgamation of stories and recipes. Most recipes are preceded with stories from my personal life or a memory behind the dish. Also, none of the books I have authored have such beautiful visual elements. Every recipe in this book has been tested by someone other than me. We requested for volunteers on my social media — my Facebook page, and several people offered to help. They followed the recipe, tested it and gave us feedback, which has gone into the book. My granddaughter Nazaneen tested out almost all the recipes and ensured that the methodology was consistent. So, when someone tests a recipe from the book, they will, rest assured, end up with the perfect dish. The book took seven years to complete. Would you agree that this is your most personal book so far? Yes, because it has stories and anecdotes from my life, and is a peek into my culinary journey. In the initial days, Nazaneen spent time recording my stories and writing them down. She spent a lot of time in Calicut (now Kozhikode) and we spent hours talking. She collected photographs and articles and we went through old documents and paper cuttings. Then, she came down again and we spent close to 10 days cooking and photographing dishes. You started cooking seriously when you were almost 40. Walk us through your culinary journey. I grew up in Thikkody and moved to Calicut in 1942 after getting married. There, I stayed in my maternal aunt’s place for a while. All through this time, I never encountered the need to cook. However, I did spend a lot of time in the kitchen, observing the different processes and methods. It was only when I moved to Chennai, in 1967, and my first daughter got married, that I entered the kitchen and started cooking myself. My husband, V Abdulla, loved good food and would often encourage me to try out new cuisines. He would take me to Gymkhana club in Chennai and get me to taste a new dish, and then ask me if I could prepare it at home. Around the same time, I joined the catering college in Adyar and learnt about preserving and pickling, and making jams and squashes. With my new skills in hand, I decided to set up a pickling unit. I supplied pickles, especially the cocktail onions, to five star hotels like Taj and Ambassador Pallava. Did you always want to put it all down in a book? My husband was in the publishing world and he came up with the idea that I should write a book on Mappila cuisine. At first, I was unwilling because I couldn’t imagine how to bring all the ingredients down to units of measurement. I had to get a pair of scales and weigh each of the ingredients and write them down, and test it out. This process went on for all the recipes and that is how the Malabar Muslim Cookery was born. The next three books followed in quick succession, one of them being a Malayalam translation of the Malabar Muslim Cookery. What are some of your favourite childhood memories about food? My grandmother, Ummama, could cook up several dishes at the drop of a hat. One of the things she did was preparing the kayada — parcels of ground rice, Mysore banana and jaggery steamed in banana leaves. She would take an entire stalk of bananas and head to the store room where she would lock herself in. She believed it would never turn out right if someone watched her prepare the snacks. But I would somehow gain access to the store room after pleading with her. She would peel all the bananas and mash them all together and prepare the Kayada in bay leaves. Mappila cuisine continues to be, in your own words, ‘shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding’. Why do you think this is the case and how can we popularise this cuisine? I do agree that there is a lot to Mappila cuisine that hasn’t been explored yet. The reason may be that of presentation of the cuisine and, partly, there is not enough exposure of the cuisine. A Kitchen Full of Stories is an attempt to increase awareness about Mappila cuisine and get more people to try these dishes out. Many of the dishes in the book are challenging for modern times. I wouldn’t say that everyday cooking is challenging. But there are some exceptions like the mutta mala and ayila nirachathu. These require some skills, and, are therefore, more complicated than the others. Of course, there are shortcuts to most things today and I do use them myself. For instance, the rice flour for ari pathiri is available in the stores and can be used directly instead of the long process of grinding rice and using it. But there are other things I haven’t given in to — using readymade coconut milk, for example, is a complete no-no. Would you agree that the cuisine is more skewed towards meat lovers? That is not true. Most people think that Muslims eat only non-vegetarian food. I actually made a vegetarian thali consisting of Mappila dishes which I served to Maneka Gandhi. Chena varatharachu charu (yam in roasted coconut gravy), muringayila charu (Drumstick leaves in coconut gravy), and pachcha karmoosa charu (raw papaya curry) are all vegetarian dishes. Why did you decide to self-publish this book instead of going to a professional publisher? From the beginning, we knew that this book was going to be different from all my earlier books. The treatment of the book, including the photography and text, was very different. We spoke to a few publishers and realised that it won’t be possible to realise our vision for the book if we took the standard route. When is the book out? This is a crowdfunded book and we are already taking pre-bookings on the site www.ummiscorner.com. We offer three packages — a signature package, where one can become a co-producer and his/her name will appear in the credits section of the book. The second one, called fan package, comes along with a booklet called ‘Cooking in my Dreams’, which contains recipes I have created over years. The last one is called a collector’s special and comes with just a book.
