In a way, the journey which has resulted in Zarine Khan’s new book, “Family Secrets: The Khan Family Cookbook”, really started back when she was a 14-year-old girl, living with her family in a private Jussawala Wadi compound in Juhu, and every morning on her way to the bus-stop, would pass a house with a “fair, elderly lady.” It is this lady, the regal Bibi Fatima Begum, who’d later become Khan’s mother-in-law, that the book is dedicated to. “She always had a wide smile for me, and she befriended me and got me interested in the taste of real cooking.”
Khan begins her book with an introduction that paints a charming, old world picture of close-knit communities, first love and the ever-present aroma of home-cooked, delicious meals. She introduces Bibi Fatima’s four dashing young sons, and tells us about going steady with Abbas, who’d later change his name to Sanjay, enter the movie industry and become an overnight star. Khan would later marry her childhood sweetheart, and the bond with that sweet lady she’d met on her way to school every day would become even stronger.
It was their mutual love for food that brought the two women together. “I came from a Parsi household, and food was always an important factor. I had a voracious appetite, though thankfully I was also a sportsperson in school. I was the sports prefect and played throwball and netball.”
While Khan remembers her own grandmother’s wonderful cooking, it was when she started dating Sanjay and visited his home that she saw the regal, awe-inspiring Bibi Fatima sit in her chair in front of the sigri, and closely oversee the preparation of the meal, that she became fascinated. “It was her passion to see that the food turned out very good, was laid out beautifully on the table, and that her family really enjoyed it.”
Khan, though used to Parsi food in her own home, adapted quickly to this new cuisine. “I loved the slight tang of the tamarind in the food, an influence from Hyderabad and Bangalore.” She remembers her daily routine. “It was the May holidays, and every morning, Sanjay and I would go for a walk on the beach, and come back for lunch in his house.” Khan loved the food and devoured it, something that Bibi Fatima was very happy to see. “It was mutual, the love between us.”
One day, Khan took a pencil and paper, and sat down with the older lady to write down the recipes she so loved. “I admire my capability at that young an age, to have that initiative.” Khan continued to collect these recipes, and soon, there were more than a hundred she had put down on paper. “After we married, and Sanjay became a star, we had to get a secretary. I was a very young bride, only 19, but I remember taking the initiative to ask the secretary if she’d put all the scraps of paper I had noted the recipes on into a notebook. She put them all together in her beautiful handwriting, with neat headings. It is this notebook that we still use in the family. Even when our cooks change, I teach them from this notebook, so the style of the food in the house has remained the same.”
There are other influences of her mother-in-law that Khan has retained. “I used to like also how she mixed and matched her food. It was not all one colour; her table had a variety of colours. It used to look very appetising, not like how you go to many restaurants these days and whether you asked for a butter chicken or a Mughlai curry, it all looks the same. Her table used to look different, and I continued doing this with my food after marriage. My table always had delicious spread of different colours.”
As Khan’s children grew up and got married, they continued to crave the dishes their mother made. “We were fortunate enough to live very nearby to each other, so that every time they had a party, I would get requests of mom can you send the biryani (a hot favourite) or shami kababs.”
So Khan had an idea. “Instead of keeping my notebook just with me, I got the entire thing printed and bound, made a copy each for all my children and gave it to them, so that they’d be able to use it too.” But the custom of sending food from her home continued, and one day, when her daughter Sussanne had a dinner party at her home, and served her mother’s famous biryani, one of the guests said, “Why don’t your mama write a book? We hear that all the food in their home is very tasty! Since we aren’t invited there, we don’t get to taste it, but if there is a book, all the people who don’t get invited can taste her food too.”
The idea caught on, and soon, every one of Khan’s children was urging her to write too. Khan says that while she initially resisted the idea, busy with interior designing, her career for the last four decades, she finally gave in. “Sussanne said that I wouldn’t need to put too much time since I already had everything written down. Little did I realise that the recipes I had written down didn’t have exact measurements. When you are a cook you don’t need exact measurements, you cook by andaaz , instinct and approximation. But in a cookbook you need the exact measurement. I had to do the whole thing all over again, and it did take a while, a year-and-a-half”
Even though it was hard work, Khan says that she enjoyed the process immensely. “Now, the finished product, with the beautiful pictures taken by Ashima Narain, is great. We wanted to keep it a casual book, so we put in a little background of the family, their pictures, stories about my children and grandchildren. It’s a great coffee table book too, a visual treat,” she adds.
The book itself, with delectable, homey food that signals a warm, cosy family meal, contains recipes that are, Khan says, unchanged. “I have added a few continental dishes, a few Parsi ones, but I have not changed a thing about my mother-in-laws recipes. If I did, their taste would be lost.” The book, she adds, only has recipes which are incredibly easy to make, with ingredients available anywhere in the country. “Our cooking is very easy. There is one red masala and one green masala, and you usually use either red or green, and then add other ingredients like a little coconut powder, sometimes a little imli, sometimes a little milk. But the basic masalas are the same. They also don’t use any heavy ingredients, like kaju and heavy milk and cream.”
Every few pages, Khan has put in a portrait of a family member with their favourite dish. There is Zayed Khan who “has repeat helpings whenever red masala chops, kalmiri ka char, and white rice are served,” Yuraaz, who loves biryani, Simone Arora, who “can’t get enough of the mutton dhansak with brown rice and kebabs,” and Sanjay Khan, who loves his wife’s Persian aash maash. “This is a very family oriented book, and I asked all of them for their favorites to put in the book. We are a very bonded family, and I cook for their enjoyment.”
