The Settler’s Cookbook: A Memoir of Love, Migration and Food - Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
March 5, 2009
Posted by ismailimail in Art and Culture, Books, Community Activities, Ismaili Cuisine, Ismaili Muslim Authors.
Tags: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
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Book Description
This is a warm, personal memoir from one of Britain’s most high-profile and vocal immigrants - a mouth-watering exploration of the author’s East African Indian roots through the shared experience of cooking.Through the personal story of Yasmin’s family and the food and recipes they’ve shared together, “The Settler’s Cookbook” will tell the history of the Indian migration to the UK, via East Africa. Her family was part of the mass exodus from India to East Africa during the height of British expansion, fleeing famine and lured by the prospect of prosperity under the imperial regime. In 1972, they were one of the many families expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin who moved to the UK, where Yasmin has made her home with an Englishman. The food she cooks now, in one of the world’s most ethnically-diverse cities, combines the traditions and tastes of her family’s hybrid history. Here you’ll discover how Shepherd’s Pie is much enhanced by sprinkling in some chilli, Victoria sponge can be wonderfully enlivened by saffron and lime juice, and the addition of ketchup to a curry can be life-changing…
About the Author
YASMIN ALIBHAI-BROWN is a leading commentator on race, multiculturalism and human rights, writing for the Independent and Guardian and appearing regularly on TV and Radio. She is the author of No Place Like Home (1995) and the IPPR report True Colours, on public attitudes to multiculturalism.
Amazon
Times Online Review
The Independent UK Review
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/0 ... hai-brown/
The Settler’s Cookbook: A Memoir of Love, Migration and Food
Ismaili Cookbook: Secret Family Recipes of the Assassins
A.U. Pendragon
Ismaili Cookbook: Secret Family Recipes of the Assassins describes the secret family culinary recipes of the Ismailis, an ancient group of Shiite Muslims otherwise known as the Assassins. These mouth-watering mysteries have been passed down generation after generation over the millennia. The cookbook documents their delicious secret culinary mysteries with over fifty recipes covering breakfast, vegetarian, poultry, beef, seafood, desserts and beverages. This cookbook reveals delicious decadent delicacies and scrumptious succulent secrets. The author includes ingredients, instructions, photographs, famous quotes and their own descriptions that will fly the reader on a magical carpet ride to the realm of never-ending pleasure. This priceless treasure is a secret long hidden in the magical caves of the Ismailis. This book is perfect for the novice cook to the expert chef and for everyone who loves to eat delicious, tasty food!!!
http://www.publishamerica.com/shopping/ ... Search=Yes
or
http://www.amazon.com/Ismaili-Cookbook- ... 013&sr=8-1
A.U. Pendragon
Ismaili Cookbook: Secret Family Recipes of the Assassins describes the secret family culinary recipes of the Ismailis, an ancient group of Shiite Muslims otherwise known as the Assassins. These mouth-watering mysteries have been passed down generation after generation over the millennia. The cookbook documents their delicious secret culinary mysteries with over fifty recipes covering breakfast, vegetarian, poultry, beef, seafood, desserts and beverages. This cookbook reveals delicious decadent delicacies and scrumptious succulent secrets. The author includes ingredients, instructions, photographs, famous quotes and their own descriptions that will fly the reader on a magical carpet ride to the realm of never-ending pleasure. This priceless treasure is a secret long hidden in the magical caves of the Ismailis. This book is perfect for the novice cook to the expert chef and for everyone who loves to eat delicious, tasty food!!!
http://www.publishamerica.com/shopping/ ... Search=Yes
or
http://www.amazon.com/Ismaili-Cookbook- ... 013&sr=8-1
Reviews for Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s The Settler’s Cookbook
May 28, 2009
Posted by ismailimail in Books, Ismaili Muslim Authors.
Tags: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
trackback
These reviews were forwarded by Dr Vali Jamal, Kampala, Uganda, which he received in an on-going communication with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. We thank Dr Jamal for bringing them to our notice. Please visit Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s website http://www.alibhai-brown.com/ and Dr Jamal’s blog www.vivaeastafrica.blogspot.com.
‘a book that is particularly touching, charming and elegiac’. A.A Gill, Sunday Times
‘The journalist writes about her past, the Ugandan Indian Diaspora; her arrival in Great Britain in 1972; her years at Oxford, relationships, family and career. Both Elizabeth David and, more recently, Claudia Roden have made the links between food, history and geography, but this is a wonderful book that takes the connections further. There has been little written about the ‘wahindi’, the Indian settler’s in Africa and Alibhai-Brown gives us a history of those empire builders who were expelled after Independence .’ Royce Mahawatte, Times Literary Supplement
‘ This wonderful book …is a path breaking record, but also a compelling, moving narrative: of shifting identities, survival and …maternal love’ Susan Williams The Independent
‘Alibhai-Brown’s response to an upbringing in a secretive community is a determination to tell all…a courageous degree of honesty for anyone, let alone a Ugandan Asian woman…a brave little book’. Jeevan Vasagar The Guardian
‘This is an unexpected joy of a book. Woven around the people, places and dishes that have shaped Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s life, it follows an emotional and culinary journey from childhood in pre-independence Uganda to London in the 21st Century. It is a voyage filled with edible mementos…evocative, revealing and often tender ..it is s story seldom told.’ Lucas Hollweg The Sunday Times
‘an unusual memoir-cum-cookery book which uses food as an emotional touchstone for memory and cultural history’ Clare Allfree Metro
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/0 ... -cookbook/
May 28, 2009
Posted by ismailimail in Books, Ismaili Muslim Authors.
Tags: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
trackback
These reviews were forwarded by Dr Vali Jamal, Kampala, Uganda, which he received in an on-going communication with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. We thank Dr Jamal for bringing them to our notice. Please visit Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s website http://www.alibhai-brown.com/ and Dr Jamal’s blog www.vivaeastafrica.blogspot.com.
‘a book that is particularly touching, charming and elegiac’. A.A Gill, Sunday Times
‘The journalist writes about her past, the Ugandan Indian Diaspora; her arrival in Great Britain in 1972; her years at Oxford, relationships, family and career. Both Elizabeth David and, more recently, Claudia Roden have made the links between food, history and geography, but this is a wonderful book that takes the connections further. There has been little written about the ‘wahindi’, the Indian settler’s in Africa and Alibhai-Brown gives us a history of those empire builders who were expelled after Independence .’ Royce Mahawatte, Times Literary Supplement
‘ This wonderful book …is a path breaking record, but also a compelling, moving narrative: of shifting identities, survival and …maternal love’ Susan Williams The Independent
‘Alibhai-Brown’s response to an upbringing in a secretive community is a determination to tell all…a courageous degree of honesty for anyone, let alone a Ugandan Asian woman…a brave little book’. Jeevan Vasagar The Guardian
‘This is an unexpected joy of a book. Woven around the people, places and dishes that have shaped Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s life, it follows an emotional and culinary journey from childhood in pre-independence Uganda to London in the 21st Century. It is a voyage filled with edible mementos…evocative, revealing and often tender ..it is s story seldom told.’ Lucas Hollweg The Sunday Times
‘an unusual memoir-cum-cookery book which uses food as an emotional touchstone for memory and cultural history’ Clare Allfree Metro
http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2009/0 ... -cookbook/
Outspoken journalist tells food tales
SARAH DEA / TORONTO STAR
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, an “urban, leftie, immigrant” Muslim journalist who shocked many with a food memoir, cooks okra in the Star’s test kitchen.
Okra-scrambled eggs Channa masala Political `battler' reveals her more loving nature
Sep 07, 2009 04:30 AM
Jennifer Bain
Food Editor
In England, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is an opinionated commentator on race, human rights, multiculturalism and politics. But right now she's using the more loving language of food to tell her stories.
The Settler's Cookbook: A Memoir of Love, Migration and Food, details Alibhai-Brown's mental and physical journey as an East Indian Muslim who was expelled from Uganda in 1972 by then-president Idi Amin and now calls London home.
She uses a dish called My Malodorous Packed Lunch to rail against the racist rules set by English school inspectors in the 1960s. Jena's Shepherd's Pie shows how her mother "repaired" traditional British food with cilantro, chillies, garam masala, ginger and garlic.
When Alibhai-Brown taught her first husband to make Cauliflower, Pea, Potato and Carrot Sag he joked, "You know I will never leave you because I love your food so much." He left her in 1988, prompting "so many lonely and famished months." Zanzibari Prawns (Love Bites) helped her win the heart of her current English husband.
Yasmin's Mulligatawny Soup was created as "a joke and a riposte in one pot" after taunts that she was mulligatawny soup – "a Raj vegetable slop, a mishmash of nothing identifiable or honourable."
Now 59, and best known for her weekly column in The Independent, the mother of two dropped by the Star's test kitchen Friday while promoting her book with a cooking demo at Harbourfront's Hot & Spicy Food Festival and a reading at McNally Robinson Booksellers.
We cook two of her dishes.
Alibhai-Brown is delighted I've bought frozen okra (already chopped into rings) for her "Bhindi With Eggs" (okra-scrambled eggs). "Often I will do it the hard way to please the Englishman," she says of her husband, "who has got it in his head, because he's a man, that all shortcuts are bad." She reminisces about the first time her mom Jena found shrivelled okra in London, stir-fried them into a curry, and scrambled in eggs to stretch the meal further since money was tight.
"I don't agree with this idea that immigrant food, or ethnic food, is sacrosanct and neither did my mother," says Alibhai-Brown.
She proudly demonstrates the way she uses lime juice when stir-frying the okra to help get rid of its "goo" (an off-putting, somewhat slimy internal liquid) and make the vegetable crispy and compelling.
Our second dish, Channa Masala, is an essential Indian picnic item that can be whipped up in minutes.
Alibhai-Brown is touched that The Settler's Cookbook has garnered great reviews, even from foes at right-wing papers.
"I'm a political battler most of the time, and now they're seeing a completely different side of me," she reports. "I think it's good for them and good for me."
In 2001, Alibhai-Brown was appointed an MBE (member of the Order of the British Empire) for service to journalism. Two years later, she returned it as a protest over Iraq and a growing republicanism. An Ismaili, she comes from a reformist branch of the Islamic faith that she admits is complicated (she drinks wine, for instance).
If things get too heated on the political and religious front, remember that food is the great leveller and the world adores Indian food.
Although Toronto has some Asians from Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, we appear to have only Simba Grill on Donlands Ave. (run by Sultan and Rashma Jessani, from Tanzania) serving the hybrid cuisine. In the London suburb of Alperton, there's an entire street for Asian-African food.
While Alibhai-Brown scoffs at "over-expensive, over-pretentious" Indian restaurants, she gets a kick out of the fact that Britain's national dish is now widely considered to be Chicken Tikka Masala. "I tease my husband and say the only reason you're married to me is so you can get free Indian food at home."
[email protected]
http://www.thestar.com/living/Food/article/691805
SARAH DEA / TORONTO STAR
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, an “urban, leftie, immigrant” Muslim journalist who shocked many with a food memoir, cooks okra in the Star’s test kitchen.
Okra-scrambled eggs Channa masala Political `battler' reveals her more loving nature
Sep 07, 2009 04:30 AM
Jennifer Bain
Food Editor
In England, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is an opinionated commentator on race, human rights, multiculturalism and politics. But right now she's using the more loving language of food to tell her stories.
The Settler's Cookbook: A Memoir of Love, Migration and Food, details Alibhai-Brown's mental and physical journey as an East Indian Muslim who was expelled from Uganda in 1972 by then-president Idi Amin and now calls London home.
She uses a dish called My Malodorous Packed Lunch to rail against the racist rules set by English school inspectors in the 1960s. Jena's Shepherd's Pie shows how her mother "repaired" traditional British food with cilantro, chillies, garam masala, ginger and garlic.
When Alibhai-Brown taught her first husband to make Cauliflower, Pea, Potato and Carrot Sag he joked, "You know I will never leave you because I love your food so much." He left her in 1988, prompting "so many lonely and famished months." Zanzibari Prawns (Love Bites) helped her win the heart of her current English husband.
Yasmin's Mulligatawny Soup was created as "a joke and a riposte in one pot" after taunts that she was mulligatawny soup – "a Raj vegetable slop, a mishmash of nothing identifiable or honourable."
Now 59, and best known for her weekly column in The Independent, the mother of two dropped by the Star's test kitchen Friday while promoting her book with a cooking demo at Harbourfront's Hot & Spicy Food Festival and a reading at McNally Robinson Booksellers.
We cook two of her dishes.
Alibhai-Brown is delighted I've bought frozen okra (already chopped into rings) for her "Bhindi With Eggs" (okra-scrambled eggs). "Often I will do it the hard way to please the Englishman," she says of her husband, "who has got it in his head, because he's a man, that all shortcuts are bad." She reminisces about the first time her mom Jena found shrivelled okra in London, stir-fried them into a curry, and scrambled in eggs to stretch the meal further since money was tight.
"I don't agree with this idea that immigrant food, or ethnic food, is sacrosanct and neither did my mother," says Alibhai-Brown.
She proudly demonstrates the way she uses lime juice when stir-frying the okra to help get rid of its "goo" (an off-putting, somewhat slimy internal liquid) and make the vegetable crispy and compelling.
Our second dish, Channa Masala, is an essential Indian picnic item that can be whipped up in minutes.
Alibhai-Brown is touched that The Settler's Cookbook has garnered great reviews, even from foes at right-wing papers.
"I'm a political battler most of the time, and now they're seeing a completely different side of me," she reports. "I think it's good for them and good for me."
In 2001, Alibhai-Brown was appointed an MBE (member of the Order of the British Empire) for service to journalism. Two years later, she returned it as a protest over Iraq and a growing republicanism. An Ismaili, she comes from a reformist branch of the Islamic faith that she admits is complicated (she drinks wine, for instance).
If things get too heated on the political and religious front, remember that food is the great leveller and the world adores Indian food.
Although Toronto has some Asians from Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, we appear to have only Simba Grill on Donlands Ave. (run by Sultan and Rashma Jessani, from Tanzania) serving the hybrid cuisine. In the London suburb of Alperton, there's an entire street for Asian-African food.
While Alibhai-Brown scoffs at "over-expensive, over-pretentious" Indian restaurants, she gets a kick out of the fact that Britain's national dish is now widely considered to be Chicken Tikka Masala. "I tease my husband and say the only reason you're married to me is so you can get free Indian food at home."
[email protected]
http://www.thestar.com/living/Food/article/691805