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Posts by Zohra Shaik

Dec 3

Connect, Create and Celebrate in Shirin’s Kitchen – An interview with Shirin Subhani

Michael Pollan in his show ‘Cooked’ talks about how human beings are the only species that cook their food. He explains how cooking is responsible for our evolution because we spend less time chewing because of cooking. While the science of cooking seems very fascinating, I believe that cooking is a very fine art form and our mothers, grandmas, aunts and everyone who ever cooked for us are artists. I was very pleasantly surprised when one of my very good friends Shirin Subhani started a Facebook Page called ‘Shirin’s Kitchen’. She was teaching Indian cooking classes at her home and I found the whole concept extremely captivating. Shirin comes from a Computer Science background and it seemed to me like she was following her heart as she cooked and celebrated Indian Food with her adopted city of Seattle. People can check out Stellenberg Property Maintenance Company for the best kitchen remodeling services.

Zohra: Shirin, it is a pleasure to be talking to you via Jaggery. Thank you for taking time off your busy schedule and talking with me. Could you start of by telling us about your journey – about how your path led you to Shirin’s Kitchen?

Shirin: Zohra, I am very excited to be sharing my story with your readers. Thank you for this opportunity. For as far back as I can remember, I’ve really enjoyed having friends over and sharing meals with them. When my older son started Kindergarten seven years ago, it was at a very special school where I found myself in a lovely community with wonderful families and loving and dedicated staff. I started inviting other parents and teachers home, and cooking for them. They received my food with a lot of appreciation and love, and it inspired me to cook more. For gifts, they bought products from Homelier Pro which I loved!

A few of them were interested in learning how to make Indian food so I started having them in my kitchen and teaching them some of my favorite dishes. As I did this more and more, I realized how much I was enjoying the experience, and so were my ‘students’. Many of them encouraged me to formalize the process more and assured me that there were others who’d be interested in learning to make Indian food. With their loving support and motivation, I started Shirin’s Kitchen.

Zohra: Thank you for that Shirin. It’s quite wonderful to realize that there are people out there that seem to be not only interested in eating food but making it too! Seems like you have a very good community of enthusiastic cheerleaders encouraging you amongst your community. I can see where your passion and love for this comes from. So, what do you love most about what you do?

Shirin: Yes, I am very grateful for all the support and love I have been blessed with!Image may contain: food

I came up with the tag line Connect-Create-Celebrate to describe my cooking classes and the combination of these three aspects is really what I seem to love the most. Connecting with people, Creating delicious and nutritious food together, and Celebrating our efforts by sharing a meal.

I also send people home with little spice boxes (masala dabbas), which include all the needed spices for the dishes they learn to make, including some of my own homemade spice blends and it gives me a lot of joy to put these boxes together.

Witnessing people getting more comfortable with new recipes, sending them back with spices, and then hearing back from them that they’ve recreated those very dishes in their own kitchens makes me really happy!

Zohra: That’s very nice Shirin. You had mentioned to me earlier that one of your favorite food-based novels is Chitra Divakaruni’s ‘Mistress of Spices’. Any other inspirations?

‘Mistress of Spices’ so beautifully captures the essence of so many Indian Spices; as I delve into the magical world of spices myself, Divakaruni’s words are a beautiful inspiration.

I loved her spice-a-day assignment in the story – “Each spice has a special day to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.”

Recently, I started reading chef Vikas Khanna’s books as well and am enjoying his journey with spices as well. His beautiful cookbooks, descriptions and stories are very inspiring. ’Bliss of Spices’ is what’s on my shelf right now and I am learning so much from it!

I also have a couple of wonderful websites which I like to look at for recipes and recipe ideas, including my favorites – Veg Recipes Of India with very helpful photo instructions for each step and Monsoon Spice, with beautiful photos and stories!

Zohra: Those sound great. Spice-a-day reminds me of Tilo’s Fenugreek Wednesdays. “Fennel, which is the spice for Wednesdays, the day of averages, of middle-aged people. . . . Fennel . . . smelling of changes to come.” 

On that note, I want to ask you what plans are cooking and what can we smell in the future in Shirin’s Kitchen?

My classes are still new and so far, most of my students have been friends and friends of friends. This has been a great experience and I feel ready now to also welcome new people to my kitchen, people who are completely new to me, and cook with them. I recently started cooking with kids as well and loved that, so look forward to more kids’ classes as well. Currently, I am in the process of completing a series of guest chef classes, where I invited other friends and family who love to cook to come in and do special classes. I get to learn a lot from them too. In my last class, I had my friend Deepa Hazra who taught us Bengali dishes from her hometown Calcutta. She taught dishes using vegetables like Bitter Gourd, Drumsticks and Plantains, vegetables that I don’t commonly cook with. It was a great learning experience to cook outside of my comfort zone. I am hoping that I can do more of these guest chef presentations and also expand my students and my horizons.Image may contain: 3 people, people sitting, people eating, food and indoor

Zohra: That sounds very exciting. I see that there seems to be a lot of planning in your classes. I think there was one time where you did South Indian breakfasts like Idli, Dosa, Wada etc. Another time where you did Rice dishes. Where do you get your class/recipes/ideas from?

Shirin: A lot of class ideas come from people telling me what they want to learn. Others are based on what I think would be fun to teach. Many of my recipes are based on what I’ve learnt from my mother or my mother-in-law. My sons are pretty picky eaters too, so I’ve had to get extra creative with my recipes to appeal to their palates.

Zohra: It is quite heart-warming to see that your family seems to be supporting your venture. I think one time your aunt did a class too.  How do your kids and your husband react to Shirin’s Kitchen?

Shirin: My kids seem to love the fact that I do cooking classes and it was my little one who encouraged me to get going with Shirin’s Kitchen. They love that their friends and teachers are learning to appreciate and cook Indian food and seem proud of their mom for enabling that. My husband is a good cook himself and I am looking forward to doing events with him in the future as well, our very first Date Night cooking class is coming up soon where we will be co-teaching.

Zohra: Very nice. Basically you are not only bringing the whole of Seattle together but your family as well. Great work Shirin. Tell us, as I am very interested to know and I am sure our readers are as well, as to how non-desis react to Indian food? Do they find it easy/hard to cook? Do they enjoy the process or get overwhelmed sometimes?Image may contain: 2 people, people sitting, food and indoor

I love how much people seem to love Indian food! The different vegetables, the spices, the completely different ways of cooking the same dish, the colors, the flavors, the smells, all of it makes for a wonderful and fun experience.

Sometimes people do start off a little intimidated, especially by the number of spices involved but my job is to make them relax, help them see spices as friends and learn to pay attention to and trust their senses. One of my challenges is that I don’t measure things typically and my students are often used to exact measurements so look for those. Encouraging them to add a pinch of this, a handful of that, and taste and adjust as you go can be hard at times, but they do slowly lean into it and end up getting comfortable with the idea by the time they are done.

They come in thinking they might find it hard, and are often pleasantly surprised with how easily they are able to follow recipes and cook up something delicious. I’ve often had people sitting down at the table, taking a bite of the food and going, ‘Wow, did I really make that?’

Zohra: Wow Shirin, that is so wonderfully put – “help them see spices as friends and learn to pay attention to and trust their senses”. I am sure there are many experiences and things that happen in the kitchen. Any interesting anecdote(s) you want to share that happened in Shirin’s Kitchen?

A couple months ago, I was setting up for a class where two of my students were going to be folks I had never met before (friends of a friend). It was almost class time and I was running terribly behind. It had been a somewhat chaotic morning with the kids and my kitchen was in somewhat of a mess. Typically, I have everything all neat and tidy, stations all set up, and chai and snacks ready at the table before folks arrive. On that particular day, I was far from ready when there was a knock on the door.Image may contain: 4 people, people smiling, people sitting, people eating, table, food and indoor

I took a few deep breaths and decided to embrace the chaos. Instead of apologizing, I welcomed the two ladies with, ‘I have a special treat for you today. You’ve already seen my kitchen picture perfect on Facebook, here you get to see the behind the scenes version, the setup process in action!’  The women had big smiles on their faces and told me to relax and take all the time I needed to setup.

They were in their sixties, friends for 35 years, having met each other because their kids were in preschool together. ‘Our kids got over us but we never did,’ they shared. Between lots of laughs and loving conversation, I got my kitchen all sorted out and set up and probably served one of my best cups of chai that day! They loved the entire experience and never having cooked Indian food before, embraced the new dishes and touched my heart with the openness and excitement with which they paid attention to and enjoyed every small thing. I have stayed in touch with them and look forward to having them back in my kitchen soon!

Zohra: What a fun story! Shirin, I read some of the reviews that people who took your classes left on your FB page and have gathered that you have come up with a very creative structure to your class that starts with chai and ends with a meal. Typically, how many hours do you spend on a class? Could you explain more about what happens in a typical class? Also, I would love to know what your favorite snacks/dishes are?

You remember the tag line I mentioned earlier – Connect, Create, Celebrate? That pretty much defines the structure of my classes.No automatic alt text available.

Each class typically run up to 4 hours long. The session starts with everyone sitting around the table and connecting over a cup of my adrak chai and other munchies, usually comprising some of my own favorite childhood snacks. As folks sip their chai and get acquainted with each other, I familiarize everyone with the dishes they will be cooking and answer any questions they may have. I ask folks to pick the dish/dishes that jump out at them and choose what they would like to make. By themselves or with a partner, they then start creating. Doing all the prep and then all the cooking, each person is responsible for their dish from start to end, with me watching over and guiding as needed. Once all the dishes are made, we eat a meal together, enjoying the fruits of our labor! As we eat, I introduce them to their masala dabbas and each spice in the dabba that they will be taking home with them.

As for my favorite snacks and dishes, they seem to keep changing all the time but some of my all-time favorite snacks with chai are Parle-G and Bourbon biscuits. I have to be careful with them because I can easily finish entire packs, dipping them into my chai one at a time! I love any dishes that are paneer-based, Saag Paneer is something I can eat all the time, especially with Zeera Rice. I recently learnt how to make Paneer Makhmali and really enjoy that as well. And of course, any kind of Raitas are right up there among my favorites also.

Zohra: Thank you Shirin for that wonderful tete-a-tete. It’s amazing to see what all you are doing and the kind of experiences you are having in Shirin’s Kitchen. It seems like you are bringing together so many people (and your family too) in sharing the happiness of making food that you love for the people that you love. We at JaggeryLit wish you all the success as you move forward, and I hope to do an interview with you after you are finished establishing Shirin’s Kitchen Empire. I look forward to speaking with you again. Good Luck!

Shirin: Thank You Zohra, this was a great opportunity for some pause and reflection. Hope your readers enjoy reading about my adventures.

For those interested in what’s happening in Shirin’s Kitchen, please be sure to like her facebook page:  Shirin’s Kitchen Facebook Page 

 

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Nov 22

Haroun and the Sea of Stories – A fantastic tribute to a son.

I was introduced to Salman Rushdie in 1981 via his second novel Midnight’s Children and recall mistaking it for a children’s book. After 7 years in 1988, I heard that Salman Rushdie had written another novel called Satanic Verses and the President of Iran had issued a fatwa, calling for Rushdie’s head. Apparently, the author had written some stuff that hurt the religious sentiments of some people, and as such Rushdie was condemned and judgment passed for that ‘crime’.  Rushdie went into hiding for a few lines he had written, and his life was never the same again. I longed to read the book, but I think it was banned in India at that time.

Years later, when I chanced upon a slim volume of his book Haroun and the Sea of Stories, I picked it up mistakenly thinking that it was a book of Short Stories. It turned out to be a book that Rushdie had apparently written for his 9-year-old son, Zafar whom he used to narrate bedtime stories to. I guess he realized that the made-up stories were quite amazing, and he decided to write the novel incorporating all the elements of a bedtime story and much more!

The novel starts off with an adorable dedication from Dad Rushdie to Son Rushdie:

               Z embla, Zenda Xanadu 

              A ll our dream-worlds may come true.

              F airy lands are fearsome too.

              A s I wander far from view

              R ead, and bring me home to you.

Fairy lands are fearsome too, warns Rushdie and goes on to prove just that with this book.

The story is quite simple. Young Haroun’s Dad Rashid Khalifa is a story teller who lives in a sad city(everyone who lives here apparently has sadness engulfing them and their lives). He brings cheerfulness to the city by making up extraordinary stories and narrating them to it’s inhabitants, diminishing their sadness for a short time. For this reason he is pretty famous in the city and is almost always center stage narrating his fantastic stories. He lives with his wife Soraya and son Haroun. Everything seems hunky dory in the Khalifa household and little Haroun is happy as a lark in the sad city. However, unbeknownst to him and his father, his mother gives in to the sadness of the city and decides that she’s had enough of the Khalifa men and runs away with their neighbor Mr.Sengupta leaving behind a letter where she explains that she prefers his unimaginative reality to her husband’s imaginary make-believe world. After that incident Rashid is unable to weave stories anymore. He goes from being the ‘Shah of Blah’ and ‘Ocean of Notions’ to being unable to proceed beyond – “Ark!Ark!Ark!”

A pretty sad tale till this point in time it looks like. I thought it would be a mop fest from this point onwards with the child blaming himself and the father falling into a depression. But then, you are suddenly plunged into a land of fantasy and imagination as Haroun chances upon a water genie who has come to cut the supply of stories to Rashid. I re-read the part again to make sure that it was a genie and not a technician from the cable company that Haroun chanced upon! You see, I am not a very big fan of Sci-Fi or Fantasy fiction. I like realism and stick mostly with memoirs and realistic fiction. But I really wanted to finish my first Rushdie novel and continued reading. Am I glad I did!

Haroun blames himself for his dad’s misfortune and decides to help his dad out of the predicament. The story proceeds as he comes to know from the water genie Iff, that Rashid has unsubscribed from their service and the genie had come to take care of the cancellation. From then onwards, we are treated to a fantastic spectacle as Haroun takes a trip to the Land of Gup and the Land of Chup to clear the error of being unsubscribed from the Sea of Stories. The choice to name the lands with Gup (conversation) and Chup(silence) seemed like pure genius to me.  No wonder Rushdie is considered a genius, because he is!

Haroun is taken to the land of Gup where all stories originate. There are the seas around the island of Gup. But we have the land of Chup whose leader Khattam-Shud (The End, nothing but the End) is hell bent on destroying the sea of stories – the sea of stories from where storytellers get their goods from. Quite a neat concept, right? I was enthralled by this book. Though it is targeted towards children as young as 9, there are many, many layers to this book. There’s politics, there’s indirect references to the fatwa, there’s philosophy so deep that I had to take a couple of minutes for it to absorb in my psyche. Consider for example the following:

“Haroun was Lucky; but luck has a way of running out without the slightest warning. One minute you’ve got a lucky star watching over you and the next instant it’s done a bunk.”

This to me represents Rushdie’s life before and after the Fatwa. I can imagine the red carpet being pulled off your legs as you are getting ready to receive your award.

There are also references to the modern world which I find applicable even in 2017. I firmly believe that some writers can foretell future, Rushdie seems to me to be one of them when he writes in the book that came out in 1988 –

“In the sad city, people mostly had big families; but the poor children got sick and starved, while the rich kids overate and quarreled over their parents’ money.”

Rushdie manages to keep the story very interesting and the flow rapid by incorporating humor and introducing unique and likable characters with regularity. The characters include a mechanical bird called Butt, who Haroun picks to be flown to the land of Gup with Iff the water genie. So basically, Iff and Butt are Haroun’s companions. I am sure the children would find that quite enthralling.

There’s a horde of lovable and not so lovable characters in the book who keep on making appearances and disappearances. One of them is Bolo, the Prince of Gup land. He is a young man who is in love with Princess Batcheat, who had managed to get herself kidnapped by Khatam-Shud. He is quite comical and stupid and does not hesitate to lead his people to war for his own selfish purpose. He reminds me of our leaders today, especially one who do it for far less honorable things than love. I leave it to your imagination to figure out who Rushdie might have been referring to so many years ago as he writes –

“What’s that you say?” shouted Bolo, leaping to his feet and striking a dashing and slightly foolish pose. “Why have you waited so long to tell us? Zounds! Proceed; for pity’s sake, proceed” (When Bolo spoke like this, the other Dignitaries all looked vaguely embarrassed and averted their eyes).

Continuing in the vein of addressing today’s issues, Rushdie does touch briefly on the concept of women’s issues as he writes –

“You think it’s easy for a girl to get a job like this? Don’t you know girls have to fool people every day of their lives if they wanted to get anywhere?”

That’s the heroine of the novel Blabbermouth who disguises herself as a man to join the army of pages of Gup land. She delivers some brilliant lines during which Haroun develops a crush for her. Lines such as:

“You think a place has to be miserable and dull as ditch water before you believe it’s real?”

There is dissent in the army of pages when war is declared against Chupwalas to rescue Batcheat. The Gupees are quite relieved that Princess Batcheat is not around to bother them with her continuous talk and worse still, her signing. They grumble among themselves as to why Prince Bolo must rescue Batcheat and Mali the gardener who helps Haroun says –

“It (the reason) is Love. It is all for Love. Which is a very wonderful and dashing matter. But which can also be a very foolish thing.”

The book is not however, relegated to only fantasies and dashing characters. A good writer not only piques and exercises your emotion, but also makes you think and Rushdie manages to do that quite wonderfully even in a book meant for young kids.

It is interesting how Rushdie tackles Khattam-Shud, the villain in the story. His description shows what sort of contempt the author held for attempts to silence him. I wish political leaders, dictators, presidents, CEOs etc. do not pick fights with writers because the writers can do much more with their words than these powerful people can do with their power.

Rushdie describes Khatam-Shud as –

“He is the Arch-Enemy of all Stories, even of Language itself. He is the prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech.”

Khatam-Shud never makes an appearance until towards the end of the story, but his brooding presence is felt in every page. It is like he is hidden between each page you turn. One builds up this image of him being magnificently and monstrously menacing. But it is an anti-climax when the cult master as he is referred to makes an appearance. In his first meeting with Khatam-Shud Haroun’s thoughts are as follows –

“That’s him? That’s him?” Haroun thought, with a kind of disappointment. “This little mingling fellow? What an anti-climax.”

Haroun asks Khatam-Shud why he is trying to take the fun out of the world by trying to put an end to story-telling. The reply he gets is haunting.

“The world, however, is not for Fun. The world is for controlling. Your world, my world, all worlds. They are all there to be Ruled. And inside every single story, inside every Stream in the Ocean, there lies a world, a story-world that I cannot Rule at all. And that is the reason why.”

Rushdie intersperses these strong and profound statements with some flippant ones to keep the pretense of this being a children’s book going. For instance, there’s stuff like

P2C2E – Process to complicated to explain, which is used generously in the book.

Dull Lake – Reference to Dal Lake in Koch-Mar (play on the word Kashmir) which apparently means nightmare in local language!

A poster is support of candidate Buttoo that goes something like

“WHO’S THE ONE FOR YOU? – NOT JUST ONE, BUTTOO!’

I can imagine the children going into peals of laughter at things like these though they might have glazed over at some of the things earlier. And a child’s laughter is one of the better things about the world and Rushdie manages to bring that out a lot with this book.

I loved the book. I loved how Rushdie used some words from the Hindi Language to cleverly bring out the intrinsic peculiarities of his characters. I loved the pace of the book which sometimes left you breathless and overwhelmed with its huge repertoire of characters and its speed. But as Rushdie says:

‘Speed, most Necessary of Qualities! In any Emergency – fire, auto, marine – what is required above all things? Of course, Speed.’

I would recommend everyone to read this book. It is wonderfully descriptive and manages to draw a picture of the fantasy land with its Plentimaw (Plenty Mouth) fishes, pure blue sea of stories polluted by dark viscous liquid manufactured in Chupland, Mudra the Shadow Warrior and of course the lovable amongst them all, the heroic son Haroun. I would highly recommend the book for the simple but evocative language throughout the novel. But I would mostly recommend it for you to understand the genius of Salman Rushdie without the aid of a Midnight’s Children or The Satanic verses. It is also wonderful that Rushdie borrows heavily from Hindi to name almost everything in the book and I loved the play of the words. Each time a new character or place was introduced, it would bring a smile to my lips.

The real reason however I would exhort you to read the book is to understand that there are many ways of telling a story. Rushdie does not resort to maudlin tales to bring across the bond between a father and his son. Even though the foundation is built on a shaky start, he demonstrates that a fantasy tale can build emotions and sentimentality without the help of drama and tears. I particularly got misty eyed, every time that Rashid discovers that Haroun is going above and beyond the duties of a son and says to him whenever he finds him helping out bravely in a precarious situation:

“Young Haroun. You surely are the most unexpected of boys!”

What a wonderful tribute from Rushdie to his son. Truly, remarkable.