Thumbing through recipes for quince curries, mealie puddings and koeksisters is a study in culinary cartography. Indian dishes have been adapted with ingredients indigenous to South Africa, like snoek (a kind of mackerel) and madumbi (a regional variety of root vegetable), that would surely confound a home cook in Delhi or Hyderabad. The flavor profiles are predominantly Indian, to be sure — red chile, cumin, coriander, fenugreek and turmeric are tossed around liberally in these pages. Much like South African Indian culture itself, these recipes weave in European, Malay and African elements.
When dissolving a marriage, you’re often too busy trading barbs to swap recipes on your way out the door. Amid my grief, it never occurred to me to ask for the steps to a former relative’s green bean casserole, an ex-cousin-in-law’s avocado-custard dessert or a onetime friend’s khowse. I didn’t realize how much I would someday come to miss the puri patta packed as snacks for road trips, the greasy bunny chows at nondescript takeaway joints in Durban, the ostrich burgers flipped on the grill and, more than anything, the heaping platters of savouries, or pastries, that had come to define each year’s Ramadan. But once the dust settled and the healing began, so did the cravings. My culinary vernacular may have expanded during my South African stint, but even if I wanted to update my repertoire with these new favorites, I didn’t know where to begin.
And so, when I found myself locked down with “Indian Delights,” I yearned to recreate the flavors that had been so abruptly dismissed from my palate. I started with prawn curries and coriander chutneys, eventually working my way toward the fist-size masala steak pies that, in my past life, I would wolf down by the dozen at iftar dinners and Eid brunches. “Indian Delights” seems geared toward someone for whom cooking is about her husband’s pleasure, her children’s nutrition and her community’s service (you’ll find all the steps you need to make haleem for 200 or biryani for 800, should you be so inclined). Instead, I looked to it as I found joy in nourishing myself, with my own hands and for my own gratification. Eventually, with a little help from the freezer dough — even “Indian Delights” extols the merits of modern-day shortcuts — I got the pies right. Perhaps because they were no longer a symbol of something I’d lost — or perhaps simply because they were all mine — they were the best I ever tasted.
Sarah Khan’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. She is the former editor in chief of Condé Nast Traveller Middle East.