Anjum Anand - I Love India: Recipes and Stories from City to Coast, Morning to Midnight, and Past to Present

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I believe that each of us is the sum of all our parts. I know that everything I have done and experienced in life has brought me to this place in my career and, looking back, I see how all the dots join up. In my case, these indelible markers started before I did.

My father was born in India towards the end of the British Raj, only 12 years before the Partition. His family were enjoying a cool break in Kashmir when they received word that the rumours about India splitting were indeed true, and that they had to gather what they could and travel to find a new home within the new Indian borders. This was a time of utter chaos, confusion and fear, with people traversing whole countries with more apprehension than belongings. My fathers family travelled on the top of a train for days, slept in a railway station for weeks and with lots of help from old friends made their way to Delhi. Many months later, they finally settled into a new home and life. By the age of 18, my father got a job with a British company, which meant he got the opportunity to travel a little. In his early twenties for the second time in his young life he moved to a new country where he knew no one and had little more than a few coins in his pocket.

My mother grew up in the mountains between Afghanistan and what is now Pakistan. She had six sisters and one brother and grew up very sheltered, her older sisters more like mothers to her. They were a proud family, with a little land to their name. My grandfather was a trader, importing fruits and nuts into India from Afghanistan. My mothers extended family had more advance warning about Partition and came to live with my grandfathers brother in a large, sprawling family home in Old Delhi. In time, the home was split between the men of the family, while all the women married and left for their new families homes. By the time I visited this imposing villa, my mothers brother lived in a one-bedroom flat with his wife and children (space for the new families having diminished as children arrived). It was small, but the grounds of the house were huge, with flat roofs forming verandahs around the home; everyone was surrounded by family and cousins, and all the positives and the politics that that involved.

My parents had an arranged marriage. My father travelled to India and met my mother; five days later they were married and he brought her to London a world as different from hers as it was distant. The way she remembers it, my father had a party at home in London to celebrate his marriage and to introduce his new bride to his friends. My mother had never before been out without her sisters or cousins and she apparently left the party full as it was of drinking, smoking and the loud friends of my father and sat on the doorstep, looking at the stars, with tears falling for all she had left behind and apprehension for what was to come.

By the time we were born, my mother had settled into her new role as a supportive wife and by the time I was four my father decided to move us to Switzerland. We spent ten years in Geneva, the weekdays in school and the weekends driving around exploring a completely new world and cuisine. We went from one recommended restaurant to another, acquiring a taste for everything Swiss and middle European with a bit of German, French and Italian fondue and raclette, filets de perches (a local river fish), sptzle (a short noodle-like dumpling), Birchermesli, wild strawberries and raspberries, ptisserie and, of course, amazing cheeses and chocolates. Swiss food is very good; often simple but rich.

Inside our Swiss home, it was more akin to a little India, with Indian food on the table and Indian movies playing on the television, instead of the local networks. My fathers new circle of friends was also Indian as, having spotted a Sikh man at the bus stop, he went straight up to him, introduced himself and soon met all the other Indians in the small city.

My father loves having people round and these new friends were often invited over for dinner, so I have countless memories of women dressed in colourful saris with clinking bangles, laughing and recounting stories from back home, eating Indian food that Mum had spent the day cooking (enlisting a very eager young me to help) and generally giving me the impression that India was an amazing, vibrant, fun place full of interesting characters.

This was only reinforced on the frequent trips we took to India. In the early days we stayed with family, only taking hotel rooms once my father could afford them. One of his cousins had a chicken farm and, on arrival, we would receive a basket of eggs and have the tastiest eggs on toast. The food in India was always amazing; I dont remember a single bad meal. Visits to my fathers family were always meaty affairs, with melting mutton curries and soft, puffed chapatis anointed with a little ghee. In contrast, my mothers family were vegetarian and preferred lighter food and meals that usually featured lentils with seasonal vegetables and some of their own specialities. These meals were often punctuated with fresh sugar cane brought in from a nearby field; we would sit and use our teeth to strip off the hard fibrous skin, tear off large chunks, chew the flesh, extract all the sweet, flavourful juices and spit out the fibrous remains into a large bowl.

My mothers family were wonderful vegetarian cooks, but she herself cooked to feed her carnivorous husband and children. For ten years she even took to eating meat to be more accommodating before finding her voice and reverting to her own style of food. She had always wanted to work, but my father wanted a more traditional wife who took care of the home and children. She would say to me that, despite my interest in the kitchen, girls with a good education and opportunities could be anything they wanted to be (though when we didnt help, she couldnt stop herself from saying that if we didnt cook no one would marry us!). I agreed and didnt even think about pursuing cooking professionally. My fathers life seemed much more exciting; he ran his own business, travelled and was always surrounded by friends.

But two years after completing my business degree and working in a small company, reality dawned I wasnt enjoying any of it. The only thing that gave me any pleasure was cooking for myself after I got home from work. I had returned to the kitchen after a prolonged absence to cook myself low-fat Indian food. By this point, I had been on countless diets and, although I lost weight, it always returned. I realized the only way to keep the weight off was to enjoy the Indian food I loved, but in a lighter, lower-fat guise than that I had been eating. So I started learning my favourite dishes properly and cooking them for myself regularly. Cooking became my main passion and, with prompting from a few friends, I realized I didnt have to force myself to stick doggedly to my career path; I remembered I could do anything I wanted to do and I wanted to cook.