The Short Story of how I Came About Cooking
The Short Story of how I Came About Cooking
The September issue: an introduction and a 'panic summer' salad
Hello Hello!
And welcome to the first issue of the Empress Market monthly newsletter.
For those of you who are new here, my name is Numra and I’m the Chef Founder of Empress Market, a desi events and catering company in London. For those of you who’ve known me for a while, thank you for joining me on my foray into writing.
I approach cooking and the process of choosing ingredients as an act of self-discovery, so I mean it when I say that this newsletter will be as much about my writing than it’ll be about your reading experience.
Before we get started, you should know that I never used to enjoy cooking.
There, I said it!
I cried through my GCSE Food and Nutrition class, stressed by all the multitasking and not being able to handle the literal heat of the kitchen during the summer exam period in Lahore. Still, the inner South Asian kid in me needs to brag and tell you that I did end up scoring 97.3%, the second highest global result, so yeah!
In my early twenties, I discovered the likes of Betty Friedan and Rosie Boycott, and I was determined to separate myself from girly domesticity. I rambled about not knowing how to cook and hating chai on nights out when no one was listening. I was one of the pioneers of what the kids are currently calling brat girl summer (we have reached the full cycle of millennial fashion indeed). I spent a good part of 2008-2012 slumped over a takeaway in the shortest of skirts, mascara running down my cheeks and nursing a sore head from the night before.
In 2014, you could say that I had rage inside me. I was hating my job - a story for another day - so I quit, invested my measly savings in a 3x3m gazebo and a round steel griddle, and I opened a street food stall. You might remember that food markets were everywhere in London back in the day. I grew up eating shami burgers (Bun Kababs, as they are formally known, and I will tell you more about their story in another issue), so I wrapped the burgers in millennial pink paper and began selling them on the side of the road.
Trust me, I really thought this street food life was going to be fun, flipping BKs in the sun at festivals and other gigs, but the reality was different. It mainly revolved around dragging heavy equipment in and out of a van, braving the rain and being a very bad manager to my recently-graduated younger bro. I grew up fast in those early years. And part of that growing up involved learning to love myself and where I came from.
I slow-cooked 10kg cauldrons of shami kababs, a delicacy that made it from the Mughal dastarkhaans to my South London kitchen. I blitzed countless litres of coriander chutney, perfecting my own ‘perfect’ recipe, not knowing a thing about the countless ‘perfect’ versions that exist in nearly every home across Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh (and beyond!).
I was cooking the food I had grown up eating, but I was also learning to embrace my Pakistani and Indian cultural heritage.
I began to expand my culinary repertoire, cooking daals, karhai and champ, desi home cooking learnt from a lifetime of smell and taste alone. I learnt a lot from chatting with my nani as well. (pro-tip: asking your nani for her recipe for pasanday will dodge the awkward questions about marriage.)
But when a lockdown was enforced in the UK, there were no venues to cater for anymore. And, while I often wonder if enough time has passed to reflect on these days, I do know they were key in bonding with Mum as I forced her to teach me all the dishes she brags about cooking in her bachpan.
[Throwing in some training and experience from my CV in here, for those who are starting to worry about what we’ll be cooking: I went to Leith’s culinary school, opened and closed a restaurant, freelanced at some of the best catering companies in London and now pursue catering and consulting full time. You can read more about me and my experience at the Empress Market website.]
I also learnt to cook wandering around the desi grocery stores of London, which has become one of my fave pass times. When I was a kid, I hated going to desi shops. They smelt funky, sold the most random stuff and my mum would always try to haggle with the shopkeepers.
(Can you sense this trend of unlearning internalised racism?)
NOW every aisle is like a treasure trove.
There are rows and rows of ancient spices, ground, crushed or packaged whole, which all add flavours from around the world. I want to learn about the high, piled sacks of the grains that are milled at varying fineness – how to cook with them, what makes them special? I could spend all day in the freezer section, scanning through the varieties of parathas, stuffed and classics, or reading the labels of the homemade chutneys that are prepared by local aunties. The uncles in the shop are my friends now and nothing beats chatting to them about the coming and going of mango season.
These are some of the ways I have learnt how to cook. This is not the whole story either, only parts of it, so consider this first letter as an invitation to subscribe to my newsletter to hear the rest of it.
The Empress Market newsletter will be dispatched monthly, following the year seasonally. Every season will be thematic, and I will share stories and recipes around them. Keep your ear close to the ground from those vital totka’s, the special tips courtesy of my mum, which are what desi cooking is really about.
For the September Issue, I’m sharing a recipe - well, actually, 3 recipes thrown together to make one recipe for the freshest salad I whipped up at the Pakistan Indian Independence Day Supperclub. I collaborated with the talented Sohini of Smoke and Lime and, as the story goes, we both panicked last minute that the food might run out. This is the desi curse of cooking; no matter how much you cook, you always feel you need more! In honour of this panic mode, I call this recipe PANIC SUMMER SALAD.
Please head to my website to access the full recipe.
Numra x