I’d never really cared much for until I found myself, one evening, in my London apartment staring at my near-empty fridge intensely craving a hit of spice. Not the spice from an Indian restaurant or “curry house” as they are called over there, but the comfort of a homemade meal, specifically my mum’s rajma. Rajma is a vegetarian dish made with kidney beans in a thick gravy loaded with fragrant spices, tomato, onion and garlic. It is best enjoyed with rice and yoghurt and was the one dish I happily ate growing up.
I didn’t realise how spoilt I had been at home in Sydney. My mum made fresh , and roti every day. Our house was fragrant with masala every day around 5:30pm. Staring at my empty London fridge, my stomach grumbled and tied itself in knots of hunger as I reached for a frozen pizza for the fourth time that week. I couldn’t believe I had moved out of home and could eat whatever I wanted, but all I was craving was Punjabi food.
In that moment, I wished I had listened to my mum when she pestered me to learn how to cook. I refused to learn, saying it was boring and who wants to cook dal when I could cook something more exotic like pasta? My mum didn’t have written recipes for anything, so when I'd ask 'how much of this?' or 'how much of that?' she would say, 'you just know'. And of course, I didn’t understand. How could you just know how much salt to add? Or how much masala was too much?
A part of me avoided learning Punjabi cooking because all I had ever seen the women around me do was cook and it looked exhausting.
Fresh dal was served at home when the writer was growing up. Source: Andrew Dorn
All the thinking, shopping, cutting, frying, sautéing, serving, washing. I feared that as soon as I learnt how to cook, I was going to be stuck in the kitchen and have my hands smell of masala forever. The women around me were never taught to cook for themselves, it was always to ensure that you could cook for others, namely that you were fit for marriage.
This conversation would show up subtly around me (with comments such as ‘cooking is a woman’s duty’ to ‘what will your mother-in-law say if you can’t cook?’). I avoided a large part of my culture because I wanted my life to move beyond the kitchen – a small way to fight the beast that is the Indian patriarchy.
A part of me avoided learning Punjabi cooking because all I had ever seen the women around me do was cook and it looked exhausting.
I remember when my parents invited people over, my mother and all the female guests would be in the kitchen from the start of the evening till the last dish was washed. The men would always be served first and only after they ate, did the women eat. As I got older, the person in the kitchen became me and I hated every minute of it.
Not wanting to have frozen pizza for the fifth night in a row, I decided to attempt rajma. I wrote down everything I remembered my mum doing and made a shopping list for the things I’d need. The first thing I needed to get sorted was my loon dani. A loon dani is a spice box, usually made of stainless steel, which can be found in every Indian house around the world. It usually holds up to seven spices which can vary from house to house. In the loon dani, a few spices you are guaranteed to find are haldi, garam masala and jeera.
Garam masala: a popular spice blend. Source: SBS Food
Haldi
It's also known in English as turmeric and has been used in India for . This is the spice that makes food pop with that orange-yellow colour and can now be found in lattes and in tablet form at overpriced health stores. It is the thing that stains your nails and plastic containers, but takes your food to the next level.
Garam masala
This North Indian spice blend varies from house to house. My mum and aunties each have their own special blend of garam masala they make themselves, so the same dish will taste different at each house.
Jeera
The spice I didn’t know was called cumin in English till much later in life. I add it to just about everything.
I wandered down to the closest Indian grocery store and the smell of spice hit me as soon as I walked in the door and awoke my numbed sense of smell. It was a strange experience, shopping in an Indian spice store in the middle of a country that had so grandly destroyed the country of my family and ancestors. It also baffles me that the British had access to all the spices in the world, yet English food is so bland. There is only so much pepper can do!
There is so much complexity and diversity in Indian cuisine, with every region having its own culinary delights such as , and to name a few. It sometimes saddens me that Indian food gets reduced to simply curry in the Western world, that is said to be invented by the English – an anglicised version of the Tamil word ‘kari’, which simply means sauce.
I confidently walked around the store knowing exactly what I needed and loaded my basket with haldi, jeera, red chilli powder, black pepper, garam masala and salt. Armed with my bag full of spices, I rushed back home, my head filled with the image of my perfect rajma that I’d proudly Whatsapp my mum a picture of.
Dosa is one of India's "culinary delights". Source: Food Safari Earth
I had all my ingredients laid out on my tiny kitchen bench and even though I had seen my mum make masala a thousand times, I couldn’t remember the steps. I Googled a few recipes and in the end just decided to trust my instinct. It’s all well and good to own spices, but if you don’t know how to balance them, it can lead to disaster. My instinct was way off as my rajma turned out to be very watery and bland. I Whatsapped a picture to my mum anyway and she sent me a bunch of the crying-laughter emoji symbols followed by a ‘good job' (thumbs up) and encouraged me to keep going, elated that I was finally learning.
I ate my watery, bland rajma with rice, happy that I had made a Punjabi meal for myself and only me. My apartment smelt like warm spice and I felt right at home. Food in that moment became more than something I needed to avoid starvation, it was a link back to home and to comfort. The narrative shifted to, 'I can cook this food for myself and enjoy it'. Serving me is enough.
This piece was originally submitted for , a project dedicated to promoting diverse voices on food.
