A peek into my kitchen, me and my journey with food
I can’t quite believe that this little space of my own that I started a couple of years ago now has over 1200 subscribers. A lot of you have joined in recent months, so I wanted to step back in time and give you a peek into my kitchen and my food journey.
P.S. Parts of this post was originally written for an interview I did with Foodstack, sharing the ins and outs of my kitchen for their series, Other People’s Kitchen
Depending on the day you ask me, I'll tell you I'm from New Zealand, India or Iran.
The first two, I've lived in for equal parts of my life. And Iran, because I'm a Parsi Zoroastrian. While I've never stepped foot in Iran, my ancestors were from there. In New Zealand, we use a pepeha to introduce ourselves formally. to share the people and places that are most important to us, that define who we are. Rather than starting with our name, we begin with the places most important to us (often a mountain and a body of water) move onto our community and family and finally, share our name.
Here’s mine:
Ko Damavand te maunga - Mt Damavand is the mountain I call home
Ko Arabian te moana - The Arabian Sea is the water body closest to me
Ko Parsi te hāpu - Parsis are my tribe, my community
Ko Patel tōku whānau - I'm part of the Patel family
Kei Tāmaki Makaurau ahau e noho ana - I live in Auckland
Ko Perzen tōku ingoa - my name is Perzen
Like other Indian immigrants, I've always had a complicated relationship with the food I grew up eating. Butter chicken, turmeric latte, naan bread. I have something to say about all of those and more, but especially butter chicken!
My Kitchen: Where the Magic Happens
Fun fact. When we were shopping around for a home, the first thing my husband would look for was a large bedroom. And me? A large kitchen of course. Ideally one with two pantries. I didn't know when I'd get so lucky again as to find a kitchen with two pantries, two ovens and a gas stove. That's when I knew we absolutely had to buy this house.
I grew up in a house where the kitchen was in a far-flung part of the house, and if you were cooking in there for family or guests, you couldn't be part of the conversation.
Our kitchen is where all the action happens. One pantry is devoted to the business, and one is used for all my experimental cooking. When we're not preparing curry pastes for our family business, I'm toodling around in there trying to use up whatever is left in the fridge. My kids know I'm probably in the kitchen if I don't reply to them.
Aside from the pantries and ovens, my favourite part of the kitchen is that it's open plan. I grew up in a house where the kitchen was in a far-flung part of the house, and if you were cooking in there for family or guests, you couldn't be part of the conversation. It was like you were being punished. I consequently love my kitchen, where family and guests can gather around and chat (or make themselves useful and brew a pot of chai) while I wash the dishes.
Like other Indian immigrants, I've always had a complicated relationship with the food I grew up eating
Kitchen Must-Haves
Kitchen gadget shopping is my favourite kind of shopping! When we bought this house however, I promised myself I wouldn't clutter it with gadgets and kitchen utensils that I hardly used and I’ve mostly stuck to that promise plus or minus a few cast iron pans and silicon spatulas
My Thermomix is my trusty workhorse. We use it for the business multiple days a day, after which it does a night shift for dinner. I'm also in love with my half oven, which heats up super quick, and my miniature tadka pan for all things tadka, kettle, air-fryer and panini grill (the new one I got allows you to adjust the height so all your sandwiches don't get totally squashed, magic!).
Cast iron pans aside, my most treasured utensil is my traditional patio tapeli.
I typically use it to make my Lagan no Patio (a traditional, sweet and sour tomato-based gravy served with poached fish). I share custody of this utensil with my mum and it’s engraved with H N Darukhanawalla, my grandfather’s name.
Darukhanawalla is my maiden name. The literal Hindi translation means walla: ‘owner, or person who does something’, with 'daru', stands for alcohol and 'khana', stands for food. When I studied hospitality, my lecturer would always joke that, my surname was very suited to me.
Kitchen improvements
I love my kitchen but it doesn’t make good use of available space. I’d love if my pantry shelves were actually pantry drawers. This way I could put things at the back of a shelf or at the bottom of a pantry and still be able to easily access it.
I’d also love one of the knife magnets, spoons hanging down from the ceiling on hooks and a herb wall but I’m a #boymom so even as I close my eyes to imagine these in my kitchen all I see is my six-year-old hanging off the wall contraption or dangerous “sword” play I’d rather not have.
Pantries, fridges and my favourite meal
Items that are always in my fridge are... curry leaves and coriander because they are my go-to herbs for just about any kind of food I make. I always have a stock of carrots because I hide them in all the meals I make for my kids and broccoli because my son likes to open the fridge and nibble on it raw. Aside from that, there's always a big block of cheese. We are a cheese-loving family.
My pantry is full of... all kinds of sauces and spices. I have storage baskets for different kinds of cuisine so my south-east Asian ingredients like fish sauce, oyster sauce etc stay there and I have another basket for all my pastas and couscous and then shelves for my Indian spices. Now that I have a Thermomix at home I also make sauces and spice blends myself at home. I do that when the mood gets me once in a couple of months and that leaves me with plenty of flavours I can experiment with.
My favourite ingredient to cook with is... onions. I often find myself cutting a couple before I have decided what I am cooking and they are just so versatile and tasty!
My go-to meal is... a bowl of dahl. I love lentils and could have them every night of the week, making different kinds of preparations using them. Being Parsi, my favourite is Dhandar, a simple preparation made using yellow split peas, ghee, turmeric, garlic and cumin. If I've been away travelling for a long time or if I am happy or if I am upset, plain, yellow dahl topped with a simple ghee-garlic-cumin tadka is soul food.
From India to New Zealand and Back Again
I've migrated from India to New Zealand as a teenager. From New Zealand back to India as a bride. And from India back to New Zealand as a mother.
Each time, it was like moving to an entirely new country.
I remember my second week in a new college where I stumbled into a classroom full of 15-year-old boys shouting "Penis. Penis. Penis." and was embarrassed heating up my box of leftover masala potatoes. That was the start of my journey, rejecting the food I grew up eating in my bid to desperately assimilate in a new country.
As a result, when I moved back to India after five years in a long-distance relationship, I knew nothing about cooking Indian food. For date night one day, I decided to cook Chana Masala. First I added too many tomatoes. Then, it was too spicy. Over the course of our ten years of married life, I've recounted that date night many times and you’ll have to read the full post to know why.
Dolly Mumma: From Grandma's Kitchen to Yours
As a kid, I used to go to my grandma, Dolly Mumma's house every weekend and she'd always make me her amazing curry for lunch. Once she cuddled and asked me what I wanted to inherit from her. I innocently told her that all I really wanted was a big, never-ending bowl of her curry that I could always have and remember her by.
When we moved to New Zealand, it took some time adjusting to having to cook all the meals all the time. I'd spend every weekend making various curry pastes so that I had shortcuts in the fridge to make weeknight cooking easier.
One night over dinner I was complaining about the Kiwi obsession with radioactive orange butter chicken and how they all needed a taste of real Indian food. My husband Rushad, sales genius extraordinaire, convinced me I had to bottle up my pastes and see if there was a market for them.
We decided to name our business Dolly Mumma because both my mumma and Rushad’s maternal grandma was named Dolly. To encapsulate everything we’ve learned about good food from them.
In October 2020, we did our first farmers' market, and 100+ weekends later, we now have a thriving small food business that both Rushad and I run together, selling curry pastes and spice blends across New Zealand.
On cookbooks
I’m an avid reader of just about every type of book. When we moved to New Zealand, I had to cull my book collection and give away most of it. The only books I’ve kept are a few (okay, about 20) collectables, mostly ones about regional Indian food. I rarely take my cookbooks into the kitchen to cook. For me, they are my bedtime or weekend reading when I want to learn something new.
A guest I interviewed for my podcast once described cookbooks as history books and it’s something I’ve taken to heart. Perhaps my favourite book in my small collection is Parsi Food and Customs by Bhicoo Maneckshaw.
The book contains no pictures and only a handful of illustrations, but I learned a lot about my community’s heritage from that book. The section on vegetables starts with Bhicoo sharing, “one seldom heard of a Parsi vegetarian in my youth” while the section on eggs includes a recipe that once called for eight eggs and 500gm of ghee!
I rarely take my cookbooks into the kitchen to cook. For me, they are my bedtime or weekend reading when I want to learn something new.
I haven’t written a cookbook yet, but I want to! In my head, it’s a culinary memoir that shares the story of me falling out of love and then, back in love, with Indian food. I’m tentatively calling it Butter Chicken Police. Read a few draft chapters and give me your feedback?
Three spice tips
If you cook with more than 3-4 spices, you need a Masala Dabba in your kitchen. An unassuming steel box containing seven steel bowls, a masala dabba is to the indian kitchen what an oven is to the western kitchen: a necessity.
If you're grinding your own spice blends or using whole spices in your cooking, you must dry roast them first, ideally individually. Dry roasting spices allows them to bloom and release their full flavour. This seemingly unnecessary step is what makes your curries go from meh to mwah (chef's kiss).
I used to roll my eyes behind my mother-in-law's back for buying spice packets in 50gm sizes but I've learned that spices, especially spice blends, lose their aroma rapidly. Buying them in smaller quantities means you ended up using the spices when they taste best.
Here on Substack, I share food stories, recipes and host online cooking classes.
By telling you the stories of my misadventures in food and life, I hope to inspire you in your journey beyond radioactive orange butter chicken and show you how simple and forgiving Indian food can be.
That in fact, Indian food can be made in any home, even yours.
Arohanui, Perzen 🍛✨
Thank you for sharing your story
Caught your post on Foodstack Library earlier this month - such fun to get another peek here, thanks!
Love your mini tadka pan - must go get one! We have a teeny cast iron pot that we keep just for sizzling up sesame or camellia oil, which we ladle on top of cold tofu or steamed fish just before serving.