I recently attained the grand age of 62 years old and to my delight received a beauty of a cookbook as a birthday present from my youngest daughter Mika and her man Shahar.
Shahar, just back from a business junket in London, was lucky enough to be wined and dined at one of London’s current top eateries: Dishoom. Dishoom is a chain of Bombay-inspired restaurants that has attained cult-like status in England with a list of awards as long as your arm, along with recognition from the prestigious Michelin foodie organisation. So impressed with the food, Shahar and Mika, knowing I had a small interest in cooking, generously shared the secrets of Dishoom and the Bombay kitchen with me.
Dishoom means ‘kapow’ or ‘bang’ (loud noise). The cookbook takes you through the menu of the Dishoom restaurant chain by way of both an historic and culinary journey through the streets of Bombay – giving you the spice, sweetness and grime you will meet in a trip, starting at breakfast and finishing well into your evening.
Dishoom the restaurant fashions itself on the Irani cafés popular throughout Bombay in the 1960s; the food fashion and nostalgia is an eclectic mix from all over colonial Asia and England itself. The photographic journey, a book in itself, offers up a visual tasting of the history, foods, hubbub and ‘the great unwashed’ that is Bombay, India.
I can’t recommend this book enough: something for every palate, interesting, well written and presented, and, most of all to lovers of Indian foods, a useful and must-have addition to their cookbook library. Available through Amazon.
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