The most expensive ingredient is time
Darjeeling Express chef Asma Khan talks to PRUDENCE WADE about her new cookbook which she has dedicated to her mother
FOR most chefs food is a passion, and for many, this starts young – but Asma Khan didn’t actually learn how to cook until she got married.
In fact, Asma had no desire to cook at all – “I just wanted to eat,” she says with a laugh – and didn’t see a need to learn. “I didn’t imagine I would leave home and leave India. The presumption was, I would have an arranged marriage into another family where people would have cooks and grown-ups – who would cook,” she recalls. “I thought I was a child, people are going to feed me – I’m never going to grow up.”
Asma did have an arranged marriage, but found herself in the UK. “I was in a foreign land with a stranger,” she says – and swiftly realised the way to connect to her family and her country was through cooking.
“Food became my way of going home, but also my language of love,” she explains. “I was cooking to heal, and feed and nourish others. I realised Ammu (her mother) did that her whole life too.”
Luckily, Asma’s first adventures in the kitchen were relatively successful and recipes came easily as she was already so familiar with them.
“I knew how to cook, but I didn’t know how to cook,” she says. Reflecting on her childhood in the kitchen, she explains: “I knew the aromas, I knew the sounds – the sizzle of the cumin, the popping of the mustard seeds, the smokiness of the dried chillies... I knew how to recreate these dishes very quickly, because you just have to watch it done once from beginning to end.”
That’s why Asma spends so much time in her new cookbook, Ammu, describing the sensory experiences of cooking – how dishes should taste and smell, rather than focusing on things like cooking times. ‘Ammu’ is the affectionate term for ‘mother’ for Bengali Muslims – and it was important for Asma to write it in her mother Faizana’s lifetime. It’s full of family recipes, stories from both Asma and her mother’s childhoods, and pictures – something Faizana was surprised Asma had collected.
Faizana was “very emotional” when she saw the book.
“My mother is not someone who pussyfoots around but she loved every recipe, and thought it was great, because there were things she had forgotten herself as well.”
Through writing the book, Asma began to understand “how much I am like her, in lots of ways”. She explains: “She changed things around her gently – she was very unusual for her time, coming from a royal family and setting up a food business. Plus, she would protect women who had been abandoned by men, and protect their children.
“We used to hate it, because there would be this woman suddenly in the house with snotty children. We would think, ‘What are these kids doing here?’ But my mother would always say, ‘I want her to know she can sell food, she can cook food, she doesn’t have to sell her daughters, she doesn’t have to sell her body.’ That was so radical for that time.”
Asma shares this entrepreneurial spirit, opening the Darjeeling Express restaurant in London in 2017, and becoming the first British chef to feature on Netflix show Chef’s Table. She has also dedicated her career to lifting up women – and has an all-female team of chefs at her restaurant (she wants to move to a space where the kitchen is open, so everyone can see and appreciate who’s cooking the food).
“Representation matters,” she says simply. “If there’s no chair at the table, take a chair and sit down.”
Similar to her mother, Asma says: “I am very traditional in lots of ways, and yet I can challenge the system.”
And she’s more than happy for anyone to make her dishes – so long as they try to understand and appreciate the history behind it.
“The problem is when culture and food are separated. There’s all this conversation about what is being appropriated. I don’t care about the colour of your skin – please cook my food – but understand the region, the stories. Do you know why the food is called this? Why is this spice in here? What is so sacred about the ritual of this food?
“If you understand all this, some part of you will be honouring the women, the generations from which this recipe has come down.”
Her final tip is to take your time. “The most expensive ingredient you put into a dish: time.
“For me, that is the core of how I cook,” says Asma.
“It’s about time and generosity – I don’t cook to impress. Heal and nourish has been my philosophy, from the time I learned to cook.”
Chef Asma Khan
■ Ammu: Indian HomeCooking To Nourish Your Soul by Asma Khan is published by Ebury Press, priced £26. Photography by Laura Edwards