Tempt your taste buds with new takes on trad food
PAGING through this handsomely illustrated volume of recipes offers a wonderful tour of the diverse tastes our multicultural city has to offer.
Abass comes from a family that brings a range of spices to both home and professional cooks.
Her much-anticipated cook book is a visual feast and demonstrates how one can be steeped in the traditional but simultaneously introduce fresh and modern tastes and takes on those old favourites. This is in addition to introducing new healthy recipes with innovative and savvy combinations.
In her introduction, Abass points out her relationship with food has always been about creating exciting flavours, staying true to delicious home-cooked meals but catering to modern tastes.
Take for example the recipe pictured on the cover. It’s for a rich paneer curry – that most delicious of Indian white cheeses which absorbs flavours so well but maintains its consistency when cooked.
In Abass’s hands it becomes a flavour-packed and decadent vegetarian dish with cashew nuts, garlic, ginger, garam masala, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and more, cooked in a tomato sauce to which cream is added.
Many of the Malay/Indian inspired recipes have similar base spices like different masalas, chilli powder and the fragrance of either coriander powder or cardamom or cinnamon.
Abbas also offers dishes that have their roots in other cultures that she has mouth-wateringly made her own. I can’t wait to try out the blue cheese and asparagus and sage pasta. Or the green salad with raw broccoli, cranberries, walnuts, avo and more, with mint and spinach leaves.
You’ll find recipes for kedgeree (another favourite), crayfish in a cream sauce, hearty chicken dishes like a Hyderbadi chicken breyani and a heart-warming lamb kalya with yogurt and fried potatoes.
Finally the sweet treats look equally lip-smacking. I loved the idea of lemon and honey glazed coconut cupcakes topped with flaked almonds...
Every recipe – and I mean that – looks enticing and just cries out to be tried and tested!
The beautiful photographs were taken by Tasneem Kathrada – and you can virtually smell the dishes, so temptingly are they presented.
With Ramadaan in full swing there are some fabulous ideas for the nightly iftar meal or the early morning pre-fast suhoor.
But for all food lovers – which probably is most of us – this is a just simply a great addition to your recipe bookshelf.
The book is available from Spice Mecca at 7-11 Induland Crescent, Lansdowne.
For online purchases of the book and more details, go to www.shamilahabass.co.za
Many of the recipes included also have qr codes so you can download them.