Food of the gods for 800 of my closest friends

THE other day, feeling a little bored, I pulled Indian Delights from my bookshelf and paged through it.

The iconic cookbook, edited by Zuleikha Mayat, was first published in 1961 by the Women’s Cultural Group and has been in print since then. It can be found in thousands of South African homes.

My copy was given to me by my mother. Her own, which she bought some time in the mid-’70s, is falling apart at the spine, its pages soiled and dog-eared after decades of regular use.

My 2007 edition, on the other hand, is shamefully still as new as the day it was printed, with nary an oil splatter in sight. It’s more unused than my matric algebra textbook. Sorry about that, Ma.

As I flipped through the glossy pages of my Indian Delights, I was struck by what an entertaining read it is. It starts with a cheeky dedication: “This book is dedicated to all husbands who maintain that the best cooking effort of their wives can never compare to what ‘mother used to make’.”

Apart from the enticing and economical recipes, there are great photographs and lots of useful tips. There is also some rather eccentric advice: “Remedy for Ants and Cockroaches. Mix equal quantities of sugar, alum and borax and sprinkle around corners and railings.”

I mean, how can you not love a cookbook that gives you tips for killing cockroaches alongside recipes for gulaab jamun and moorkhoo?

Also spread throughout the book are interesting culinary, historical and cultural titbits and folklore. All this makes Indian Delights essential reading for anyone interested in South African Indian food.

However, the part I enjoyed the most was a small subsection entitled “Mass Cooking”. That is where I encountered “Biryani for 800 people”.

Read that again. That’s right: 800 people.

It is moments like these that make me love being Indian. Only a charrou cookbook would think to include a recipe that feeds almost a thousand people. The ingredient list is incredible — 4kg ginger, 2kg garlic, 200kg mutton, 2kg chilli powder, and it goes on. I’m not even going to mention how much oil and ghee is in this thing; suffice it to say that my cholesterol went up just reading it.

I stopped paging through the book at this point because, let’s be honest, nothing is going to top a biryani recipe for 800 people.

The recipe put me in the mood for a plate of steaming-hot “wedding biryani”, covered with a ladle of equally scalding dhal. I don’t know if it is just me, but I’ve always felt that those monster pots of biryani cooked at weddings and other functions taste infinitely better than biryani cooked at home.

Perhaps it’s the secret alchemy of the professional caterer or the fact that it is prepared over an open fire, giving the food a smokiness lacking in home cooking.

Another thing I’ve noticed about biryani at weddings is that it often seems to turn regular folks into restaurant critics. Your usually kind, polite aunty becomes Gordon Ramsay in a sari and starts making comments such as “The potatoes are too hard”, or “The meat is too dry”, or “They must have run out of salt”.

I guess people are so critical of wedding biryani because if you force them to sit through a two-hour ceremony, you’d better make sure the food is perfect.

One of my favourite parts of a wedding is when you have finished eating the biryani and the soji is dished on the same paper plate.

Something about that oily, spicy paper plate makes the soji taste better than if it was served on a new plate.

It’s like how curry and rice are always more delicious eaten off a banana leaf.

Anyway, I’m rather tempted to try that Indian Delights biryani recipe.

All I need now is a gigantic pot and 800 chommies.