Chance to home cook restaurant favourites
NEW COOKBOOK COMPILES LOTS OF CLASSICS OFF BOBBY’S MENU
A MUCH-loved city restaurant is set to release a cookbook featuring some of its favourite recipes.
The book, by Bobby’s in Leicester, has been a long time in the making but came to fruition during the pandemic.
Enna Lakhani, one of the restaurant owners, said she had always spoken about writing a book with her motherin-law, Mangla.
“I learned a lot of cooking from her when I got married, “Enna said.
“She used to say ‘learn this and we’ll make a book!’”
Mangla died 15 years ago, but many of her recipes are still part of Bobby’s well-loved menu.
Bobby’s was opened in Leicester’s Golden Mile in 1976 by Bhagwanjibha Lakhani, Mangla’s husband, who came to Leicester as part of the forced expulsion of Asians from Uganda in the early 1970s.
The restaurant became one of the first Gujarati restaurants in the country and is known as a local institution by multiple generations.
While the coronavirus pandemic was a difficult time for hospitality, it gave Enna the chance to make a start on the cookbook.
“I just started writing down recipes and it was nothing serious,” she said. “I never thought beyond just getting a few recipes together.”
But she was soon introduced to an independent publisher, with the help of a designer who had reworked the restaurant’s interior a few years back.
Eventually, the list of recipes grew with the help of the chefs and the family.
“My sister-in-laws shared a few of their recipes – they’re all excellent cooks and they have the talent of their mother,” Enna said.
In a long and at times painstaking process, Enna tested all the recipes at least three times, working with the Belgrave restaurant’s chefs.
The recipes were also taken home to trial with the help of her two sons Arjun, 24, and Karran, 21, and the support of husband, Dharmesh.
“We were cooking every day – it’s a different story making something on a big scale at the restaurant and then making it for just a few people at home,” she said.
“There’s been lots of tears and a lot of laughter through the process!”
Now with the help of A Way With Media publishing company, the tried and tested recipes have been put together in a book for people to recreate at home.
The 224-page hardback Cook with Love, which is out in the autumn, is available to pre-order directly from the publishers at: