Spice Mama is a culinary nostalgia project. It’s how I learn from and share generations of culinary wisdom and history and it’s how I tell the story of my culture through food.
I come from a long line of women that cooked good food, passing their traditional recipes on to their daughters in the warm, fragrant kitchens that continue to exist only in my imagination.
"When I cook our old recipes I bring to life the food and the stories of my family and also the entire history, culture and philosophy of Indian cuisine. I feel so lucky to belong to one of the oldest culinary traditions in the world and I want to keep it alive for my children and future generations."
When I cook, I feel like I am home again in old Bombay, the city where I was born. I travel in my mind to an enchanted place, where hot food was cooked in cool kitchens, in high ceilinged houses tiled with stone, and afternoons were spent on shady verandas hung with slow fans, swinging on day beds gossiping and drinking chai.
I cook to remember the past, and with inherited knowledge of the medicinal and nutritional use of spices, the healthy cooking and eating practices traditionally passed down through generations.
I cook Indian food because it is one of the oldest and healthiest cooking styles in the world. From the moment thousands of years ago that man first realised the importance of using food as medicine, our families have used spices when we cook.
By sharing recipes, I want to show people how different spices add natural flavours to food, helping to reduce the use of sugar, salt and artificial ingredients in cooking. I want people to experiment with using spices because they are full of anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant and anti-bacterial compounds - the original ‘super’ foods.
Cooking healthy food at home for your family, and following a traditional, non-western diet rich in anti-inflammatory ingredients, can reduce exposure to some of the chronic diseases of the western world. And more than that, cooking and sharing good food at home, with your family, is a way to restore meaning, and the ability to connect and show love, in our otherwise frantic lives.
I want people to indulge in the beauty of home cooked food, made from scratch, the stories that food tells you and the emotional wellbeing that comes from eating a simple meal made with love.
I hope you enjoy my stories and recipes, and I hope that they inspire you, in the kitchen and beyond.
Shaheen x
