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Flavours of love

Stumbling upon her late mother’s recipe collection, Bina Thadani shares it with the public

Yummy mummy! Kishni Thadani

Mumbaiite Bina Thadani’s case resides somewhere in between. Her mother, Kishni Thadani, like many young women in the early ’30s, loved collecting recipes. Having been raised in a privileged family from the Sindh province, headed by her uncle, Dialmal Lalvani – a renowned lawyer in pre-partition India, who often entertained European guests – and then married off to an Indian Foreign Service officer, Kishni’s canvas was of course bigger than the usual. If as a young maiden, she noted down recipes from the European guests at home, as a diplomat’s wife, she continued with the exercise. “So what do you cook at home?” would often be her opening line, daughter Bina now relates.

So, from Europe to the Orient, her diary got filled with a wide variety of recipes, many of which, Bina says, her late mother would try out at home. Not just that, she would meticulously write down how to decorate and serve a particular dish and how best it could be paired with other accompaniments. For instance, if asparagus soup can be served hot or chilled, Borsch, a Russian beetroot soup, is often served cold and goes best with vegetarian pate with hot roast and a fruit salad. If crème Vichyssoise, a French soup, is best prepared a day before serving, potato gratine is finest with fried fish, grilled ginger chicken or roast meat.

Kishni also noted down some personal recipes like that of the mayonnaise sauce from the chef at Rotary Club, Hyderabad, Sindh, and the signature dish, fish chowder a la Verdon, from Rene Verdon, the White House chef of John F. Kennedy among others.

“Towards the end of her life, my mother would often say, ‘I wish someone had filed my recipes. Many British dishes that I noted down in the 1930s are mostly dead in England too.’ But I somehow ignored her wish,” says Bina, a corporate communications executive in a private concern.

A good three years after her mother’s death, Bina, while spring cleaning her chest of drawer, stumbled upon the diary filled with close to a hundred recipes. The love for the lost mother made her decide to turn it into a book. And only last month, Rupa has come out with Kishni Thadani’s “Special Flavours of Europe and the Orient – Fine Dining in Diplomatic Enclaves”.

“I wanted to share the recipes with the public as I felt if they are not recorded now, they would get lost. Also, it is my tribute to her,” says Bina. Sharing more, she talks of excluding some of her mother’s recipes as she had graded them “bad”.

“Only those for which she had written ‘good’ on the side bar of her diary have been included.” Some of the recipes in the book say “Kishni’s favourite”. There is also a section on Sindhi dishes. Wishing she had come up with the book before her mother’s death, Bina refuses to get herself clicked for a photograph to go with this story, saying, “Please take my mum’s photo. It is her moment.”

SANGEETA BAROOAH PISHAROTY

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