Keep Calm And Curry On

In August, India celebrates the anniversary of Indian Independence, yet the Anglo-Indian community, a legacy of the British Raj with its roots in European and Indian ancestry, still treads the cultural line between both communities. Jenny Mallin, author of A Grandmother’s Legacy, tells us about the fusion food in her family and recipes passed down through the generations

- Jenny Mallin

Tell us about your book

“It’s a cookbook memoir relating to five generational grandmothers of mine who were living in India during the British Raj and decided to hand a recipe book down from mother to daughter. I used their book as the catalyst to offer an insight into the lives of British Raj women, their family life, their recipes and the history and events which ran parallel to them.”

What inspired you to write it?

“My parents often spoke to me about their lives in India and how life was for them, with the sudden loss of my father I recognised that not only was life fragile but also they had been part of a chapter in British/Indian history which was rather unique that, with Partition, had come to an end. Something stirred inside of me to try and spend as much time as I could with my mother capturing a sense of the generations in my family who were part of that history and I used the old grandmothers’ cookbook as the catalyst to research their recipes, discover why they had such intriguing names such as country captain (a chicken curry dish named after the country boat steamer captain who coursed his way from Bengal to Chittagong and onwards to Burma in the 18th century) and ding ding curry (which was a railway curry served in the refreshments dining hall at the railway stations in India) and document them for posterity.”

Some of the recipes in your book go back to 1850. Could you preserve all of them?