Meera Sodha’s dazzling take on the food of her heritage is voted Best New Cookbook by OFM readers. Plus three of her classic Indian recipes, via Scunthorpe
Meera Sodha has made turmeric lattes and a type of mithai (Indian sweet). Rather apologetically, she notes that while things may seem to have gone a bit hipster cafe when we meet in her east London kitchen, both are old Indian recipes. She’d grown up drinking “golden milk” as a cure-all (though health claims on its behalf remain unproven, she hastens to add), and had been busy developing her own spice blend including turmeric, cinnamon and pepper. The sweets are khajur pak – traditionally made by heating dates and nuts, likely cashews, in a pan on the stove, but she blitzed them in a food processor before rolling them into balls and dusting with pistachio and cocoa. “And I added pecans because … well, who doesn’t love pecans?” This pursuit of flavour over tradition has contributed to the success of Fresh India, this year’s winner of Best New Cookbook.
Sodha, 35, isn’t keen on people who get uptight about authenticity. “I’m lucky to have straddled two worlds,” she says of her upbringing eating traditional Gujarati food made from seasonal British produce. She was born in Scunthorpe, the daughter of immigrants expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin in 1972. They had to adapt their cooking to use the produce available to them, as her grandparents had. “It’s still Gujarati cooking, but seasons change and people change, so food changes – even produce in the UK has changed wildly since my parents moved here.”
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