EXPERT TIP
If you want to prepare this a day in advance, you can make the lamb curry base but don't soak or cook the rice until the next day when you're ready to serve.
“Cooking and eating good, home-made food has always been a part of my life; whether it was prepared by my mother or sister or, in later years, by myself. I knew that any meal we made using the ingredients in our home was going to fill and nourish us.
My parents taught me that making and serving food is an act of service and an evocative language of love. My mother taught me that when made with the right intentions, food can be medicine, and that a home-cooked meal can heal on all levels. This showed in how well my father, who was always ill, ate. In the same way, the food she cooked for my husband, who is diabetic, never once increased his blood-sugar levels.
“My mother taught me that when made with the right intentions, food can heal”
My late father, Hoosain Shaik Saib, taught me to have a humble relationship with food. He would make sure we ate every grain of rice, especially the ones stuck to the back of the serving spoon. His motto was that food was precious and not even a grain of rice deserved to be wasted. After all, someone somewhere in a foreign land planted the seed, watered the crop, harvested it and packaged it all before it came to be on our plates. While he didn't know how to cook, save for scrambled eggs and toast, I feel him through the food we eat every day. I think about what flavours he would like and how he would respond to what we had for supper and, through the writing of this book, how he would respond to me.
FOOD WAS SCARCE WHEN MY FATHER WAS YOUNG.
He came from a poor, broken family in KwaZulu-Natal, with a
