Hi! I’m Saima and I’m so glad you stopped by my site.
I live in Edmonton, Alberta with my husband and twin boys, and I love cooking tasty, healthy Indian meals for them. No canned stuff or take-outs for us.
My relationship with Indian food goes back a long way. Born in an Indian home, my earliest food memories are of my mother cooking parathas (a type of flatbread cooked in ghee or clarified butter) on weekend mornings.
Pure ghee has a very pleasant smell and when my mother cooked with it, the entire house was filled with its aroma. Smelling the ghee, I would run into the kitchen and she would make a special smiley-shaped paratha which I ate with dollops of fresh cream and sugar.
But I did not just want to eat those parathas! I also wanted to ‘help’ Mama make balls from the dough and roll them out. I must have gotten in her way, but they were my very first lessons in cooking.
Those mornings spent in the kitchen with my mother sparked an enthusiasm for cooking that led to many culinary adventures (with a few misadventures) in my teenage years. I loved surprising my parents with my creations and fancied myself quite the chef par
excellence.
In later years, this enthusiasm waned somewhat but was rekindled when I got married and realized I was in charge of the food department. I needed to put practical meals on the table everyday, not the elaborate and exotic experiments of my youth. So back to my mother for help. With her tried and tested recipes, sometimes dictated over the phone, I got along extremely well.
Since those early days, I have added to my recipe collection and evolved as a cook (or so my family tells me). I’m especially partial to simple and fresh food that doesn’t take a ton of effort to make.
In fact, there is a little test I have for including a recipe in my collection. One, the
ingredients that go into making a dish have to be fresh, natural and whole. Two, the dish itself should make the taste buds sing. If a recipe passes this two-pronged test,
it’s in. Simple.
There’s no greater pleasure than making good food for the people you love. So, join me on my cooking journey as I discover and share with you better ways of cooking awesome Indian food, the kind that’s eaten in my home …. and in Indian homes everywhere.
Cheers,
Saima Zaidi