Book Description
This is a warm, personal memoir from one of Britain’s most high-profile and vocal immigrants – a mouth-watering exploration of the author’s East African Indian roots through the shared experience of cooking.Through the personal story of Yasmin’s family and the food and recipes they’ve shared together, “The Settler’s Cookbook” will tell the history of the Indian migration to the UK, via East Africa. Her family was part of the mass exodus from India to East Africa during the height of British expansion, fleeing famine and lured by the prospect of prosperity under the imperial regime. In 1972, they were one of the many families expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin who moved to the UK, where Yasmin has made her home with an Englishman. The food she cooks now, in one of the world’s most ethnically-diverse cities, combines the traditions and tastes of her family’s hybrid history. Here you’ll discover how Shepherd’s Pie is much enhanced by sprinkling in some chilli, Victoria sponge can be wonderfully enlivened by saffron and lime juice, and the addition of ketchup to a curry can be life-changing…
About the Author
YASMIN ALIBHAI-BROWN is a leading commentator on race, multiculturalism and human rights, writing for the Independent and Guardian and appearing regularly on TV and Radio. She is the author of No Place Like Home (1995) and the IPPR report True Colours, on public attitudes to multiculturalism.
Ismailimail 
Sand witches and albatrosses: thoughts evoked by a cookbook
I loved this. Thank you Yasmin for again putting us on the map. I think the East African Asian cooking must be the most fused of any group of people, the way we picked up local African staples and European herbs in our dishes. And we helped fuse food in our adopted countries. Samosa and chapatti you pick up from any corner kiosk or shop in Kampala, London or Vancouver for your evening meal. Chicken Tikka Massala is now said to be the UK’s national dish, so familiar that it goes by the acro CTM – itself a fused dish when someone in Glasgow late one night asked for “some gravy” on his chicken tikka. The best biryani I ever had was on a BA flight LHR-YVR. And when I say the best, I don’t ignore the biryanis we had on picnics in the beloved Botanical Gardens at Entebbe and at the Aga Khan mosque on festival days that Yasmin writes about. Somehow the most memorable meals were always on picnics. Not for us – NEVER – sand witches (UgEng spelling), not even at tea – s’m’s only – not even at Jericho Beach picnics in Vancouver. In Texas the Ugandan Asians created a market for fresh corn for human consumption (y”ll folks ack’t’ly eat that cow feed?) and frozen cassava from Costa Rica. They tried subbing green bananas for matoke, but that bombed. I once had a Nanaimo Bar garnished with vindaloo spice at Vancouver’s trendiest Indian resto (nice but there’s no telling for taste, is there?), and there’s a very special ice cream shop there that sells a Mumbai Massala flavour, apart from 99 (999?) others.
Yasmin’s book takes us back to our Ugandan childhood, a most precious childhood because of our expulsion. I am writing about that too in my book on UgAsians and in this other one – Cooking Your Albatross – about my experiences doing a restaurant in Kampala, pleine Kampala Road. It’s hilarious. Lots of food stories, including about this headless chicken in Bamunanika village at Christmas 2008 that was presented as a stew with matoke with some green herb floating on it. I fell into a hallucinatory stupor. And, oh yes, a recipe for cooking your goose. The whole book is about that, after all, isn’t it!
Vali I V Jamal, Kisaasi, Kampala
PS> I went back to England in 1967 after working for Uganda government after going down from Cambridge after…. well OK. I woke up most mornings with this song going on – and…
And they say there’s a few million dames
That are impressed, their ears are blessed with Georgie Fame
So stay a while, you’ll see ’em smile, you won’t complain
His hands and feet make music sweet, you’ll miss your train
Your goose is cooked, you’re gettin’ hooked
On Georgie Fame…
Loved Georgie Fame, love him still
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