LIFE AS IT IS

I can't even recall making a cup of tea while in Dhaka. My relationship with the kitchen was limited to finding a jar of cookies or pickles from the cupboard. This very relationship changed soon after I set foot in the USA, where I learned to cook for the first time in life. I am just a cook, not a good cook, let alone a great one. I cook to survive. In the US, I learned to cook mostly fried veggies, lentils, egg curry and tuna kebab. While hubby happily experimented with cooking ingredients, I happily appreciated his culinary skills as I ate his beef and fish curries, biriyani, chotpoti and much more. Nevertheless, I cooked almost everyday, prepared what I could, and never dared to embark on a large culinary project. Then it all changed with the arrival of the woman who brought me to this world. Now, I have more or less gone back to my Dhaka days. I literally have not cooked in three months. I happily handed over the responsibility of cooking to my mother. Now, my own re

I grew up seeing a copy of Ranna, Khadyo, Pushti by Siddika Kabir on our bookshelf. Like our house, countless other houses in Bangladesh have a copy of this valuable book that instantly helps ease a mother, wife or daughter's culinary vexation. As a child, I often saw my mother flipping through its pages, looking for the recipe of a Chinese dish or anything that she was cooking for the first time. Ranna, Khadyo, Pushti also graces the bookshelves of Bengali households outside Bangladesh. "I cannot help but consult Professor Kabir's book every time I cook a deshi curry," Nazia Hussein, a doctoral student at University of Warwick, U.K., said. Like Nazia, thousands of other men and women regularly consult her book before embarking on a culinary project -- be it shrimp malaikari, murighonto, biriyani or Chinese fried rice. "There was a time when Siddika Kabir's book was given as a gift to anyone going abroad," said Naznin Sultana, a homemaker from Dhaka.