The Mohameds at their Iftar party last year. From right: Tasneem Hatimbhai, Khozema Mohamed, Hatim Mohamed, Kehkashan Merchant, Yusuf Merchant.
Every Ramadan, Khozema Mohamed’s Muslim and non-Muslim friends and family save their appetites in anticipation of an invitation. The Mohamed family has an iftaar feast that makes guests cancel vacations or skip out early from their own family events. The folks who can’t make it must let salt be rubbed into their wounds – for days after, photos of the thaals served will flood their Facebook timelines and their Instagram feeds. They will see the kebabs they lost out on, the raan they could have scooped up with naan, and the kesar-pista ice cream on mithai that would have been theirs if they had massaged their schedule a bit.
The Mohameds are excellent hosts, but that is not the main reason why their iftaar is so special. Its success comes mainly from the undeniable truth that the family is committed to eating well. They make sure that their guests eat well too. I had an iftaar meal at their home a few months ago. We had jaggery-sweetened water with basil seeds, galouti kebabs, kheema samosas, biryani and lots more while we spoke about how the more meals change, the more they stay the same.
Hatim Mohamed at his home.
THEN
Nafisa Mohamed, Khozema’s mother, wasn’t allowed to enter the kitchen when she was growing up because the family’s cooking staff was all male. But she’s always been surrounded by food. Recipes were passed on to her orally as they had been to the other women in the family. She vividly recounts how Mohamedbhai, the family cook, would grind chutney on a flat patthar, how kheema was always hand churned, and how ghee was extracted on a Primus chulha. She said that when they lived on Saifee Jubilee Street in Bohri Mohalla in a large joint family – Khozema’s grandfather owned the building and the family had moved in before Independence –during Eid, ten litres of milk would be set aside for shir kurma. Preparations would start at 4am and it would be portioned off for distribution in the neighbourhood. This is a mohalla and Bohri community tradition: shir kurma is meant to be shared among relatives and friends, and still is, logistics permitting.
For a special snack, beef mince was tenderised with raw papaya and spiked with adrak-marcha (ginger and chilli paste) and masalas, patted flat, rolled in egg first and then bread, and deep fried in ghee. These were called ‘cream tikkas’, not because they contained any cream, but because they were tenderised to the point of creaminess. Almost every meal the family ate was served in a thaal, food was cooked in tapelas so large that you could not put your arms around them, and guests were always welcomed with Rooh Afza.
Nafisa Mohamed’s provisions journal.
The Bohris are a community of Muslims from Gujarat – they speak a version of Gujarati called Daawat ni Zubaan – and they have a range of recipes that are found only within the community. “Thri-conh samosa (triangular, thin filo-like pastry) stuffed with kheema and the labour- and time-intensive malida – made with wheat flour, ghee, sugar, gondh (edible gum) and charoli,” says Nafisa Mohamed. “I haven’t seen any other community make them the way we do.” Her idea of food has been informed both by her own mother and her husband Hatim’s mother. The sense of tradition and an understanding of traditional food – kheer, khichda, dal chawal palida – she got from her childhood home. The art of running a kitchen, she picked up from her mother-in-law, from whom she inherited a weekly stock-taking diary that she keeps to this day. It’s a decades-old record of the family’s history and tastes through lists of fruits, grains, dry fruits, nuts, vegetables and spices.
NOW
Seven years ago, Khozema’s birthday coincided with Ramadan and the coincidence created a new tradition that continues to preserve and expand on the old. That year, the family decided to host an iftaar party to mark the occasion. It has turned out to be the most significant decision in passing down the family’s long-established way of eating. In the first year, they invited less than 20 friends and served three thaals. In the years that followed, the numbers grew to 40 then 60 people. This past Ramadan, the caterer Dilawar (whose services the family has used for over 50 years) served 15 thaals to 120 guests. “We didn’t realise non-Muslims enjoyed the food as much,” says Khozema.
Some things, of course, are done differently now. Guests get diet cola instead of Rooh Afza. Instead of bhains (buffalo) ka doodh, family members prefer the kind that comes from a carton. Desi eggs have been replaced by milder-tasting ‘English’ ones. Kheema is bought ready-made even though there is an electronic machine to grind it somewhere at home. For a relatively smaller family of eight, a large cup of dry fruits and nuts suffices for shir kurma. The Mohameds now live in an apartment in Cuffe Parade, they eat at the dining table and the thaal, once an aspect of daily life, is typically brought out only two days in the year – Ramadan and Moharram’s Pehli Raat. The most elaborate meal of the year is Pehli Raat, when the thaal can have as many as 52 sweet and savoury dishes including tikka, kebab, samosa, cutlet, gajar ka halwa, caramel custard, milk pudding and cakes and chocolate.
While pizzas and tacos have also featured on their dinner menu in recent years, when Khozema and his sister Tasneem Hatimbhai think about home food, they think about simple chicken or mutton dishes cooked in a thick stew of tomato, onion and dry masalas, kaari chawal, biryani, and dal chawal palida (a rice and lentil pulao served with a stew of dal and veggies). Bohri masalas continue to be bought from Hakimi Stores in Crawford Market as they have been for decades. Khozema’s wife Kehkashan Merchant says she was fascinated when she learned about the stock-keeping diary, and has taken over the book.
From right: Joeri Aulman, Khozema Mohamed, Hussain Aulman, and Abbas Merchant.
Nafisa says that she is now “retired from the kitchen”, but continues to be a big dessert person, making sweets on festive occasions – dates stuffed with pistachios and mawa and sev kurma using a traditional technique. She also makes sure that every cook who has worked in their home knows the family’s traditional recipes.
When Tasneem lived in the Netherlands with her Dutch husband Joeri Aulman for a few years, she found herself returning to her mother’s cooking traditions, attempting the family’s favourite dishes – harira (a chickpea soup), kheer, samosas, halwa – to give her a sense of home. She carried her mother’s recipes with her. Tasneem has since moved back to Mumbai and is looking for a good patthar because she feels that there is a special quality to spices ground on it, and she suspects that the older, simpler things – ghee, fresh milk – might be better than processed vegetable oil and packaged milk. Her children Hussain, aged ten, and Sarrah, aged eight, have fasted every year since they were four or five years old. During our iftaar meal together, they were the most enthusiastic diners at the table.
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