Noorbanu Nimji
As the fifth-born child of Ismaili Muslim parents—who had immigrated to Nairobi, Kenya from northwestern India in the late 1920s—Noorbanu Nimji, together with her two older sisters, was encouraged to take an active role in cooking and food preparation from a very young age.
Moving to a different country on another continent brought significant changes to daily life for this young family. The relocation meant having to get used to the local cuisine and dealing with issues of availability and quality of various ingredients and produce that had, until then, been staples of a northern Indian (Gujarati) diet. Living in East Africa meant once-familiar recipes had to be adapted and cooking with unfamiliar foodstuffs had to be learned. Thus, Noorbanu grew up learning Gujarati recipes that had necessarily been modified by the Kenyan environment of her early life.
In 1971 when foreign nationals were being ousted from several East African countries, Noorbanu and her husband, together with their own young family, made the decision to depart to the United Kingdom and, shortly thereafter, the Nimji family eventually settled in Canada. Another country, another continent and yet another reason to have to adapt recipes, in light of the produce then available in grocery stores in Calgary in the early 1970s.
Given this life history, it is appropriate that this third volume of A Spicy Touch be subtitled A Fusion of East African and Indian Cuisine. This is a subtitle to which “for the North American Palate,” could easily have been added. The recipes presented in this volume represent the “state of the art” of Noorbanu’s fusion of culinary influences—Indian, East African, and North American—this after thirty years of living in Canada and more than sixty years of consistent service in front of a hot stove.
Noorbanu Nimji is the author of two previous volumes of A Spicy Touch that, collectively, have sold more than 200,000 copies. Both are out of print but a compilation of the best recipes from both volumes will be published in 2008.
Noorbanu continues to make Calgary her home and, more often than not, can be found at home in her kitchen.
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