LOVE LETTER TO LALLIE
Edited by Zenariah Barends and Michail Rassool
‘LOVE LETTER to Lallie’ is no ordinary cookbook, it is structured in two parts – a family history followed by a trove of recipes in nine chapters.
It is amazing how food can bring families and communities together, it is such an emotional and personal journey shared in the book. Liesl Van Der Schyff speaks to Zenariah Barends
Q: Writing a cookbook is a labour of love, what inspired you to start this journey?
A: Over the years the grandchildren of Lallie (Ayesha Rassool) have spoken about compiling a cookbook that contain many of the favourite recipes in our family so that they would not be lost to future generations.
As none of her children (our parents) were able to find Lallie’s famous fruitcake recipe, we felt that the dishes that we loved should not suffer the same fate.
At the initial stage the plan was to include only our favourite curries, biryanis, bredies, stews and, of course, desserts.
As Lallie had passed on and our parents, especially her daughters – themselves remarkable cooks and whose food we loved – were getting on in years, we felt we needed to action the cookbook discussion and make it a reality.
In 2017 we held a family reunion and the discussion of centralising recipes into a repository that we could all reference was raised again.
However, it was the Covid-19 pandemic that eventually provided the opportunity for this discussion to progress. We called an online family meeting in January 2021 to get the blessing of the remaining elders in the family, kick-start the project and get a team of volunteers who would pull it all together.
Six of us volunteered and the rest is history.
Q: Who is Lallie?
A: Lallie, my maternal grandmother, was Ayesha Rassool (née Gool) the eldest daughter of Yusuf and Bibi Gool and called Lallie by her grandchildren.
She married Peter Alexander Rassool from Somerset West, who adopted her Muslim faith and who we, their grandchildren, called Oups. Lallie bore nine children, eight of whom survived into adulthood – four daughters and four sons.
My mother, Jessie, is Lallie’s youngest daughter. Lallie was stern and told her grandchildren to finish every grain of rice on their plates. Failure to do so meant that one day when we got to heaven we would be questioned by each uneaten grain of rice.
She was quite vociferous about the importance of education, and she ensured that all her daughters completed their schooling.
Q: In the beginning pages of the book, you write about a shared sense of family identity. How did you get your various family members to contribute to the recipes?
A: At the online meeting in 2021 a proposal to activate the publishing of a cookbook was presented to the family, many of whom still live in South Africa but also scattered across the globe.
The cooks were requested to contribute their favourite dishes to the book and thus the scope of the book broadened to include newer recipes, as long as they were favourites in each family unit. Bearing in mind that as home cooks these dishes were often cooked from memory, we requested that they pay attention to the ingredients and quantities that they used when next cooking the dish and record it. There were also some handwritten recipes which our aunts had written over the years, which had been shared between the families.
The team consisted of six members, grandchildren and one great-grandchild, who became the main photographer for the project. It was important to do this in-house as a family and it was a self-published work, but we got in a professional designer and printer to collaborate and create the book as it stands today.
As you will see there are a variety of biryani and curry recipes, for example, as there were variations on how these were cooked in the different homes. We encouraged this so that we could have the choice of which biryani to cook when the occasion arose. It took a while but eventually we gathered more than 130 recipes that have found their way into our cookbook which was finally published in 2022, a year and a bit after we first began the process.
Q: What are your earliest memories of Lallie's kitchen?
A: We used to visit Queens Road from the time I was born, so I remember how the kitchen was the fulcrum of all our visits, with many women, including Lallie, my mom and aunts chatting away and of course all of us children being fed. In addition, we often gathered at what was then the family home at 24 Queens Road, Woodstock, especially on special occasions like Eid, where the men went for a special breakfast after attending mosque in District Six.
At Eid lunch we would be sure to savour Lallie’s fruitcake, chocolate cake and eclairs, which were always on the table. Today we still associate Lallie with delicious food and cake. The family cookbook, Love Letter to Lallie, is therefore our tribute to her.
Q: The back stories are often what lends itself to storytelling of a different kind – in particular the one shared by Ciraj Rasool. Ciraj mentions the family home was in District Six. Does it still exist?
A: The house at 24 Queens Road, Woodstock, is no longer the family home, but still exists.
Q: The artwork is something very different to other cookbooks. Why the particular cover?
A: When we had the first meeting to discuss the cookbook our elders made it very clear that they wanted 24 Queens Road, Woodstock, the home out of which the children of Lallie and Oups had gotten married, to be on the cover. Our cousin, Reza Rassool, offered to paint it so it is an original artwork. It was going to be the cover from the start, no question, even though it is not a typical cookbook cover.
Q: In your foodie notes and tips ... What is Dhai? Is it the same as Maas?
A: Dhai is a fermented drink made of either yoghurt, buttermilk or maas but with extra ingredients. These ingredients vary but often include chillies, garlic, green coriander and spices. It is usually eaten and associated with biryani.
• ‘Love Letter to Lallie – A Family’s Culinary Journey’ can be purchased at the District 6 Museum at R300 and on Amazon.
Cape Times