Review by Yemisi Aribisala author of Longthroat Memoirs, Facebook, October 2018
I had an instinctive feeling I would love Ishay‘s book from the moment I laid eyes on it. It was most probably two things – the cinnamon and gold cover and the emblazoned word “CURRY”. I didn’t have time to look through it. It was at the wonderful, dynamic Book Lounge Bookshop at the corner of Buitenkant & Roeland Street in Cape Town. We were planning to move from the Western Cape already and I was worried about weight and all the other hundreds of books I had to move. I didn’t buy it. I’m glad I didn’t. It would be stuck in storage with all my other books. And this book without any doubt, though the year has not ended IS my favourite book of the year. I want it right here with me. For so many reasons that I cannot yet put in words since it only arrived in the post yesterday I love this book and it is a keeper. Not to be borrowed or even touched by just anyone. I admit that I myself am a book thief so I’m going to attach all kinds of alarms to it so it doesn’t walk out of the door under someone’s arm.
Firstly the book stopped time when I opened the package in the middle of a stressful cloudy day- to open that package and see the gorgeous gold and brown and to have a handwritten note from the author drop out. I am passionate about hand-written letters and the author just hit all the right notes with the arrival of this book.
Secondly, the power of so many people’s stories told through the delicious medium of spices and virtuoso cooking. Many of the women in the book are like me – past 40, cooking for many years, with heartwarming and traumatic and true stories, understanding intrinsically the muscular often underrated meritoriousness of moving this pot here, and filling that one there, and chopping this and that. So much beauty and integrity in this book, in the seemingly mundane, and in people and the lines on their faces and their smiles and eyes and souls and hair and commitment to nurturing others… I loved the pace of the book and the closeness of the photographs and all the featuring atmospheric props – landscapes, mountains, road signs, Namaqualand daisies etc. I love the fact that one is reading about ordinary people and not celebrity chefs. (Well one or two are present but they are not the focus of the pilgrimages) I kept feeling my scalp and backbone prickling just browsing the pages.
Ishay writes about a country that I lived in for three years but couldn’t travel through. I recognise the names and regions but she has given the gift of beautiful journeys through the homes and hearts and cooking… mussel curry, bunny chow, fried fish masala, curried mealie rice, moong dhal, paneer chutney with cashew nuts, Gadija’s fish and prawn curry…etc etc… of South African people. What an amazing book. A truly stunning collection of stories that I found myself struggling to adject-ify. I am always looking for books to invest my whole heart in (without finding them) and this book just deserves all of it. I want to cook every dish in it. I want to read it in bed.
Lastly (for now) An inadvertent study of hands…I was telling my children how my hands and arms had changed over a decade because I suspect when you spend hours cooking, functionality takes over…sinews, burns, loss of daintiness, a thickening and widening and callusing that allows you to swing heavy hot dutch ovens. I have often found myself sitting on my hands in public because I am conscious of how “minimalist” for a lack of better words- my hands look. Ishay’s book is full of hands that look like mine – sturdy, working, powerful, cooking hands. On other people, reflected from Ishay’s book and stories, they are beautiful and move me, and so I don’t mind so much my own hands.
I love this book. No ifs no buts. And it is going to take pride of place in my kitchen among my precious books, cookery and otherwise.
Well done Ishay. The highest accolades. Well done.
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