Queen’s Spread

Zarine Khan in her cookbook Family Secrets reveals how Raj Kapoor was a big foodie, Zayed Khan’s lasagna is the best, and why her husband prefers lighter food like khichda, unlike Suzzane who loves brinjal and Hrithik Roshan chicken korma.

Among Raj Kapoor, RD Burman and Dilip Kumar, who was the biggest foodie and most fun?

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As far as foodies are concerned, I’d say RD Burman and Raj Kapoor! If I were to rank them, Raj Kapoor would be the biggest foodie of the three. He used to host the most amazing parties, and the Kapoor home has been a household that has been known for its great food and dinner parties! My interactions with RD Burman were mostly due to his work with my husband Sanjay Khan, so the dinners and meals were usually the entire movie team working together at our home. Having said that, he was full of life, and a very free-spirited person, and it was a pleasure dining with him! Dilip Kumar has a little more sombre and serious personality compared to Mr. Kapoor and RD Burman, but it was always a joy to host him for dinners at our home. And of course, he had his favourites, too!

You credit your mom-in-law with honing your culinary skills. One lesson she taught you that has stayed with you?

My mother-in-law was a very special lady. There are many lessons she taught me that have stuck with me through time; but if it is about cooking, the first and foremost thing she taught me was that whatever I do, especially during the food prepping time, I should do it with love. She always said that love is a very important ingredient in cooking, and it plays a very important role! It is love that makes us prepare the meal or cook more wholeheartedly, and that is the first basic lesson she taught me. Till today, whenever I am serving a meal (not just while entertaining, but even the daily meals), I pay a lot of attention to details, and it is with a lot of love that the table is laid to make it a special meal. Not just with cooking, I believe that this lesson holds true for life, because when we do something with love, we do it with more deliberation, attention and patience.

Another lesson she taught me, something that is more technical, was that while plating and serving, colours play a vital role with the presentation. Two similar colours shouldn’t be served together, and there should be a contrast so that the feast whets the visual appetite, the first sense! She taught me how to serve and lay out the table artistically, something that is key to Western cuisines and dinner services.

Amongst Suzzane, Simone, Zayed and Farah, who is the best cook?

Zayed, is undoubtedly the best cook among my children, and it is also because he enjoys cooking. He finds it relaxing, and unwinds with cooking! He is a cook par excellence and I suppose it has been a genetically passed on trait from his father, who obviously got it from my mother-in-law. Zayed’s lasagna is the best I have had to date, and it compares to the flavours and standards of authentic Italian cooking. His hara masala chops are exquisite too, and a favourite of Adi Godrej! He also likes to experiment a lot with food, and makes it look exotic and different. My daughters enjoy good food, and can cook as well, but are not as enthusiastic as Zayed is about food.

You came from an aristocratic Parsi family—how have you mixed Parsi cuisine with your mom-in-law’s recipes?

My tastes and sense of flavours have been adapted to Parsi cuisine, since I’ve grown up on traditional Parsi food, and that palate has also developed in my children. However, there are so many influences in our meals; Parsi, Mughlai, Continental, that it helps break the monotony of just one cuisine and makes a merry mix of dishes at the table. Be it Parsi favourites like dhansak and fish curry, or Mughlai dishes, and even Continental food like baked or roast chicken, we keep the tastes individualistic, retaining the authenticity of the dish and the cuisine because they together create a wonderful symphony and ambience.

Is it possible to bond over good food? Which are the fabulous parties you have had, and the one guest you would like to invite over and over again to your home?

I think it is very much possible to bond over food, especially with the family! In fact, there’s the old adage-families that eat together, stay together. We, as a family, have always made a conscious effort of eating at least one meal together. Since everyone gets busy with work at lunch time, we mostly eat our dinners together. My husband is a very good conversationalist and an avid talker, and he keeps the conversation flowing on topics like politics, current happenings, international news, history, you name it. He initiates interesting chats and engages with all our guests.

When it comes to guests, besides friends and family from the fraternity, we have hosted prime ministers, sheikhs, the King of Morocco (who came incognito), the King and Queen of Nepal (who are our special friends), the Maharani of Jaipur with her children, and many such dignitaries. Our home has been very lucky from the beginning, and we have been blessed to host and dine with some of these esteemed guests who have since become very good friends of the family. In fact, I remember this one instance when Sanjay was filming at RK Studio, and they had some Russian guests who came over for an impromptu dinner party. There were some 20 guests and there was no space, so we did a carpet seating. It was an informal evening, but there was so much love and affection! Also, we later discovered that one of the guests was the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia. Food and dining with friends is all about sharing love and warmth! I would like to host over and over again are my closest friends, whom I see every day. My close family, and friends!

You have said that the key to good dishes is mixing veggies and meat, which is your personal favourite and why?

I have two favourites, bhindi gosht (it is similar to a common Persian dish), and cabbage gosht, which is something we experimented with and created at our home! I think when you mix vegetables and meat, it brings in a lightness to the dish and balances it. Palak chicken and palak gosht are my other favourites. I think mixing these two elements helps add variety, which is a very essential part of cooking. Coconut powder helps add and enhance the flavours. But I suppose you have to have a hand and love for cooking to be able to make the right flavour combinations. Baingan gosht is a new dish we tried as well, where we deep-fried aubergine and cooked it with gosht by steaming them together for five minutes.

Food and home cooking is also about innovation and experimentation, and we need to try new things.

Green masala pomfret was Sunil Dutt’s fave, what is your husband’s fave and why?

Aashmash is his favourite dish now. It is light on the stomach, and is very similar to khichda but lighter. Of course, he loved to dine on biryanis and fried eggs, gurda kaleji and heavier meals, but I suppose as we get older we prefer lighter food. He also enjoys Continental food-salads, roast and baked chicken, too!

You have stayed away from desserts, seeing a friend’s obesity. Which are the ones you cook at home on festive occasions?

Well for Eid, phirni is a favourite and we cook it for the festival. Gajar Halwa is another Indian dessert, we enjoy eating on occasions. But, as a family, we are conscious of our sugar intake and prefer eating lighter desserts, like fruits mixed with ice cream, cheesecakes for indulgence every now and then. We usually tend to stay away from sweets.

How does the Khan family stay in shape, with such good home-cooked food?

We have our genes to thank for it! We have a good appetite and enjoy good food, but the key is moderation! My husband Sanjay says that we should not feed the stomach to the core, and we apply that. While we all are health-conscious, have moderate meals to ensure we aren’t overeating, we don’t diet either! Also, all of us lead very active lives, I am on my feet till the evening, and all my children keep very busy with their work, so I guess that helps us stay in shape!

What requests do you get from your daughters to make for them on a weekend?

Farah enjoys seafood a lot, and her usual requests are for crab curry or fish curry.

Simone loves the mutton dhansak, and Zayed enjoys eating red masala chops, chicken fry, and white rice with chaar (pepper water). Suzzane has been a vegetarian for sometime now, so she usually asks for vegetarian dishes like mashed rice with aloo bhartha or baingan.

What about your sons-in-law, who appreciates you the most?

It is quite interesting, but all my sons-in-law did not believe that I could cook at first. My son-in-law Ajay (Simone’s husband) even asked me to cook the dumka keema to reconfirm that I could in fact cook! Even Hrithik, he asked me to cook chicken korma and even after I prepared the meal, he kept asking and checking repeatedly that it was in fact cooked by me.

Of course, over time I do not cook myself as much. But I have trained my staff to cook exactly how to prepare a dish, and I oversee it. In case, I feel something has been done or cooked incorrectly, I ask them to make it from scratch! And it all comes from the love of cooking.

Among veggie dishes, which is the one, which is most difficult, and why, to make?

I do not think there is any one recipe that is difficult to cook in the book. All the dishes, vegetarian or non-vegetarian, are very simple, fast cooking dishes made with ingredients available at every household. With this book, I wanted to share with everyone some of the dishes we have enjoyed cooking and dining on, and for them to be able to enjoy cooking it for themselves, their families!

Possibly the baked mac and cheese would be the most difficult dish, but only because of the technique of baking that makes it a little more tedious. I believe that it is a false notion that more difficult and complicated a recipe, the more delicious; in fact I think it is the reverse, the simpler a dish, the better. The ingredients and the food shine through. And while complicated dishes may look more beautiful, simpler dishes are more delicious!

Do you plan on another book, to add what you probably could not in this one?

Honestly, you never know! My children wanted me to share all these time treasured recipes that have been passed on to me, so graciously by my mother-in-law. But when I started working on it, it became a giant! When we cook at home, a lot of times, the spices are not measured but estimated, and to put it in a cookbook, we had to dissect the recipes.

The photography, done so beautifully by Ashima Narain, had to be exceptional to represent and showcase the dish in its glory, and it can be exasperating to make it all look just right! There are so many elements that go behind putting this together, and I may not have the energy to do another book, but like I said, you never know!

From the October 2015 issue of L’Officiel India.