Even as a teenager, I was very interested in cooking, when no one else in my family was. My mother hated cooking & would rather eat chutney-roti than having to cook! But my father was fond of eating. When he saw that one of his daughters was so inclined, he immediately presented me with an Urdu book called Ismati Dastarkhwan, I must have been 14 or 15 then. I started actually cooking slightly later, but I loved reading it first, and also collecting other recipe books — I probably ha...
