About Andaza

When I imagine my mother, I see her in the kitchen, immersed in the act of preparing a meal, measuring spices with her fingers. My memories of my Nani (maternal grandmother) – Nani Mummy, as I called her – are of her crouched over her white enamel cooker, stirring rice pudding. In my reminiscences of my Dadi (paternal grandmother), she is always in the kitchen, silently commanding my five aunts as they cooked large family meals.

Both of my grandmothers, and my mother, cooked without recipes, recollecting and recreating meals using their senses. I grew up around this way of cooking called andaza, which translates as ‘estimation’, but really encompasses what I like to think of as the art of sensory cooking. Even as a young child I was fascinated by the idea that a recipe could turn out differently when it was cooked by someone else, that we all had a different ‘flavour in our hands’ that made a dish unique to us – this felt like alchemy to me.