Recipe writing

Preserving my family Indian Gujarati recipes in a cookbook especially for my three girls is something that I have always wanted to do. None of our family recipes have ever been written down before, until now. I wanted to capture and document the secrets behind my family food and ‘Pass It On’ to my girls, so they can do the same for future generations to come. Food is such a big part of my culture, so I wanted this cookbook to be special to keep the authenticity of our food in the family. A big part of the cookbook making project was recipe writing, so here’s a little bit on how I approached this.

Recipe planning

The first step I took to document my recipes was to type up a plan that included a range of recipes for different sections of the book, for example ‘breads’ and ‘pickles and chutneys’. I did this in my ‘notes’ app on my cell phone.

In my spare time after work and during the weekends, I began typing out each recipe, estimating the ingredient quantities until I had completed them all. There are a lot of factors to consider when writing out a recipe, for example the cook time, dietary requirements, how many people the recipe will serve and the cook and preparation times. There’s also the mini recipe blurb to write where I had to think back to my childhood and recall the processes of how mum and dad prepared and cooked food. The biggest challenges were ensuring that all of the recipes were documented to a high standard, creating content that flowed logically end to end, making sure that each recipe was consistent in style and tone using a styleguide that Keryn made, and that all of this was completed within our time frame that we had set.

The first physical print & perfecting each recipe

The whole document of my recipes was printed for the first time. It was so exciting to see and touch our recipe book even though it was in its first stage. There was lots of work to be done. We spent time researching recipe books from the library, looking at layouts and styles that we liked and disliked from other recipe books so we put our own personal touch on our book. The next step was to begin testing the recipes and to note changes to the printed copy. To begin with, I found this quite hard because I don’t know anyone within our culture that use recipes or measuring spoons. We are taught to use our senses for cooking, so you can imagine how difficult it was! I began testing about three recipes after work each day. I would let Keryn know what dishes I would be making so she could plan each shoot in advance, and then photograph them before dark. Keryn used natural light for the photography so it was harder when daylight saving finished and she would get home from work at 6pm. Although dinner was cooked and it looked appetising and we were hungry, we couldn’t eat until the photo shoot was over, so it was a long night! Some shoots took much longer than others. After dinner Keryn would spend time editing the photos and I would type out the necessary adjustments to the recipes. It took me a long time and we would both be up until late at night or early hours of the morning working on our book. Some recipes took longer to perfect than others. The more testing I did also meant getting through some ingredients sooner than expected so I’d find myself back at my local spice store where I became even more of a frequent customer! I would scribble down any changes on the page, then retest the recipes. Some were tested more than others so there was lots more scribble on the pages which became confusing and messy. It was time for another reprint of the book. Here’s a glimpse at what some of the scribbled recipes looked like:

The challenge of weaving in Gujarati words

If you look hard enough on the above images, you may notice some Gujarati words. We made the decision to have some words translated to Gujarati to capture our culture more and to show the authenticity of the cookbook. This created an additional layer of complexity when writing our cookbook because I’m second generation Kiwi and I didn’t grow up learning to speak Gujarati. Of course I know and refer to different dishes by their Gujarati names, but it was critical that the spelling and translations of all of these words were accurate and consistent throughout every single page. We chose to have Gujarati words on our book cover, on each recipe title, and even weaved throughout other parts of the book content. The tricky part was that a word in English didn’t have a like for like translation in Gujarati and there are so many different contexts, so we couldn’t simply use Google translate. Despite the challenge, the translating step was a lot of fun and I learnt more about the Gujarati language. It involved asking several relatives from far and wide to understand and have this explained to me, but it was essential that the right translations were captured. I never realised how complex the different meanings could be, but I’m so glad we did this because this addition really connects the culture to the book and adds richness to the authenticity. 

The recipes were written!

More than one year later, I ended up with a total of five prints of the entire recipe book, made endless visits to the local Indian spice store, and put on a bit of weight after all the testing - but it was all worth it! After I wrote all the recipes and structured the book as best as I could, the file was passed on to Andrea Coppock who did a fantastic job of copyediting the content. It was then passed to Jessica Read to complete the design stage, and then to Kate Wanwimolruk to proofread it for a final time before completing the index and then handing it to our printing company to print. It’s been awesome to see the team working together so well to bring my vision to life, and I’m forever thankful for this!

I have a whole new appreciation for cookbook authors and have learnt more than I could ever have imagined. I hope you all have fun and enjoy cooking my family recipes that I’m passing on to you, and I hope you get to pass it on too!

Shobha Kalyan