A reluctant icon

Noorbanu Nimji, a culinary force from Calgary, shared her spicy touch with the world

Written by MANISHA CLAIRE Illustration by ANSON NG

In 2016, Western Living magazine announced its annual Foodies of the Year list. It featured a typical selection of cutting-edge chefs and beverage masters, but among the honourees was also the oldest person ever named to the list, as well as the only home cook recognized that year: an eightysomething Calgary grandmother named Noorbanu Nimji.

Five years later, it’s clear that Nimji’s presence on Western Living’s list—where she received the title of “Reluctant Icon”—was a fitting nod to her unique place in the Canadian food world. Nimji, who passed away last June at age 85, spent more than 40 years teaching fans around the world about the Indian and East African food of her Ismaili Muslim heritage through A Spicy Touch, a self-published cookbook series that went on to sell several hundred thousand copies. From her home kitchen, she served as a one-woman cultural council, ensuring that multiple generations of Ismailis could learn about and appreciate their homelands. “When the time comes [and] our parents and grandparents are no longer around, how do we preserve that heritage aspect of our cooking?” says Ali Jadavji, a Calgary chef who grew up near the Nimji family. Through her recipes and her commitment to teaching the next generation, “Mrs. Nimji did that for us.”

Nimji’s journey from homemaker to culinary celebrity started when she and her family arrived in Canada from Nairobi, Kenya, in 1974. As a young wife and mother, she learned to cook dishes

that blended her Gujarati heritage and the cuisines of East Africa: comfortable in a strange land,” says Mawji. “One of those most impotato curry, pigeon peas and savoury rice dishes. portant aspects was food. If they could make the food, they could

After Ugandan president Idi Amin called for the expulsion of turn any place into their homeland. Food was not only something Asians from the country in the early 1970s, Nimji’s family left that made a new place of settlement into home, but it was also a Kenya, worrying the same might happen there. Many Ismailis, who way [for women] of gaining independence within the family, being are part of a Shia Muslim community currently led by Prince Karim important within the family and also a way of earning a living.” al-Husayni (Aga Khan IV), sought asylum in Canada, the U.K. and In a few short years, Nimji went from being a homemaker elsewhere, leading to the creation of a diaspora that now spans 25 catering small community parties to a local celebrity that all countries. Today, there are about 100,000 Ismailis living in Canada. Calgarians wanted to learn from. She hosted cooking demonstra-

In Calgary, the Nimjis were active in the local Ismaili commu- tions at local community centres, at a store in downtown Calgary nity, and it was common for Noorbanu to host visiting Ismailis for called the Cookbook Company and at the Calgary Stampede, dinner at home, often to rave reviews and requests to learn how to where she funded the annual Ismaili-Canadian pancake breakmake the samosas, spice mixes and condiments she served. None fast that featured bharazi-stuffed mandazi (coconut doughnuts). of her recipes were written down, so she would have people come She also hosted her own events. Whether she was on stage or in over to teach them how to make bharazi the crowd, she always patiently answered (pigeon peas in coconut cream) or kuku questions from visitors about recreating a paka (chicken, potatoes and eggs in coco- certain restaurant dish at home, explainnut sauce), says her son, Akbar Nimji. “And ing that not all curries were spicy and ofthat’s how it started.” fering Indian-style options for preparing

“It” was Nimji’s foray into recording her FROM HER HOME Alberta beef. recipes and teaching them to others in a KITCHEN, SHE “Even when we were trying to [land on] more formal setting, starting with small the name ‘A Spicy Touch’ . . . I could get that cooking classes for university students in SERVED AS A ONE- the general Caucasian population could be the late 1970s. The classes, which met ev- WOMAN CULTURAL scared of spicy food,” says Akbar. Without ery Saturday in Nimji’s home kitchen, were TV coverage of Indian food or the internet’s organized by local Ismaili community COUNCIL, ENSURING trove of how-to videos, Nimji became a members for those students who wanted a guide for many non-Ismailis who wanted taste of home but had no idea how to make THAT MULTIPLE to add a spicy touch to their diets. the comfort food they craved. GENERATIONS OF One of those people was Karen Anderson,

She quickly amassed enough codified a nurse who took her first cooking class Indian and Indo–East African recipes for ISMAILIS COULD with Nimji in the 1990s. Anderson was her first cookbook, A Spicy Touch: Volume 1, LEARN ABOUT AND drawn to her teacher’s humility and impublished in 1986. Getting the book to print peccable cooking skills. was a family affair: A teenage Akbar was in APPRECIATE THEIR “One of the biggest things she taught me charge of typing all his mother’s handwrit- HOMELANDS. was tasting, tasting, tasting along the way ten notes, which often included terms in to educate your palate,” she says. Gujarati, Swahili and Arabic. The final Anderson became a devoted student of product almost didn’t see the light of day Nimji’s and eventually co-authored the when Nimji found out how expensive it fourth volume of A Spicy Touch with her: would be to have it printed. But after a A Spicy Touch: Family Favourites from home-cooked meal, the representative from the company struck Noorbanu Nimji’s Kitchen, published in 2015 as a best-of collection a deal: They would front the money for the initial costs, and Nimji from Nimji’s archive, with new recipes from family and friends. would reimburse them once copies sold. The book was received with praise in the food world, receiving sil-

And sell they did. Following the initial success of the first vol- ver medals at the Independent Publisher Book Awards and for Best ume, Nimji released a second in 1992 and a third in 2007. The first Regional/Cultural Cookbook at the Taste Canada Awards. In adthree volumes sold more than 250,000 copies, especially remark- dition to her spot on Western Living’s Foodies of the Year list, she able considering the first two books were only available for pur- also received positive coverage in the Globe and Mail and on CBC. chase in Canada during the 1980s and 1990s. Many were given to “As a devoted friend, to see somebody who worked their whole new brides across the diaspora who had either never been to their life never expecting any recognition be recognized, that was really family’s homelands or had not lived there long enough to learn fulfilling for me,” says Anderson, who took over many of the promotraditional dishes. Through word of mouth, the book became tional duties of the book due to Nimji’s failing health. “[Noorbanu] a precious culinary and cultural resource. was quietly thrilled by the awards.”

Nimji’s role as a community connector showcases the impor- But even as she wound down her public appearances in the last tance of food as a cultural touchstone in diasporas, says Nazira years of her life, Nimji’s goal of preserving her community’s tradiMawji, an educator whose doctoral dissertation focused on Ismaili tions was wrapped up in every samosa and stirred into every fragrant women’s experiences in Canada. sauce. Eating one of Nimji’s dishes was like participating in “history

“When families were leaving the last place of settlement where that she made, and that her mother made for her, and that her moththey came from, there was very little they could take with them in er’s mother made for her,” says Akbar. “That’s the legacy that she the sense of physical belongings that would make them feel wanted: that [our] people should not forget who they really are.”