PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Well-connected and beloved in the food world, Sumayya Usmani went from practising law for twelve years to pursuing food writing and teaching. Her first book, Summers Under the Tamarind Tree: Recipes and Memories from Pakistan (Frances Lincoln, 2016) was the first Pakistani cookbook in Britain. Her mentor and friend Madhur Jaffrey, who wrote the main blurb, calls the book 'a treasure'. It won the Best First Cookbook category in the Gourmand Cookbook Awards in 2016. It was also shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award. Her second cookbook, Mountain Berries and Desert Spice: Sweet Inspirations from the Hunza Valley to the Arabian Sea (Frances Lincoln, 2017) was shortlisted in the Best Cookbook of the Year category at the Food & Travel Magazine Awards. Sumayya won The Scottish Book Trust's Next Chapter Award in 2021 for Andaza as a work in progress. Sumayya is an experienced cookery teacher having taught in many UK-based cookery schools, including Divertimenti and the School of Artisan Food and her style of teaching is based on inspiring people to trust their senses and intuition with flavours. She has been featured as a resident food writer for four weeks in the Guardian COOK supplement (now known as Feast), and has also featured in the Telegraph, New York Times, Independent, Saveur, Delicious, Olive, BBC Good Food and Food 52. She was called 'the go-to expert in Pakistani cuisine' by BBC Good Food Magazine. Sumayya is a BBC broadcaster and has been a presenter on BBC Radio Scotland's Kitchen Cafe as well as being a regular panellist on Jay Rayner's The Kitchen Cabinet on BBC Radio 4. She has appeared on BBC Radio 4's Women's Hour. On television, she has appeared on Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Nation on Good Food Channel, and various times on STV and London Live. Sumayya mentors other writers online as well as hosting her podcast, A Savoured Life.
What stood out for mewas the enchanting way you told your life story. I somehow cared less for the food in this book and more for you. I wanted to know more about you and what happened next. You, yourself, are such an exciting focus and you tell your story so well. Your story overpowers the food.- Madhur Jaffrey The title for Sumayya Usmani's memoir, Andaza, means sensory cooking, and it delivers on so many levels. Sumayya's words awakened my senses almost synaesthetically: I could taste the sounds, visualise the flavours, and hear the colours of Pakistani cooking. Her story felt new, exciting, but also familiar in a visceral kind of way. In places, it made me smile and laugh, and at times it triggered sadness. Throughout, Sumayya's voice and spirit are strong, prompting one to read on with an overwhelming sense of awe and solidarity. -Olia Hercules, author of Home Food, Summer Kitchens, Mamushka and Kaukasis Not only a transporting and engaging memoir at a time when we could all do with being transported to the markets of Karachi or the Sea of Japan, but an important contribution to the culinary canon; an irresistible invitation to delve deeper into a food culture Britain has embraced on its plate, yet still knows so frustratingly little about otherwise. I can't decide whether I want to devour Sumayya's story or her recipes first, but this has left me hungry to travel, to explore... and, of course, to eat. -Felicity Cloake, Guardian food columnist and author of Perfect, The A-Z of Eating and One More Croissant for the Road Sumayya has a beautiful, personal and interesting story to share. Food stories like these (the best kind of stories) are the door-openers, harnessing diverse fragments together in a nourishing collective. The cooking of her Nani Mummy, Dadi and phuppos has me hungry to know more of this culture: these dishes, and the comfort, love and support that they bring. -Tessa Kiros, author of Falling Cloudberries, Provence to Pondicherry and Apples for Jam
