A CHESTER mum is releasing a cookbook full of recipes inspired by her childhood.
Bhupinder Virdee-Lace, who regularly uses her Indian cooking skills to fundraise for various good causes, has compiled a book of the traditional recipes she grew up with.
Taste of the Punjab – Recreated in Your Kitchen features many unique Indian recipes including spicy sardines, curried eggs, asparagus and potato and meatballs in thuuri.
Bhipinder, 44, of Dicksons Drive, Upton, said she started off the project as a way of recording the food she was taught to cook as a child, because none of them were written down.
“The food that I grew up eating is not available in the local area, with most of the Indian restaurants focusing on Bangladeshi food, which is in the southern part of India,” she said.
“India has 28 states each with its own cuisine, language and cultural identity and I regularly entertain and cook up the food from my heritage and everybody always comments on how they have never tasted anything like it before and then ask for the recipes. “These have never been written down before because they were just in my head as my mum had shown me how to cook them.”
Mum-of-one Bhupinder added: “In the past I have delivered cookery classes at West Cheshire College & Bishop Heber High School and these were used as the research process to ensure that all the recipes worked for other people as well as me.
“I started working on the book in 2008 but had to combine it with working full time at my job as an RE teacher at St Christopher’s special needs school in Wrexham – hence why it has taken me so long!”
Bhupinder’s book, published by The Lantern Project, will be on sale at Chester Food, Drink & Lifestyle Festival for £10. An eBook version will be available on iPad in the near future.
