Meeru Dhalwala of Vij's Will Teach You How to Cook up Great Food Writing

You won't find Vij's restaurant co-founder and chef Meeru Dhalwala in the kitchen next Saturday. Instead she'll be in The Tyee's Vancouver newsroom, serving up a lesson to 20 local foodies on her second love, writing. (Later in this article you can sample some of her delicious prose.)

Dhalwala's upcoming Tyee Master Class is centred on "inspired" food writing -- a term taken from the title of her first cookbook, Vij's: Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine, and one that quite accurately describes the passionate restaurateur's outlook on both food and life.

Inspiration is not difficult to locate in the two award-winning cookbooks Dhalwala co-wrote with husband Vikram Vij. Memories of childhood meals, reflections on the virtues of local produce and heartfelt anecdotes on the role of cooking and eating in both their personal and professional lives add context to recipes that otherwise speak for themselves.

The premise is simple: culinary culture is changing, and with it how we communicate about food. In a city like Vancouver, where restaurants and groceries line the streets and hundreds of food bloggers compete for influence, a clear, compelling and contextualized voice is needed to cut through the noise.

Who better to give lessons than Vancouver's favourite food personality who, together with husband Vikram Vij, runs one of Canada's top-rated restaurant businesses, is an active member of the local food community, and has penned two critically acclaimed cookbooks that epitomize the voice of modern food writing?

Whether your interest is writing reviews, blogs or cookbooks, advocacy, marketing or just plain fun, Dhalwala's class will help you stock up on the ingredients for mouth-watering prose. Beyond this will be expert advice on transposing recipes, finding voice and pinpointing audience, with plenty of time for Q&A with one of Canada's feistiest food personalities.

Of course, you can expect to be fed. A full stomach is necessary for learning. Registration includes a home-cooked Vij's snack (it's a surprise!), full Whole Foods catering and local B.C. refreshments served up by The Tyee's own sommelier.

Space is limited, but a few spots are still open in Dhalwala's April 21 class. We hope you'll sign up and join us.

In the meantime, here's a taste of Dhalwala and Vij from the introduction to their latest cookbook, Vij's at Home: Relax, Honey. The story picks up after the purchase of the family's first dining room table, very late in their culinary careers, in preparation for their home being showcased in an episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations...

Vij's at Home: Relax, Honey
By Meeru Dhalwala and Vikram Vij
Douglas & McIntyre (2010)

"We spend hours at the table (often with the girls) discussing anything from the carbon footprint of lamb from New Zealand to the merits of buying local versus organic. We have spent days discussing the meaning of 'gourmet.' We still haven't reached any consensus on this one: is gourmet an extravagant beef tenderloin with a shiitake mushroom and rapini curry, or is it a rustic peasant-style stew? We do agree on one thing: any meal cooked from raw, unprocessed ingredients that tastes good and is served with love is basically gourmet.

"Vikram's gourmet comes out when he's cooking curried rack of lamb for dinner parties with our friends. Meeru's gourmet comes out when she empties the grocery bag onto the kitchen island and sees all the colours of the fruits and vegetables, along with purple onions, green onions and garlic. For her the smell of green tomato vines right where they meet the tomato is better than any perfume.

"After years of not realizing what we were missing, the arrival of a dining table was like a balm to our lives. We've always loved cooking, but now our rewards are multiplied with the joys of being able to have friends over for dinner without any stress of rearranging kitchens and carrying folding tables and chairs. Simply put, we are less lonely with the freedom of being able to more often invite people over for a meal.

"Nevertheless, we simply can't cook like a team, and we finally accept that. One of us has to take the lead, with the other one in a support role. Vikram in his robust mood will spend the day before a party planning and shopping and then cook all day of the party. The two hours before our friends are to arrive have become a family joke -- Papa will start yelling about cleaning up the house and setting the dining table. This can't be just any setting -- every detail must be looked after in a very five-star way. It's truly a high-maintenance feast with millions of pots and pans, different glasses for each type of wine, and different bowls, plates and cutlery for each food item.

"Meeru is most comfortable when she's cooking daily meals for the family or when she's with her staff in one of the restaurant kitchens. When there's no stress, she feels free to experiment and try new combinations of ingredients and spices. When cooking for friends, she enjoys making the meal as simple as possible, with a focus on few dinner items and minimal set-up and clean-up. She also loves to cook in the presence of friends and get their help along the way. Although she often makes a meat curry, she has no qualms about serving a completely vegetarian meal. And she always balances the dishes with little to no fibre with high-fibre dishes.

"With the new dining table Meeru often has casual, small dinner parties, which Vikram joins later in the evening when he gets home from the restaurants. No matter how tired he is, Vikram always notices that something is 'missing' from the table or that people are pouring their own wines instead of being served. Within minutes, he loosens up and starts drinking and eating, contending with the fact that, just as she'll always be five minutes late, Meeru will never host a fine-dining dinner party on her own.

"And this leads us to our cookbook. Almost everything we cook at home for our dining table ends up at either Vij's or Rangoli, our two restaurants in Vancouver. Whereas Vij's is sophisticated and exotic, Rangoli is bright and playful. At the restaurants we'll pair up various dishes prepared at different times. At home we keep it mostly simple, unless it's Vikram's turn to cook.

"In this book we've arranged the recipes according to the main ingredients. Traditionally, home-cooked Indian food is served in the middle of the dining table, and people help themselves to what they want and as much as they want. Indian food at home is rarely plated in advance. Whereas some people plate their own food in phases (Vikram's dad will always help himself to a small serving of lentils before anything else), others (like Vikram) will pile everything on their plate at once. You can pretty much make any of these recipes and serve several dishes together or just cook one dish and serve it as your main meal. The combinations are endless, and we've given food-pairing suggestions at the end of each recipe to help you.

"Ours is a whimsical, loud and very social cuisine that practically begs you to share it with as many people as possible. Its aromas will go through your entire home, the floor of your apartment building or your entire neighbourhood block. Meeru remembers childhood picnics at the Washington Monument and recalls how non-Indians would often follow the smell of the curry and ask her parents what they were eating. Every time, Meeru's parents would invite the inquisitors to try the food. They always had more than enough, since Indian food tastes even better as leftovers.

"We don't have a 100 per cent cooking success rate at home. Many factors -- a stressful day that is difficult to shake off, endless errands that still need to be done or just the feeling of not wanting to do any more work -- can contribute to a less than perfect meal. But we don't regard cooking as a household chore that can be postponed or neglected. Cooking, just like singing a goodnight song to your child no matter how tired you are, or listening to your sibling's most recent emotional trauma no matter how distracted you are, is one of humankind's unique forms of nurturing. Nurturing takes effort, but it isn't a chore. We believe that when you look at cooking this way, the effort to cook a good meal becomes a form of pleasure and satisfaction."

Dhalwala teaches More than Recipes: Inspired Food Writing at The Tyee on Saturday, April 21. Read more about the class and register here. We expect a line-up longer than the one outside Vij's to get in. See you there!