Author holds on to Punjabi heritage through food

A cookbook author is teaching people to make traditional Punjabi food in order to try to hold on to her heritage and the memory of her mother.

Surinder Hothi, from Somerset, runs cookery workshops and has written a cookbook to teach British people traditional Indian recipes.

She said she wanted to keep alive the memory of her mother, who died at the age of 59, and her Punjabi culture.

"When you are an immigrant, you can only carry your language and food - the only two things you can keep in a strange new land," she said.

Hothi's parents settled in Portsmouth, Hampshire, in the 1970s.

"My mother wanted to try and preserve something so she taught me traditional Punjabi cookery, exactly how she was taught in the village," she said.

"She made me cook dinner from the age of 11, in the 70s and 80s.

"I think she thought it was the one thing she could give me.

"She died young, so I really held onto that because it's holding on to her."

Hothi said she noticed that people were losing their culinary heritage and often did not have a family member handing down their recipes.

She decided to run workshops to teach people Punjabi cooking "the way mothers teach their daughters".

She said: "I'm aiming it at British people and second or third generations."

Hothi has now written a book called the Business of Recipes, in which she describes immigrant's relationship with food.

"It's about how our people make a living from food," she said.

"My mum had a bed and breakfast. It's a way immigrants can immediately make a living if they don't speak the language."

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