Diaspora
Dinners

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Repaired Shepherd’s Pie

In Proust’s À La Recherche du Temps Perdu, he writes: “When nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer, but more enduring, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste remain for a long time, like souls remembering, hoping, waiting upon the ruins of all the rest.”

Food awakens the past for most humans, but for us diasporic peoples, it’s a lifeline – a way, sometimes the only way, of dealing with inner and outer turbulence.

I cook my mum Jena’s inventive coconut dhal – in her acrylic cooking cardi, which I have never washed – when I miss her desperately, and fried mogo (cassava) sprinkled with chilli powder when I get too sad about my sister Zarina’s severe mental illness and Covid death. I used to take some to the care home she lived in. Though it was cold and soggy, she would scoff all the chips.