“Cook of the Week”

Cooking is a chance to be creative and create a strong bond with family and friends, believes Aban Daboo who was chosen "Cook of the Week” by the Daily Herald of January 7, 2015. "Last summer the paper had a Cook of the Week challenge for Chicagoland chefs and I was one of the eight finalists with my recipe for patra ni machhi. I did not win the contest but the Food Section editor was fascinated with some of my recipes and this December she asked for some more Parsi recipes,” Daboo wrote to Parsiana. Under the label of Parsichef, she pursues her business for catering and shipping food throughout the US.
"Actually Parsi food is a fusion of Mediterranean, Indian, English and Middle Eastern foods,” observes Daboo who knows how to promote her dishes with exotic names so that papeta per eedu becomes potato frittata or khara rus-chaval becomes coconut lamb and spiced rice. Besides Parsi dishes she is also adept at Chinese, Mexican, American, Italian and Indian cuisine.

Aban Daboo: "food is a fusion"

Her favorite ingredient for Parsi dishes is the paste made with fresh ginger and garlic which she adds to her saffron chicken with apricots, her curried turkey loaf, her home-made curry or when cooking vegetables. Always in favor of using fresh vegetables or herbs she would rather not use bottled spices or pastes, preferring instead to roast the spices and make her own masalas at home. Since Indian spices are freely available in ethnic and Indian grocery stores in Chicago, "The only spice I get from India is Parsi style dhana-jeeru (coriander-cumin powder),” she responds to Parsiana’s queries. Used to "tasty tum-tum-tu bhonu (spicy food)” when growing up in Bombay, she learnt cooking from her mother, maternal and paternal aunts, and her paternal grandmother who would dismiss a meal without spices as "hospital nu bhonu (meant for invalids).”
For the main courses she prefers to follow her mother’s recipes although for snacks and sweet dishes she depends on Parsi recipe books. She appreciates the efforts of the late Freny Mehta who "taught the Chicago Parsi community how to make dar-ni-pori many years ago and today we have dar-ni-pori bake-a-thons every February/March when the ladies and some brave men come together on this day.”
Since the inauguration of the Zoroastrian Association of Metropolitan Chicago (ZAC) 32 years ago Daboo has been volunteering for their lunches, potluck and fund-raising dinners and other events. After she and her husband moved to Aurora, her involvement has reduced although a minimum two volunteer lunches are fixed in a year when the attendance may vary from 50 to 150. Referring to the Parsi love for food she revealed, "Even to this day when friends travel together from Chicago to Detroit we decide who will bring the poras and rotlis, with jelly and makhan – and at our first stop we polish them off, no matter how many are made, they are all gone!”
Her education in Bombay was at St Anne’s School after which she graduated in economics from Jai Hind College and then worked for 19 years with Merck, Sharp and Dohme before leaving India with husband Aspy, son Behram and daughter Shireen. Daboo migrated to the US in 1981 and joined McDonald’s Corporation where in her 15 years of service she started as an administrator and retired in 2000 as office manager.
The one-time Cusrow Baug resident on a recent trip to Bombay observed the rising economic prosperity in the community and felt "maybe the children should give religion a little more importance…I feel they should take time to smell the roses!...The Zoroastrian community in the rest of the world is trying their best to stay connected to their roots… However they will never have the feeling of Parsipanu or the flavor of being a bawaji as we experienced in…Bombay and Parsi colonies.”
Looking forward to vacations and holidays with the children and grandchildren, Daboo gives due importance to family, saying "everything else is secondary.” Besides cooking for her husband of 50 years and family, she loves to host dinners in style using her good China crockery. As quoted in the Daily Herald, "I’m the only one from my group of friends who uses cloth napkins whenever I entertain.” Cooking as a hobby is "a way to unwind,” believes Daboo who enjoys getting creative with leftover food too.
Also fond of writing and directing Parsi nataks as fund-raising activities, she urges all fellow seniors to stay away from the TV and instead "be involved with family, friends and the community,” lauding the example set by Chicago seniors like Roshan and Rohinton Rivetna, Kayomarsh and Nergish Mehta. Daboo recommends, "Do not re-tire but re-fire your spirit…”