A generous helping of crowdsourced nostalgia
Crowdsourced recipes and family favourites continue to hold sway on menus in restaurants across the country
Among the wide repertoire of dishes I cook, there is a chicken curry recipe that has reached far and wide. It’s an easy-to-make, potato-laden, bone-in, brown-hued gravy that uses a quartet of dry powders (cumin, coriander, chili and turmeric). I call it my international chicken curry. It is also one that proudly features on the menu of a tiny café nestled along the promenade fronting the confluence of the Mekong and Tonlé Sap rivers that flow through the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. A chance conversation with the owner of the restaurant resulted in a unique barter; he comped off my food bill in exchange for me showing his chef how to make said chicken curry. I don’t even know if it carries my name as a prefix, like he promised he’d add.
FAMILY CONNECTIONS
Beryl’s prawn curry, with mango and kokum (Indian mangosteen) as the main ingredients, along with Aunty Li’s serradura take prime position on the menu of one of Mumbai’s most celebrated Goan cuisine restaurants, O Pedro. The former is a recipe of Beryl Cardoz, mother of Floyd Cardoz, the late master chef and co-founder of the restaurant. The latter is a condensed milk-biscuit-orange caramel pudding that’s the recipe of a beloved Cardoz family aunt, perhaps?
Scores of restaurants across the country have such ‘family jewels’. ‘Harnaam Kaur Da Dabba’, the set meal at New Delhi’s Ikk Panjab restaurant in Rajouri Garden, comes to the table in a heavy brass fourtiered tiffin can. Sourced directly from the culinary treasures of his late paternal grandmother, Harnaam Kaur, the restaurant’s founder Rajan Sethi made sure to stay true to the flavours and nuances of the food that he remembers fondly. “The dishes, including dal tadka, sarson ka saag, matthi cholle, pinni, panjeeri, gajar ka halwa and more, are a homage to her expertise and love for cooking,” says Sethi.*
SPICING IT UP
Staying true to the village vibe that it has been propagating for over four decades, the twin resorts of the Taj Holiday Village and the Taj Fort Aguada Resort & Spa in Sinquerim, North Goa have an equally unique ‘masala programme’ in place. To get the local flavour in food which is so distinct from the rest of India due to the Portuguese influence, the hotel’s kitchens have been engaging with local village housewives for their expertise.
They do this by having the ladies come into the kitchens for a few days a week to freshly grind the wet masala pastes like reichado and jeerem meerem that go into the dishes that the chefs then go on to prepare. “Being the first five-star resort in Goa, we drew a lot of strength and knowledge from the local populace,” says Dibyendu Roy, executive chef of the property. “We believe that this amazing treasure of knowledge cannot be overlooked or discarded. Especially when one is standardising the recipes.”
BORROWED BITES
“God has provided Kashmir with a bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables and we must make the best of the opportunity by cooking delicious recipes,” says Kashmir-based home chef Feroza Begum. She along with her daughter-in-law Nahida Majeed Bhatt have five recipes—including cheukh vangan, a sour tomato and brinjal stew and al hach, a sun-dried gourd and waer masala preparation—that feature on the menu of Mool: Kitchen & Bar, a new multi-regional Indian restaurant in Mumbai.
Joining the duo are 12 other home chefs from around India—like Shubha Nair from Mallapuram, Kerala with her chatti choru fish and rice dish, Aakash Kumar from Jharkhand with his ahuna mutton and Asha Kedia from Rajasthan with her bajra khichdi, raab and gatte ki sabzi. Making an entire section of the menu a crowdsourced one. “When we decided to bring regional food all in one place and out of one kitchen, we realised that this was something no one has ever tried before. To make it even more interesting, we decided to collaborate with home chefs. We did this to source the real and authentic recipes. We had researched and met families that have been cooking these recipes for two or three generations,” says Dipti Shetty, Mool’s co-owner.
Shetty adds: “To ensure that the home chefs were noticed and credited for their work of holding on to these recipes for all these years, we felt that we must give something back... So, whenever someone orders from our home meal menu, that home chef will be credited a certain amount as royalty”.